Since everyone’s all a-buzz about Mixx aiming to be the new Digg I decided to check Mixx out for myself to see how much of a clone it really is. In all honesty, I really only use Digg to promote my favorite blogs. That’s what Digg was made to do and it does it well. In regards to this function, Mixx is no different aside from the fact that it takes far fewer votes to get featured on the front page. While Digg is also a social site that is meant to help users find new media, I don’t like these aspects of it at all.

This is where Mixx has picked up the slack. While I’m not as huge a fan of social networking as it would benefit me to be, Mixx’s social features strike me as a bit more inviting than Digg’s, giving users the ability to use Mixx’s features within the boundaries of private groups. Plus, the site greets you with your customized MyMixx page. This page lists the most popular, most recent, or most commented on media in each category you’ve selected as having an interest in, helping you build “your blend of the web.” Plus, Mixx allows you to search for media that is related to your area and subscribe to feeds for each category. While Bubbletop is my favorite when it comes to having a customized online experience, I’d say Mixx is handling that aspect a little better than Digg.

Ultimately, it’s difficult to say how well Mixx is going to do. I by no means think it’s going to replace Digg but it probably will continue to steal little bits of Digg’s user base at a time. One of it’s big downfalls at the moment is the fact that Digg, StumbleUpon, and Del.ici.ous are already integrated into so many sites. Is the web willing to make room for a fourth? If not, the chances of people opting to use Mixx over Digg and other services will probably decrease quite a bit. Regardless, Mixx is definitely worth watching, as its growth is bound to shake things up on the Internet at least a bit. Sign up for Mixx Beta at www.mixx.com.

Many people may not be aware of this, but blogs such as this one and many others rely on numerous ways of spreading word of their existence. One of the most widely used tools to expand a blogs reader base is something known as digging. Digging is where a reader clicks or navigates in someway to the digg site and submits the story. You may even notice up on the right hand corner of this very post a little number with digg it! underneath. What this little number represents is how many people have submitted the story to the digg site, and the more people who have submitted it generally can give you an idea of how popular an article is. This is an important barometer of how popular a particular blog or subject might be, and it also spreads the word of a particular blog or articles existence.

So now that you know what Digg is, I am going to take you through a step by step course on how to use digg. For those of you who already use digg, you may find this part some what redundant, however for those of you who have not used digg it is my genuine hope that you will begin to do so.

The first thing you will need to do is register. So please open up a new window in your web browser and type in www.digg.com. Once you get there you will see this:

Now simply click on the Join Digg and follow the instructions. Once you have finished your registration, come back to this post.

Now Find the picture up in the right hand that looks like this:

Now that you have found it, be prepared to be directed away from this page and remember to come back! Now click it (go ahead it won’t hurt you or your computer I promise).

Back? Good, now if you were the first person to digg this post then you were probably asked to provide a brief description and give it a category, then at the end you were asked to prove you were human and more than likely after that you had to be told the story was similar to another one. I hoped you went ahead and submitted it. For those of you who were not the first to click on the digg it symbol you now know what it is like to be the first!

Now that you have done that, comes perhaps the hardest and most difficult step in digging. Relaxing and going on to the next post. Thank you for taking the time to not only read this post, but to digg it as well. Believe it or not, we all really do appreciate it when someone takes the time to digg us, it lets us know that someone cared enough to share the story with other people.