Friday March 03, 2006

Side Project: The Lit List

Digg.com has been making a lot of noise lately, and spawning a lot of imitators. Not only has the site’s method of allowing users to promote stories to the front page given Slashdot a run for its money, the idea can easily be extended to topics beyond technology news.

I thought using a community approach to sharing—and rating—links to online fiction would be interesting and useful (to readers, to writers, and to sites that publish fiction), so I put together The Lit List. Built on the free Pligg platform, the site allows users to submit links to fiction (websites, eBooks, or podcasts) in all genres and vote on the ones they like the best. When a link garners enough votes, it is promoted to the front page.

The site is off to a good start—thanks to kind linkage from Michael, Maud, and The Morning News. New stories are being submitted at a good clip. The Lit List will only be as good as its community, however. The more people participate—by submitting and voting on stories—the better the front page will be. Ideally, the cream really will rise to the top. So, I encourage everyone to visit the site, register (the registration is no more involved than when commenting on a blog), and participate. If you have comments or suggestions, you can email them to me at jim@thelitlist.com. Many more features are on the way.

Posted by jim at 09:07 AM ||