1. Check the SoToMo.com Network (same thing)

http://www.playsquad.com/
http://www.imixes.com/

Posted at 2:01PM on Mar 20th 2006 by Motumbo

2. "What exactly is the word for them even?"

They're called memediggers:

http://mashable.com/2006/03/12/memediggers/

I've done a lot of work with the kinds of companies you describe, and it seems obvious to me that people are creating niche and/or roll-your-own memediggers and memetrackers at a fast pace. The CrispyNews idea isn't very new (I predicted it would happen a while back) and in fact a company called Boxxet already has something similar (I think you already know of them - I seem to remember seeing your comments on the Silicon Beat post).

Likewise, NewRoo (recently acquired by Fox) is trying to do the exact same thing for memetrackers - roll your own memetracker and earn a cut of the revenue. I hate it when my predictions come true. :)

Posted at 2:59PM on Mar 20th 2006 by Pete Cashmore

3. Hey thanks for the review! appreciate it. You guys are right: digg is obviously not a new concept. However, I think the difference is in how we are approaching it.

1. Niche markets. Editorless publishing goes after traditional media. But we're going after Automotive weeklies and not the New York Times. There really only needs to be one tech news site, but there are a million niche subjects that smaller magazines thrive in. As news companies battle it out in bigger subject areas, we're fine with providing niche markets a way to share news with each other. We're already finding communities being started for subjects we didn't even imagine and in countries we didn't know about.

2. Community focus. Why not just have a massive site where there are subcategories of every imaginable subject? Because communities have their own culture and their own flavor. Aside from the news, people really gather to exchange opinions and interact with other people. However, Hip Hop fans do not visit the same site as, say, investors. We're looking to allow each site to stand independently and be customized to the community's tastes.

3. Entrepreneurial Energy of the people. What people (so far) have harnessed, is the community's willingness to contribute. What we're trying to do is harness their entrepreneurial energy. We've offered practically 0 customization, but in a few days, people have found ways to do all sorts of things to differentiate their page and make use of the platform. People are amazingly creative when given the chance. A key part of what we're enabling (hopefully) is to allow site creators to be as creative as they can be in creating a good community news site.

Thanks for the post. Let us know what we can do to help improve the site for you.

Posted at 8:48PM on Mar 23rd 2006 by Crispy News Programmers

4. if anyone can build me a digg clone for another subject matter please email me at hilltownmedia@gmail.com

thanks!

Posted at 4:19PM on Jun 7th 2006 by Jeff Davidson