Thing 12

My first impression of Digg is that I could "waste a lot of time here". Maybe if I spent more time figuring out where to look or how to customize, I would find more news that I was actually and typically interested in rather than interested that there is such a variety of content out there. When I looked there were protest YouTube videos featured. These "first hand" items would never appear on traditional news outlets and were interesting. Depending on who "finds" them and how many people actually see them, many unhearalded causes will have a stage never available before.
Reddit is too confusing. I guess that after it finds out the stories you like you will see more stories like those. I don't think I have the time, patience, or inclination to do this.
The organization of Newsvine feels more user friendly and focuses on traditionally newsworthy items from sources with long standing reputations. Quite frankly, this seems the most useful to me for keeping up on news. Furthermore, I clearly wouldn't have the time or access to glean information from all of these sources without this resource.
The Mixx page had a clean simplified look with clear categories. I think I would look more into this than Digg or Reddit for a social news device.
I think the idea of having personalized news that caters to your interests and connects you with people of similar interests is a concept worth exploring. Like I mentioned above, I preferred Newsvine for its "legitamacy" and Mixx for its format. On the other hand...I kind of like edited news. I don't always feel I have time or inclination to do all of my own news selection and editing. And as an information professional, should I really be limitiing my scope to strictly my own interests? This may end up limiting my ability to relate to the variety of patrons I serve. On the other hand I ran across some interesting information I would have missed in the mainstream media.
Productivity??? This has me spending time on something I never "had to" spend time on before. Right now, it doesn't seem to be an enhancer. If I learned how to make it work for me, I might change my mind.
Here we go again... a theme. The more I learn, the more I learn that there is out there to learn. AND moderation and balance in all things. Does this make me interesting or boring?