Digg vs. del.icio.us

After messing around with del.icio.us for a while (and quickly liking it very much), I set up an account on Digg. I've seen plenty of references to Digg online, but had never tried it.

I was surprised to quickly get a bad case of what could best be called culture shock! Advertising is prominent on Digg, whereas it's nonexistent on del.icio.us. As a result, the whole feel of the sites is very different. Digg's site seemed loud and busy, with Flash animation in the ads. del.icio.us is much more minimalist. Navigation on Digg seemed more difficult too.

I also found Digg's language intimidating. You "submit" a link, and the process isn't nearly as intuitive as del.icio.us makes it (of course, you don't have to install an add-on to your browser, either, which could be a plus). Then of course, there is the voting process of "digging" a link (or not). On del.icio.us, you can see how many other people have bookmarked a link, but Digg's more active language makes the process seem more competitive or game-like. That could be a draw to some people (obviously, given Digg's success, it is a big draw for lots of people) but it just turned me off.

All in all, I found Digg to be overly commercial, busy and competitive. I think I really haven't given it a fair trial, and if I came across it at another time (during a week that was less personally stressful), I might have liked it more; I certainly can be quite competitive on occasion, and playing random games on the internet can be lots of fun. I'm interested to see if anyone else tried Digg, and if they had different opinions than I did.