Move, Counter Move: Mixx and Digg Rivalry Growing

June has been a particularly interesting month as both Digg and Mixx have come out with fairly big upgrades. Digg just put their beta recommendation engine out for use and feedback, and Mixx added a whole new level of community building tools to the site. They're addressing slightly different immediate needs, but they are still dealing with the main need: getting people the info they want to read.

Let's start with Digg. This is still pretty new, and admittedly, I'm just getting started working with it. So far, I'm not really impressed. Perhaps I haven't cultivated my interests closely enough or the "friends" that I have in my Digg network. I can't say that the recommended stories and videos that come up are really matching my interests that well, although it is nice to have the amount of information that I'm looking at cut down (it knocks out the hot upcoming section). I'll be honest; I read a ton of stuff during a day, and it's easy to get overloaded. So in the vein of making a page a little less cluttered with stuff that is aimed at being closer to my interests, I applaud Digg. They have the good fortune to have tons of submissions, and now they're working with this "problem" to help people cull through all those submissions in a more meaningful way. I think the compatibility percentage with other Diggers pretty much blows at this time (I don't care if someone matches my interests at 18%; show me someone with a 50% and above match), but that's why they call it a beta.

Mixx doesn't have the good fortune to have an overload of submissions. I don't generally feel overwhelmed by information on Mixx, although perhaps that suggests a better UI. No, what Mixx is doing is building the for the future. They've taken a page out of Ning's book and given users the means to create their own communities around topics of their choosing. Personally, I think this is a brilliant move, and down the road, this can be one way to help let the community cull through massive amounts of information, which Digg is now doing. Of course, the current problem with the community system is the lack of users and submissions. My Boston Sports News community gets pretty quiet in there if I'm not doing anything with it. But as Mixx grows its user base (check out the month by month growth on Compete), the social news site is primed to be able to give the users a better experience that's flexible to their needs.

Now I'm not going to tell you that this is a marque match up yet, but given Mixx's innovation and rapidly growing user base, I'm telling you that you need to keep an eye on it. You can check out compete.com's metrics to see just how far apart the two really are. And some of you may be wondering why I haven't talked about Reddit, Propeller, or Yahoo Buzz. Well, I'm not impressed by any of them. Reddit seems to have sat on its hands for some time, and it's recent open source code move doesn't really change anything in what it offers users. Innovation that creates a better and more fulfilling experience for the user is the key to the Internet. Because today you may be the toast of the town, but tomorrow Microsoft is trying to make a hostile take over of your company and everyone talking about how you lost your way. Digg's recommendation engine is a nice move in the right direction, but I'm not sure that it significantly alters what they offer users just yet. Certainly, it doesn't give users the kind of flexibility Mixx's new communities section does.

At the end of the day though, it's about visits and eyeballs, and Digg has got those in spades. At least for today. Tomorrow? Well, we're all just going to have to wait and see.