If Digg is about the users controlling the content, then shouldn’t Diggnation be the same? Why should Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht (or David Prager) choose the stories, when we could?

Sure, Alex and Kevin only pick stories that are highly popular on the site - which means we do have some say in what’s on the show - but thousands of stories hit the front page of Digg every week.

What I’m proposing is an extra button in Digg a Firefox add-on that, once a user has Dugg a story,  will give the option to suggest it for Diggnation. A limit of five or so suggestions per week would be more than enough per user.

The result of this should be a list of what Digg users want covered on this week’s edition of Diggnation. The stories covered in the show would be entirely controlled by the users who have opted-in for this add-on.

On the other hand, it’s Kevin and Alex that make Diggnation what it is, so they would know which stories they can entertain us best with. Diggnation viewers may also not be Digg users at all - their reason for watching Diggnation could be because they don’t want to look through Digg.

What do you think?
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If you use the internet, it’s more than likely that you’re on at least one social network — for many of us, it’s more than one. These five guidelines should help you have a better presence on the internet, and allow others to find you more easily.

1. Use a consistent username

This is something I haven’t done in the past, but is essential. Having the same username means that if I know someone, e.g. “Nick”, I can easily go to twitter.com/nick, flickr.com/people/nick, etc.- without even needing to search. Using the same username also groups your accounts under a Google search for the name. I recommend using your real name, or at least some element of your name.

2. Have a memorable avatar

Sometimes people talk to me on IM and know my name — I ask them how they know, and the answer is usually: “I recognized your avatar”. Think up something original and simple; the same consistency rule applies here, too: Use the same avatar everywhere — services like Gravatar make this somewhat easier.

3. Use your real name

Using your real name on social networks will help people that know you find you, and gives a list of your online presence under a Google search for your name. When someone adds you on one social network, they might often search for you on another one — if they see your name, they will most likely add you there too.

4. Add the people that add you

That, of course, doesn’t include spammers — no one should add them. But the regular people who have added you or followed you should be added back. This might encourage a conversation, which could bring more followers/friends to you — it’s also just nice when you get an add back from someone.

5. Organize your social profiles

I use a service called ClaimID. All I do is add the links to my profiles on all of the social networks, and it creates a list. It’s useful to have a list like this, so that people can easily add you on multiple networks — plus, it’s useful to have a list yourself; I’m registered on so many websites that I sometimes forget which ones I’m on.

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I’m currently registered on over 25 social networks - only 5 of which I use on a regular basis: Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Digg and Last.fm. New social networking websites are being created right now, to compete with the expansive number of other social networking websites currently in the cloud.

I agree with Brad Fitz and his “social graph” theory.

“The goal is not to build a social networking site or anything that’s fun for the end-user. Rather, the goal is to build the guts that allow a thousand new social applications to bloom, like Dopplr, etc. Do one thing and do it well. It will be most powerful to instead merge little isolated social graphs into one big social graph and spread it far and wide, for all to enjoy.”

Creating another Facebook is not the right thing to do - there is not a social network for everything, and there never will be. Facebook is extremely close to being that with its support for third-party applications - but still doesn’t include everything in one.

However, I have noticed that there are several new social networks appearing that have the same purpose as others. I don’t believe this is the way forward. If Twitter already exists, why make another one? There are enough photo and video sharing websites out there - you can’t beat Flickr or YouTube by just re-branding a clone of them; you have to think different; do something new and innovative.

I’m happy for there to be many social networks out there, all with a different single purpose: Twitter for status updates, Flickr for photos, Dopplr for travel, Vimeo for videos. But creating a clone of something that already exists and does the job well is not the way forward, and these sites will fail.

A lot of readers from the USA may be thinking: “What’s Bebo?”. Well, apparently, Bebo wasn’t ever that successful in the USA - instead, MySpace and Facebook took the lead. For those who don’t know what it is, it’s a social network just like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster and all the rest. It’s been a huge hit in the UK, and most people I know have used it before and have an account.

I personally found Bebo a much better experience than MySpace; however, when I came across Facebook, it became my new favourite social network. At the time I found Facebook, it didn’t even support UK networks. But it was Facebook’s simple and intuitive interface that kept me coming back to the site.

If I were to guess, I’d say Bebo is about even with Facebook for UK users at the moment. According to the Telegraph, they are actually the UK’s second most popular social-networking website.

I think it’s a smart move for AOL to buy Bebo for $850 million, from both Bebo and AOL’s perspective. Bebo has been starting to struggle in the past few months, because of Facebook’s domination of the market - although Bebo is still a strong presence in the social-networking world. AOL is an internet giant that is now struggling to compete against new Web 2.0 start-ups. Bebo could be the key to getting AOL back on track; and AOL could be the key to bringing new, exciting features to Bebo.