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Mixx Conquering the “Timeliness” Barrier!
27Mar2008 Filed under: Social Media Author: Rami TaibahSocial news websites are all the rave these days on web land, the basic idea is that users submit their news stories and then the community votes up or down. While such sites provide you with new and fresh content daily, but when it comes to breaking news it royally fails. For example, this year’s Pi day, which is celebrated on the 14th of March, reached to Digg’s first page on the 15th where I live and the evening of the 14th in America. So in reality, Digg missed half the world by a day, and the other half had a late celebration.
Mixx, has found a way around this problem. It recently announced the introduction of the breaking news function. So how does it work? Well SuperMixxers can flag a certain story as “breaking”, and if two SuperMixxers flag a story, then it’s moved to the Breaking section. Breaking News stories only remain present as “breaking” for a limited number of time… and only a limited amount of stories can be present in the breaking section at any given time. A very simple solution to a seemingly unconquerable problem!
Now while Digg has been promising us for ages a new comment system, which is pretty much a basic need, Mixx has been throwing at as loads of intuitive and creative ideas never seen before on the social news arena. First they introduced the “related story” function and now this. I don’t know if Digg has become bankrupt of ideas, just don’t care anymore, or the site has become to big for them to handle.
Now on paper this very much sound perfect, and I really do believe that Mixx could pull it off. The Mixx community is very much against spam, and would probably call out any SuperMixxers who abuse this function. However, in interest of transparency I really do hope that Mixx starts to show which SuperMixxer actually flagged a story as “breaking”. This way SuperMixxers are accountable for their breaking flags, and would have to answer to the community if something sketchy is going on 
PS: Ironically this post is already two days late, but hey it’s not only me who wished there was 48 hours in a day
5 Responses to “Mixx Conquering the “Timeliness” Barrier!”
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Royal HeHe2-ness is a world where free software is valued, nay sought for!! While proprietary software is banished, degraded and ridiculed till the end of times.
Kerry from Mixx
March 27th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Hi Rami
It is our intention in an upcoming release to do exactly what you have suggested here: show which two SuperMixxers tagged something as breaking
Thanks!
-Kerry
http://www.mixx.com/users/kerry
honest ape
March 27th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
SuperMixxers need no such system! We are above reproach! I decry your doubt of us, Kerry!
Philonius
March 27th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
This is yet another reason why Mixx is the greatest social news site operating today.
Disclaimer: I was granted Supermixxer status late last night (thanks Mixx admins!). This may be influencing my opinion that Mixx ROCKS!
Rami Taibah
March 28th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Thank you Kerry for your quick reply.
Here is another reason you gotta love Mixx. For those of you who don’t know Kerry is from the Mixx team, and she responded only hours after this post. I wonder when was the last time someone from the Digg team responded to a random blog post by a random guy?? Keep up the good work Mixx!!
Mixx vs. Digg: Which Brings You News Faster? | Royal HeHe2-ness!
April 8th, 2008 at 5:27 am
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