Crowdsourcing News
Monday, Beth talked about getting a handle on all the information coming at her through blogs. I want to let you in on my secret, too. I’m constantly trying to stay on top of the next trend or the next viral content. This is a habit of mine, not because I gain anything from it, but because I enjoy knowing before anyone else. The best resource I’ve found is Reddit.
My running joke is that Reddit is what Facebook will be two days from now. Users (or Redditors) constantly post new content, and then other Redditors upvote the best content to the top. Think of it as crowd sourced curation. The catch is that the content is divided up into subreddits, specially focused areas, looking at only one aspect (r/books for example).
While you can find some amazing things, Reddit is also the internet unfiltered. Some subreddits are not for the faint of heart; some show off the worst of humanity. Once you create an account, you can unsubscribe from the default subreddits, and subscribe to only the subreddits that interest you.
Take a look at my favorite subreddits:
- r/books – um, books
- r/ArtisanVideos – well-made videos of things being made well
- r/bestof – the best things that happen on Reddit
- r/IAmA – public Q&A sessions sometimes with really famous people
