TechCrunch: Is Spotplex a better Digg?

It's basically Digg + an ad hoc reputation system. The good news is that it will eliminate most linkspam. The bad news is that it will filter out a lot of insightful content. The systemic design rewards the people who post every single day, rather than those who post the occasional great piece. The reason is that if you only post occasionally then it's very hard to build up a following, unless you write for a techy audience who all use RSS or you make Digg or Slashdot regularly. Instead of encouraging people to speak up when they have something valuable to say, it seems to be encouraging almost the opposite. [insert joke about my comments here].

I do, however, predict that this site will have a lot of stories with really awesome headlines.

Spotplex seems to be down currently, so I haven't been able to fully explore the site. However, based on the Techcrunch coverage, it seems like this will ultimately be just another content suggestion site. I like the innovative way of sourcing stories, but at the end of the day, it will just be another wall for news to echo off of. If a story makes it to the front page of Spotplex, there's a good chance we'll see it on Digg. And then Reddit. And so on.

However, Spotplex will ultimately garner a different type of reader base, so it should provide some variety from that standpoint. Not to mention, now we're getting one step closer to our news feeders becoming "self aware."

Holy Crap. I can't stand that every div in Spotplex is pulling some other Ajax thing down. I had spinny indicators whirling at me like I was in a land of pinwheels.

And when I went in, the first 3 links to stuff was just some test posts or spam.

Answer: No.