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Fri, 02 Mar 2007 Slashdot revamps news aggregation site

New interface encourages more user interaction

Juan Carlos Perez

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Slashdot.org has introduced new feature designed to give more participation in the selection of articles to its users, who submit links to stories and comments about them to the site.

Called Firehose, the new interface lets readers see, for the first time, all the news articles that flow into Slashdot for evaluation by the site's editors. Additionally, readers will be able to vote on whether specific articles should or shouldn't be featured on the site.

Question of the day!

Mark Hattersley
Editor in Chief

Do you share your creations online?

Question of the day!

Do you share your creations online?

% of Macworld readers agree with you

Yes
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What do you create and how do you share it?

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Follow the conversation at @TabletChat

paintings & illustrations, mostly, which i upload to flickr.RT @fragmentedm

I draw manga/anime characters. I also do graphic design and photography.RT @spialelo

Yes. I usually put them up on my #deviantart account for feedback on how to improve.RT @spialelo

"Before, if we chose not to post something, it was gone, and no one else saw it again," said Patrick McGarry, Slashdot project manager.

Firehose will contain stories submitted for consideration by readers, as well as the content of automatic feeds. Readers will be able to tweak their Firehose view by filtering the contents using different parameters, and may opt to use Firehose as their main Slashdot interface. They will also be able to share their Firehose views with other users.

However, despite the increased participation for readers, Slashdot editors will still have the last word on which stories are featured on the site's home page. "Anything going to the front page has to be vetted by an editor," McGarry said.

Anyone will be able to see the Firehose repository of submitted articles, but in order to vote on stories, users have to register with Slashdot. Registration is free.

With these changes, Slashdot, which is part of OSTG, is catching up to so-called 'social news' features that have made sites like Digg Inc's Digg.com extremely popular.

Digg has increased its popularity significantly in the past year, according to web-measurement statistics from Hitwise Pty. For the week ending 24 February, Digg ranked first in Hitwise's IT News and Media category with 10.8 per cent of visits to sites in this category, while Slashdot grabbed 22nd place with 0.75 per cent. A year earlier, in the week ending 25 February, Digg ranked in sixth place with almost 4 per cent of visits, while Slashdot had the 11th spot with 1.33 per cent.

Others that have seen Digg take market share away are PC World and Cnet, which ranked first and second, respectively, in this category, in the week ending 25 February 2006. That week, PC World had 9.5 per cent of visits, and in the comparable week this year it had fallen to third place with 6.7 per cent. Cnet had 9.28 per cent and kept its second place in the comparable week this year, albeit with a smaller 6.8 per cent share.

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