Digg:
Went to digg. Clicked “most popular” then “last 30 days.” Top “story”: screengrabs of someone posting “IS THIS REAL LIFE?” then a response “Is this just fantasy?” followed by several posts giving the entirety of the lyrics (and some instrumentation) of “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Huh. So what’s the second thing I most needed to know? A kid is drugged when he goes to the dentist and is filmed asking questions about the experience. (”Is this forever?”) Cute, funny, not newsworthy.

And the third? “Obama is kind of a dick.” Four photos: Obama leaves a building, Obama packs a snowball, throws it, orange tabby has snow on its face, Obama is grinning outside the building. Sure, it’s funny. Actually he threw it at his spokesman, but I don’t really care about that either.

Fourth top story: Google street view of two people in medieval costume having a sword fight. Cute but, again, not news.

Verdict: I don’t digg it.

Reddit:
1. Scrabble word of the day was a bit lewd.
2. “Who listens to NPR as primary radio source?”… I have no idea what this actually was–a certain story? a discussion? It just links to npr.org.
3. Link to an image of a popup phishing for credit card numbers, claiming to search to see if your number has been stolen.
Somewhere on the site I found a link to a story about a soldier in WWII who was a bear (no, not the subculture kind, the furry kind … ah, I mean the kind that goes for honey and salmon).

Verdict: This site will also not enrich my life.

Newsvine:
Holy hell, it’s a social media site about news which looks like it might be about news. I could spend some time here.

Mixx:
Mostly junk, though it seems to be less junky than Digg or Reddit.

I suppose these sites could be useful in the library for pulling popular news (or popular puff pieces that pose as news). If someone asked for any of these sites, I’d help them find the site. I wouldn’t volunteer most of these sites as a resource though.

Maybe if I were willing to spend time creating a profile on each of these sites and voting enough things up or down, they’d eventually start recommending articles I’m interested in. Frankly, though, there’s not enough time in the day for me to bother with it and I’m tired of creating accounts all over the place.