BusinessInsider.com has a chart stating that Digg received 17.4 million unique visitors in August 2009, easily eclipsing other social news sites. Its dominance in the social news sphere brings to mind another company…

Top Search Engines According to a July 2009 comScore Search Report:

1. Google (65% market share)
2. Yahoo! (19.6%)
3. Microsoft/Bing (8.4%)
4. Ask (3.9%)
5. AOL (3.1%)

Top Social News Sites Based on Unique Visitors in August 2009:

1. Digg (17.4 million)
2. Yahoo! Buzz (7 million)
3. Propeller (800,000)
4. Reddit (670,000)
5. Mixx (660,000)

Digg’s dominance in the social news sphere is not unlike Google’s dominance in the search sphere. Digg’s strong community and constant roll outs like Facebook Connect, the DiggBar, and constant Digg Dialogues appear to be having a positive impact on the site’s popularity.

Amusingly enough, Yahoo! Buzz is like the Yahoo! Search of social news. Poor Yahoo! — always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Most surprising to me is how disappointingly Reddit appears to be performing — are they the Ask of social news sites? I remember a few years ago when it was all about Digg vs. Reddit, and now this chart depicts Propeller is beating Reddit in unique visitors and Mixx nipping at their heels (though I suspect the unique visitors for Reddit are incorrect–the number seems a bit low for them, don’t you think?). In any case, Digg fans must love seeing their favorite site spanking Reddit while Reddit fanboys are probably scoffing and saying they prefer the site’s “intimate” community.

Love them or loathe them, but clearly Digg is doing something right since they’ve managed to outshine their competition and seem to be establishing themselves as the predominant social news site on the web today. What do you think the other social news sites need to do in order to better compete with Digg and attract more users to their sites, or do you think that, much like with Google, Digg’s only going to get stronger?

If you haven’t tried Google’s Fast Flip, yet, it’s worth a click.

Earlier this month, the company released a “labs” version of its latest product. The web and mobile pages of Fast Flip are designed to allow users to quickly access content from 39 prominent news sources, such as BBC News, Business Week, Cosmopolitan, Men’s Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, Smithsonian.com and The Washington Post.

This product is a new experiment for Google, on multiple levels. First, it’s a departure from Google News. In fact, the two aren’t even linked together. Second, Google has created a revenue sharing arrangement with its news source “partners.” This is something, financially speaking, that Google rarely does, even in “test mode.” Third, each news page can be scrolled within the Google interface, but the pages can also be clicked so that a user is taken directly to the news source’s website. In other words, it’s pretty easy to navigate away from Google.

To Google’s credit, Fast Flip is speedy, easy to digest, and actually makes “looking for news” a little fun. A visitor can sort through the front pages of more than three dozen pubs, scan headlines and lead pics, and make selections based on chronology, popularity, topic and source. According to Google’s official blog, Fast Flip aims to deliver, “fast browsing, natural magazine-style navigation, recommendations from friends and other members of the community and a selection of content that is serendipitous and personalized.” So far, so good.

Is Google fishing for data on the way its users interact with news? Yes. Could this be a pre-cursor to upcoming mods within its news section? Maybe. It remains to be seen where the gurus from Mountain Valley will take Fast Flip, and whether or not it will become a revenue generator.

For now, it’s nice to parse an array of articles from the likes of SPIN and Slate without actually committing to a full site visit.

Guest blog by Julian Bibb, president of JLB, LLC, a visual and Web communications company in Franklin, Tenn.

If you haven’t tried Google’s Fast Flip, yet, it’s worth a click.

Earlier this month, the company released a “labs” version of its latest product. The web and mobile pages of Fast Flip are designed to allow users to quickly access content from 39 prominent news sources, such as BBC News, Business Week, Cosmopolitan, Men’s Journal, The New York Times, Newsweek, Smithsonian.com and The Washington Post.

This product is a new experiment for Google, on multiple levels. First, it’s a departure from Google News. In fact, the two aren’t even linked together. Second, Google has created a revenue sharing arrangement with its news source “partners.” This is something, financially speaking, that Google rarely does, even in “test mode.” Third, each news page can be scrolled within the Google interface, but the pages can also be clicked so that a user is taken directly to the news source’s website. In other words, it’s pretty easy to navigate away from Google.

To Google’s credit, Fast Flip is speedy, easy to digest, and actually makes “looking for news” a little fun. A visitor can sort through the front pages of more than three dozen pubs, scan headlines and lead pics, and make selections based on chronology, popularity, topic and source. According to Google’s official blog, Fast Flip aims to deliver, “fast browsing, natural magazine-style navigation, recommendations from friends and other members of the community and a selection of content that is serendipitous and personalized.” So far, so good.

Is Google fishing for data on the way its users interact with news? Yes. Could this be a pre-cursor to upcoming mods within its news section? Maybe. It remains to be seen where the gurus from Mountain Valley will take Fast Flip, and whether or not it will become a revenue generator.

For now, it’s nice to parse an array of articles from the likes of SPIN and Slate without actually committing to a full site visit.

Guest blog by Julian Bibb, president of JLB, LLC, a visual and Web communications company in Franklin, Tenn.