tiinker: The anti-Digg
So I’ve been tinkering around with a new website called tiinker (pun intended).
Some bloggers have labeled it the “anti-Digg.” I opened an account with it and poked around. It appears that unlike Digg, you can’t actually submit URLs to it — the website finds the URLs on its own. But like Digg, you can vote up or down on which URLs interest you, and then it uses an algorithm (likely similar to the one used for Wikia) to learn your reading habits and recommend more stories that you like.
This has an added benefit over Digg because — at least how I understand it — it’s virtually impossible to spam it by saturating it with your own posts. It’s designed for the individual, while stories that make it to the front page of Digg are geared toward mass audiences, thereby making it vulnerable to people who are trying to game the system. What’s more, tiinker has a “popular” page, so you can still get the mass-appeal stories. But in this instance you know that those stories aren’t being gamed.
Keep in mind I’ve only tried it out for a few minutes. I was a bit frustrated that it only had a handful of stories for me to vote up or down on — I was hoping to spend like a half hour trying to teach it what I like.
I need to remember to come back to this site regularly.
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Related posts:
1. A documentary about obsessive video game players
2. How difficult is it to scoop Boing Boing?
HEY!!!1!! I’ve trademarked the “ii” thingie. Those interlopers.
Hi Simon, you say that there were only a few articles for you to rate/view. There is a next page button which leads you to more articles. Alternatively you can try changing the mode to “only unseen” in the right hand menu.