Now that Digg has expanded beyond the realms of Technology, geeks will not be the only ones who’ll dominate the community. With the introduction of major channels like Science, World & Business, Videos, Entertainment, Gaming and recently also Sports, we will slowly see the tide levelling with non-tech topics getting more and more exposure. Digg is trying not to alienate its grassroots population and has done so by making the Tech channel as the default front page.
With this expansion, I believe the community is now faced with more possibilities and a cultural twist is a potential scenario.
What if the Digg crowd becomes cultural? What if all Filipinos tag other fellow Filipinos as Digg Friends. Same with Indians and Singaporeans, and possibly Chinese and Koreans? These cultural group could be a force strong enough that they could practically influence what appears on the front page of Digg.
Tech is a universal topic and whatever country or culture you are from, there is a huge probability that you’ll be interested in a similar tech news as everyone else.
However, this may not be true in the field of Sports, Gaming and Entertainment. Ragnarok is huge in the Philippines but not in the US; Efren Bata Reyes is a legend in billiards and Manny Pacquiao is getting a lot of attention lately; Richard Gutierrez and Angel Locsin are hot items in the Entertainment industry as well as the Alyssa Alano “Keys Me” video.
What if we have enough Filipino Diggers that could catapult every story about these people into the Digg frontpage? Same could be true with other personalities in other Asian countries.
When that happens, we could be seeing a huge shift in the western make-up of social communities such as Digg. Brazilians have conquered Orkut and more than a 4th of Friendster users are Filipinos. What could prevent them from taking over Digg?
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