I have ‘Digged’ a few articles but I do not find the process of ‘Digging’ scalable. I am not going to put in my password/username and do other related routine stuff every time I find something interesting on the web. I would rather have a Digg icon embedded in my browser or some Digg widget on my desktop so that each time I find something interesting, I am easily able to add it to my list of favorites. Towards the end of the day (or at pre-determined intervals) I should be able to post the list on Digg. The bookmarking service should then automatically aggregate references to web pages listed by various contributors. One more thing: The ‘widget’ also stays on my blog or website so that my readers also see what I have been reading.
To this reading list I may also add names of books that I am currently reading. The motivation for me is that this reading list can potentially drive more traffic to my site if I am a trusted observer of some industry segment. The way bookmarking works right now, (1) there is little incentive to contribute to these sites, and (2) the process of bookmarking itself does not scale easily.
There are other instances too where you want to know what other people are reading on the Internet. Celebrities, for instance, are big everywhere. I mean readers want to know what they are up to, especially what they have been reading on the Internet. Forget celebrities. I would certainly want to know what my friends and business acquaintances and industry pioneers are reading on the Internet. I would also want to know what some of the bloggers are reading. …. So basically a whole spectrum of people you know and have heard of.
The widget or the embedded bookmarks-sharing icon (I prefer ‘reading-list icon’) I mention above can also be designed to automatically note the urls you surfed and then at certain intervals present you the list of those urls/page-titles which you then edit as your ‘approved and sharable’ reading list that you wish to share with others. If you surf a lot let us have the option of noting only those urls where you spend X number of minutes ….
In the widget that you post on your blog or your personal page, there can be a link that says 'see what others are reading too'. That can link to a portal where you aggregate input from all the contributors. One thing you have to include though is the categorization of individual reading items on your list. That I guess can be done when the user is doing the editing of automatically tracked urls or manually bookmarking a page. My message here is basically that contributors to bookmarking sites should have an incentive to contribute. The present model does not provide much of an incentive.