Mixx Fixes the Breaking News Problem

I am a sucker for the plucky under dog. This is always certain when said under dog tries harder and is much more friendly than the dominant player. Sometimes these under dogs turn out to be the winner over the long term, just look at Google.

My current fave plucky upstart is Mixx. I’ve written about how and why I like Mixx before. They just seem to want to improve the experience more than the competitors. It’s not just about the traffic but about actually sharing interesting and relevant stories.

A big problem with all these social voting sites is the vote process itself takes time, and that can mean once the site is popular breaking news takes so long to appear on the front page it is no longer breaking. Digg especially is lousy for news. Once it is on Digg front page you can be sure the news is 24 hours old or more.

Mixx though has a solution, but one that might well upset the more democratically aligned users.

They have announced that certain Super Mixxers will have the power to nominate a post as breaking news, which will catapult them right to the front page in a special breaking news area. You will still be able to vote up and down on the story, but everyone will get to see it regardless until it is no longer breaking I guess.

As I mentioned, there is one big problem with this already, and that is the level playing field of web2.0 is no longer level. Of course there have always been power users, but this makes it explicit and obvious.

The second problem as pointed out by Michael Arrington is they are depending on Super Mixxers actually being “Super”.

I’m sure the digg guys will be watching this carefully. Mixx are aggressively working hard on features, it might not be too long before they take the lead in innovation and people are calling new Digg features Mixx clones.

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Web 2.0

Comments

Leave a Reply