What do you get when you mix Slashdot community ratings with MySpace social networking and Delicious tags to let users categorize stories? You get Digg.com, the company I believe is revolutionizing relevant search and turning the news into a democracy. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, search engine optimization, machine algorithms, and search engine bots are on the way out. Though it may be several years, people engines via the social web will be the future of search relevancy. Don’t get me wrong, I think indexing will still be used, but human relevancy is far superior.

From the article: “Imagine being able, for example, to use Digg to explore the popularity of consumer products such as cell phones or plasma TVs–to be able, as Rose put it, “to drill down among your set of friends or the masses and see their opinions.” Then imagine this capacity married to the recommendation-engine feature that Rose and his team are working on. In other words, Consumer Reports, look out.”