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A new social aggregator, Newspond, has been the talk of the blogosphere lately with some sites giving it glowing reviews and others offering a more moderate response. However, for a site whose tagline refers to itself as the "most advanced news site on the planet," it begs the question: "OH RLY?" Let’s see if that’s true…

The main difference between a site like Newspond and Digg is that Newspond doesn’t use human editors or voting. Instead, the stories are promoted via "machine intelligence" - that is, an algorithm that determines the newsworthiness of the article. Instead of being limited to a narrow range of sources, like Digg, Newspond claims to scour hundreds of web sites from major news portals to the tiniest of blogs.

So who does it better? Let the comparisons begin…

Stats

I pulled up the popular "Tech News" section of both Digg and Newspond and the first difference I notice is that each site provides looks at historically popular stories. At Digg, you can view the "Most Recent," "Top in 24 Hr," "7 Days," "30 Days," and "365 Days." Newspond, on the other hand, only offers "Now," "Today," "Yesterday," "1 week," and "1 month," completely missing a link to view the most popular of the year. Perhaps this selection will expand as the site ages? If not, Newspond is missing out by not providing annual snapshots of their data.

Winner of the Stats Round: Digg

Categories

Well, this is easy. At this time, Newspond only features three main categories, Tech, Science, and Games. Now, just because these are the only categories that appeal to me, Digg’s wider selection, which delves into areas like Sports, Entertainment, Lifestyles and also features sections with Videos, Podcasts, and Images, is the better option for variety.

Winner for Category Selection: Digg

Newsworthiness

The next thing to notice is the story selection differences between the two sites. On Newspond at 3:16 PM EST (2/20/08), the top tech stories (most popular now) were the following:

Microsoft Suspends Distribution of SP1, Sharper Image files for Bankruptcy, PC Gaming Alliance Officially Announced, Sony to Sell Chip Facility to Toshiba, Sony NW-A820 and NW-A829 Bluetooth Powered PMPs, Microsoft Makes XP SP3 RC2 Publicly Available, Airfoil for Mac OS X transmits audio to the Apple TV, Wii Fit to Launch in May, TypeIt4Me 4.0 Adds Spelling Auto-Correct, Logitech Driving Force GT Wheel.

On Digg, at the same time, the top tech stories were:

Lawrence Lessig Launches Change Congress Movement, Use Your Wii as a Media Center, Undersea Saboteurs May Have Been Responsible for Cable Cuts, Microsoft Post New Windows XP SP3 Build, International Clock Video, ‘DVD Jon’ Frees Your Media with DoubleTwist, Recharge Your iPod with Your Shirt, What do thousands of ‘internet voices’ sound like?, Cable and telcos side with Comcast in FCC Bittorrent dispute, and 16 Incredibly Detailed, Useful (and free) Dingbat fonts.

These examples both come from the "popular now" sections of the two web sites’ tech sections. Each site has a couple of, what I would call esoteric stories, featured, as opposed to large, breaking news items. On Newspond, you could say that TypeIt4Me story and Logitech story fit into this category…maybe even the Airfoil story depending on your level of Apple fandom. On Digg, however, there are several "minor" stories being featured: a clock video, an iPod charging shirt, the "thousands of internet voices", and free fonts. If anything, these seem like articles crafted for Digg. They are the kind of headlines that peak your interest, making you want to click through, but as to whether they are considered "news" is debatable. (I vote no, for the record).

Perusing the other sections of both sites, the experience is the same. Newspond’s "Science" stories feature topics like Cancer Deaths Up in 2005, rate still falling, Do Animals think like autistic savants?, and Stem cells help rats recover function after stroke. Digg, again, goes for…well…Digg-bait: Mysterious Creatures Found in Antarctica, Top 10 Landfill Candidates, 41 Hilarious Science Fair Experiments, 50 Weird Science Tidbits & Oddities.

Now, Digg may be a fun place to read these off-the-wall stories, but let’s be out with it: Lists Are Not News.

If actual news is what you want, I’m calling the winner of this round: Newspond.

Sources:

As Read Write Web mentioned earlier, Digg’s selection of sources seems to be narrowing. In this selection of stories, Digg featured 2 stories from Ars Technica, and the others came from Lifehacker, BBC, Yahoo, ComputerWorld, News.com, Metacafe, Lessig08, and bittbox.com.

Newspond claims their stories come from all over the web, but do they deliver on this? On Newspond, the stories in my sampling came from ZDNet, DailyTech (2 from here), i4u, Google News, Macismum, HotHardware, New Launches, The Mac Observer, and Uncrate.

Although both Digg and Newspond feature some stories from large news portals, Newspond also pulls from some blogs and sites that aren’t your typical A-Lister fare (like Digg’s favoring of Ars Technica and Lifehacker). However, featuring stories from Google News, i4u, and ZDNet isn’t exactly going to the ends of the internet, either. A quick comparison of some stories outside of the tech category, though, shows that both sites are featuring a combination of large portal news sources as well as smaller sites. 

It’s too close to call without serious analysis, so I’m calling this one a tie.

Comments

We all know what they say about the comments on Digg, but let’s see if it’s true. I dig deeper (pardon the pun) to read the comments on various stories on both Newspond and Digg. Again, differences are apparent.

A typical Digg comment seems to be, more often than not, negative, rude or crude, and doesn’t provide additional, insightful information or feedback regarding the story. For example, a Digg comment on a story about XP, goes like this: seeing as you have "mac" in your name, I’d assume this doesn’t apply to you. You’re comment should read "I don’t care" which would be more accurate of a comment but equally worthless. On Newspond, a comment on a Vista story reads, "I’m not exactly surprised about this. And if you really want to try it out, get a MSDN subscription.Then you can get the Service Pack 1 Beta 2 off of MSDN." Which one is more useful to you as a reader? And this was a mild example, as I’m sure you know. Browsing through other stories, the trend is similar, Newspond readers are commenting with, if not more intelligent, certainly less juvenile thoughts and opinions.

Winner of the Comments: Newspond

End Results

Although a feature to feature comparison of the sites seems to result in a tie, there is something to be said for Digg’s foothold in this niche and the traffic provided when your story is "dugg." Many competitors have tried, and failed, to be the "new Digg," and Newspond is really just another attempt at the same. Getting a story on Newspond won’t bring your server down, bring in additional linkbacks, or turn you into an A-Lister overnight , but reading the stories on Newspond will give you a more intelligent selection of news, even if a more limited slice of that pie.

The thing is, the act of interacting with the news, clicking a button to have your say on a story and its value, is  a process that makes digg…fun. Participating, not just passively consuming, that’s what the web is about now. So where does that leave Newspond and other aggregators? Will they ever have a chance to succeed? If there is any hope at all for them, the one to watch is Newspond. I’m watching, and you should too.

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