As an avid blogger I am well aware of the role that social media sites play in attracting a larger audience. So I find myself noticing some worrisome behavior over at my daily stomping ground Digg. For the last several days the site has been plagued by dozens of errors and bugs. I find myself frustrated to the point of finding alternative places for my submissions. Here are a few such errors I have noticed in abundance. This one in particular has been showing up on at least 50 percent of my submissions over the past 48 hours or so. Not sure what it means, but the caption they have left alludes to something having blown up. That’s comforting….

So, with this growing issue in mind I have started to seek out other sites on which I can spread my news. My hunting has actually turned up a few gems. I of course use the usual reddit, Propeller and, Delicious, but i’ve also recently started using some of the smaller up and comers to the field like TagSum.com.

friend feeds, private messaging, drag and drop photo gallery. Cool stuff

The beauty in these sites lies in the developers ability to move quickly and change with the industry, while having a clean slate with which to start from. I’ve actually had a chance to speak with the developers over at TagSum, they have shown me some new features slated for release as early as next week. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but rest assured, this place is going to grow quickly once word spreads around. These guys are smart, and their business model which includes revenue share with users who submit news items is going to revolutionize the way blogs and social media interact in the future. With the ever growing problems on the mainstream sites rearing their ugly heads, it may just be the perfect time for one of these “little guys” to step in and take away some market share.

UPDATE:

Ironically I submitted this story to Digg and received the above error 3 times. I was finally able to submit the article on the 4th try. I am however unable to vote up any comments on the story or post comments myself.

What is going on over there?