ShoutingMat.ch - Trying to Out-do Digg

One of the crowning points of this whole Web 2.0 phenomenon is the amount of license given to the people; terms like the wisdom of the crowd, pro-am, crowdsourcing, and groupthink are bandied about with a certain pride and power. Sites like Digg and Reddit have done away with editors, giving the word to the mass. New comer ShoutingMat.ch wants to bring a little class, a little brains, and a whole lot more order to this mess. They employ editors who compile master lists of hot blogs in the blogosphere; from this list they employ an algorithm to glean out the most popular links and stories. They've got three main sections: politics, technology, and something called life hack. Items are presented by headline with link references, comments, and the date. Check it out for yourself.

"You're probably familiar with the many "user-created" link aggregating sites that seem to be sprouting up all the time. Their chief advantage is their democratic, free-wheeling nature, right? Quite the contrary: their chief disadvantage is their democratic, free-wheeling nature.

Do you really need to read about the latest celebrity scandal or wacky animal antics? Aren't you sick of having to digg through articles until you find something that is actually important?

Would you trust just anyone to fix your car? No! Then why trust the masses to filter your links?

Enter shoutingmat.ch—a civilized retreat untainted by the excesses and whims of the mob.

The ninja editors at shoutingmat.ch have compiled a definitive list of the blogs that everyone's reading. A separate elite division of parsing ninjas scours these blogs regularly to find out what all the blogging heads are linking to. Using our top-secret army of (robot—and, again, ninja) monkeys, we then determine what links are hot and publish them for you."

The site looks slick, orderly and a pleasure to read (unlike others). They've definitely got the execution down.

ShoutingMat.ch lags remarkably. It could work on its speed. Does the site really get to the bottom of what everyone wants to read? Does it do it better than other sites?