I've dugg, been up and down the vine and decided to go Public!

I absolutely love NowPublic!

I tried digg.  It's a great site but I just couldn't participate in the submitting end of things.  I don't know how many times I tried to submit something I had just seen/read/heard only to find out it had already been submitted.  In many cases, submitted many hours/days ago.  I did get one or two items submitted, only to have a comment(s) left that the story a repeat, old (read:  over 3.5 milliseconds), and I should search before I submit.  Maybe not quite that politely.  Granted, now this was a while back and I have no idea if the submission process is the same now.  

In any case, for me at least, digg turned out to be only a site to go and read the news.  I have RSS and get feeds from sites I'm interested in so I've not been back to digg.  Not because I've anything against the website or what they're trying to do, simply because I didn't feel involved like I had hoped I would when I signed up.  

And . . . maybe . . . because it felt a little too 'young' for my liking.  Yes, I know, I must be a terrible old fogey.  Get with the times, web 2.0 and all that.  I like to think I am.  Here in my little world.  Where skies are always blue and - sorry - I digress.  What I think I mean is - the last time I had visited, it seemed that at least half of the stories on the front page were, well they were sort of questionable at least to my tastes.

Yes, I know all kinds of people are interested in all kinds of things, but I just don't really care much about a story about some co-eds all-night party that ended with one of them sleeping on a tree branch 40 feet up. There seemed to be a lot of that sort thing.

I tried Newsvine.  To me, in many ways it felt the complete opposite.  I didn't feel 'at home' or comfortable in the least.  It felt like I was trying to mix with the big boys, and wasn't going to stand a chance.  I did try unsuccessfully to submit a couple of items, once again they had already been submitted.  

I tried a couple of others, which I can't for the life of me think what they were called.  Apparently I wasn't enamoured of them either.  I don't believe for a moment that I'm a tough sell really.  I just know what I like.

Downtrodden and disillusioned I was convinced there just wasn't anything like what I was looking for anywhere on the web.  I had given up hope when I saw NowPublic mentioned somewhere.  I would like to be able to tell you where, but I honestly don't remember.  Being the glutton for punishment that I am, I decided to give it a try.  

As I navigated my way around NowPublic I could have sworn I heard a thunderous chorus of Hallelujah.  Then again, it could have been the medication.  NowPublic looked right, it felt right and I couldn't get to the register page fast enough.

Now, all of that said, I may (well it could be a possibility) not be going about NowPublic in the totally correct manner.  I don't know and I should take some time to check it out.  I'm almost certain that some of the items I've submitted to NP must have been submitted by someone else at some other time.  The neat thing is that it didn't seem to matter.  If I was reading/seeing/hearing something now that I found interesting I could submit it.  Period.  I did, on two rather popular stories, search on NP and found many others had submitted items about the story and as I had nothing new to add, didn't bother.  But I love the fact that I could have it I hadn't had the time to check first.

I am not online 24/7/365.  If a story 'happens' on Thursday the 1st at 2pm, I may not get to read about it until Friday the 2nd at 4pm or heaven forbid, Sunday the 4th at noon!  When I do read about this story, I may be in a hurry and not have the time to run a search and see if it has already been submitted.  I can just highlight and right click to add to NowPublic. Voila!

Because my item was submitted and accepted on Now Public, someone like me (yes, we are many - beware) who isn't online all of the time will see the submission and it will be news to them too!  So yes, the story may have already been submitted by other people (but it is also possible they could be from different sources with different 'slants' on the same story) and that's okay.  But if I don't know about the story already, I'm hardly going to do a search for it am I?  That's why I believe being able to submit a story that has been previously submitted is a real star on NowPublic's chart. 

There is plenty of room for all of the aforementioned simply because they are not cookie cutter sites.  While basically they exist for the same reason, aggregate news via users, they go about it in different ways and appeal to different types of people and in my opinion end up with totally different products.

NowPublic just happens to be the best!  ;-)