The People Have Spoken

Social media is growing by leaps and bounds, with the sale of YouTube on everyone's mind in hopes of creating the next big web 2.0 success story.

The players being digg, delicio.us, reddit, and to a lesser extent, Netscape, Newsvine and Stumbleupon, are at the mercy of a voting system by their users.

Key users are in part becoming influencers, but at what expense to those which frequent social bookmarking sites? Do theses contributors have adverse or biased effects on reporting the facts? While influencers of these types of websites dictate what's hot and what's not, isn't a 2.0 democracy leaving the backdoor open to buying of votes and more?

With these sites being undeniably popular and receiving millions of hits per day, their looms the very real possiblity that the way we get our news is on the verge of shifting. But more importantly is the risk of payola and attempts to gain the system.

Social bookmarking sites are ultimately a challenge to traditional media, but without proper policing, the inevitable gaming of such aggregator sites could lead to their demise.