Please Digg...it makes you smarter.

It is official that googling makes us smarter. Please read this article if you are in doubt (or not smart enough to google it).

Since that is settled, I would like to direct the reader's attention to the DIGG button on the top right corner of this post and request a DIGG from you. Digging the posts you like is as important as voting in your country's general elections.

(Just in case you have no clue what digging is - When you come across something (anything) in the internet that you believe is worth sharing then you can submit it and comment on them. Stories that get maximum hits or diggs get pushed to front page. You can also go to digg.com and digg whatever you want to.)

Digging is more than just sharing. It is a means of leaving an online footprint of yourself on the web. It enables you to voice your freedom on the internet. It is a global equalizer in that, people from all backgrounds can digg what they like and in a unique way 'band together'. Additionally, digging also presents you with the best that the web has to offer. Blog posts, news articles, picture galleries and all sorts of online content get digged into categories ranging from Technology and Business and Lifestyle and Sports. Its pretty safe to assume that digg.com is a one-stop-shop for the web's most exciting offerings on a daily basis. The article from livescience that I linked above was a digg find from last night.

Digg.com has been around sonce November 2004 and lord knows how many people visit the website or participate in digging. (Actually someone at digg.com should have this data.) So all you diggers out there must be thinking I am pretty mad to write about why one should be digging. However, after blogging about Nepal and India relevant topics for quite a long time, it seems that digging is very much restricted to the West (US & Europe). This is a call out to all Indian and Nepali netizens to go sign up for a digg account and get their voices heard loud and clear on the internet.

Now I am aware there are sites like Digg that are very much geared towards the Indian web user. For instance there is Indianpad. I actually like this this site, but why create an Indian version of digg when the whole world can be brought together by a single website. (For a list of other digg like sites that are India focused please read this post at tothepc.com.) Staying confined to an India specific digg-like portal is keeping from getting Indian news onto the global scene. Let me illustrate. Yesterday Aravinda Adiga won the prestigious Booker Prize for The White Tiger. This news is most definitely digg-worthy. But I could not find it in digg.com. This morning I submitted the news from the TOI website. What should have instead happened is that the TOI should have dugg the news themselves and let their readers add to the diggs and push the story onto the frontpage.

Currently this is how the digg search result for 'adiga' looks like:

14 as the maximum number of diggs is almost embarrasing. The 6th article with 1 digg is not even relevant. The article on TOI has 119 comments. So let's say we just missed 100 diggs and a good chance of having this on the digg.com frontpage.

It might sound like I am giving way too much value to the digg frontpage. Yes I am and yes it's a big deal. That is because millions across the world visit the website and 'digg'. So, for a change you - Reader from India/Nepal please get a digg account and digg this post. And if googling makes a person smarter, digging -sorta like picking the best that comes out of googling- could make us all way smarter.

PS: To make things easier for you I have already submitted the post to digg.com and all you have to do is click on the digg icon on the top right.