Welcome to the PiggNation blog!

So some friends and I have been having a discussion recently about dawn of Digg 3.0.
(If you don't know much about digg click here, warning it can be very addicting) (... and now get ready for me rambling on and on...)

Though a lot of cool stuff has come with Digg 3.0, the most daring change is the addition of non-tech related categories. Personally I think this is fabulous and will have no problem taking off. With the current user base, Digg certainly has a number of people with multiple interests and initial Digg3.0 stories in all categories are reflecting that.

The question we have is what will come of DiggNation.... will it still be geared towards tech news? I think we can all agree that for some time tech news will still dominate the front page stories, because of its history and current user base. Will this turn off the new audience that Digg is trying to attract? To some degree I think all users of digg have to be a techie on some level, and we know everyone wants to hear about Zombie Dogs. But will this new audience really give a shit about using the Google Earth API to display a World of Warcraft map? Meh... I don't think so.

With the dawn of Digg 3.0 I think two new target audiences of news junkies opens up, two areas that makes people hot, you know. What do I think they are? Music and Politics.

Personally I would love to see digg's music section take off in getting people interested in lots of independent and new stuff. Hopefully digg can make it easy for anyone to have a shot and anyone that's worth listening to get the deserved spotlight without the corporate marketing, etc. Unfortunately, in addition to being tone-tarded, I've fallen out of the music scene wouldn't have a clue what's going on out there.

So... politics... been kinda dragged in to politics of late because of a political junkie family and friends... not that I haven't enjoyed the ride. But the more I've become involved the more I've seen how the current political machines churn out the same fast-food, mass market lines as the rest of the media today, good honest candidates and real pundits are rare these days. (On both sides of "the line"). What this all comes down to.... I can't wait to follow the stories that pop up on digg... maybe see some good articles that might have otherwise gone unnoticed... find some new blogs of some insightful insiders... or see how the digg community might actually raise wrong doing into the spotlight... as in the infamous 'PriceRitePhoto' story.

Anyway.... what does this have to do with DiggNation and what the hell is PiggNation and why am I rambling on so much? So the idea we have is to replicate another DiggNation called PiggNation focusing on the World News and Politics stories. Focusing in on a different audience... something for the new kiddies joining the Digg community. Our idea is to simply replicate the format that Kevin and Alex use... drinking is key ;). Really, they have a working formula, so why re-invent the wheel. I think one big difference we would like to do is to include more digg user input, we are certain this would be mutually beneficial for the vPodCast and Digg. Taking input not only through emails... but also by browsing through heavily dugg comments on each story. I think this would be good to involve people who interact with the news thoughtfully or (just who might have something really hilarious to say). Some of this new crowd may be hesitant to get involved in the Digg system and interaction... seeing Steve and I making fools of ourselves on a certain issue that they have insight in just might be enough to motivate them to participate.

Our vision is to not be super-pundits of any-sort.... more of just regular people talking US politics and world politics.... making fun where we can and hopefully not offending to many people, ;). We don't want to do a high power, high intensity rage propitiating show that you see in the major media scene. We want this to be laid back accessible discussion about what's new. Also, we're not gonna hide the fact that we will probably be a bit center and left... we'll probably tear into ourselves about it... (I mean shit, we're working out of Berkeley, hippy capital of the west). We want to be straight with people and take in as much user input as possible to get a broad view of the topics we talk about.

So anyway.... we've gone through a practical analysis if we can do this... people, gear, software, time, distribution, that stuff... we don't want to mooch money or gear off Digg or anything we are really interested in setting this up with our own hutzpah and making it fun for our own sake, at the same time as big fans we don't want to piss the people at Digg, it is their baby and we don't want to step on their toes.

We've nailed down the people to get the job done and are lining up our first round gear, we've got some work being done on some graphics and sound already. We are soon to be in touch with Kevin and Jay, once we line up a few more details. They seem like damn cool cats... so I'm sure there down for some collaboration.

I'm Out, told u I could ramble,
Dan


Have any thoughts, ideas, wanna help, just wanna chat late at night... email us at: piggnation@gmail.com.