Digg

www.Digg.com# is a news community run by amateur news buffs instead of professional news editors. Members submit items of note they've found somewhere on the Web and vote for the ones they like. A typical entry might read: "A Windmill for Your Backyard? A new, affordable wind turbine promises to help homeowners fight rising energy costs." Readers would click through to the site or blog, read the original article, then vote it up (digg it) or down (undigg).

If your book or Web site gets voted up on Digg, you can expect a crush of visitors within minutes.

Originally Digg was narrowly focused on technology news, but in 2006 it expanded into world news, entertainment, politics, and other topics. Members pride themselves on unearthing noteworthy items that might be overlooked by traditional news sources.

Items are assigned to a category such as technology, business, gaming, or entertainment. If a story receives enough votes, it's promoted to the site's home page, where it's often read by hundreds of thousands of members who often click through to the blog or Web site for further information, or perhaps blog about it themselves.