Looking at the Thoof

Thoof is the latest in the long list of social news media sites. It follows closely in the tradition of sites such as Digg and Reddit. Thoof shares a lot in common with these sites in that it allows registered users to submit and vote on stories submitted by the Thoof community. These social news sites are really starting to spread like wild fire. What makes one site stand out from the other? The branding.

Thoof When it comes to personalized news sites, branding is the key. All successful social news sites follow a similar branding formula. Snappy web 2.0 logo, cutesy name that ties in well with a 'vote' button. In this respect, Thoof is no different.

The Thoof ranking system is called ThoofRank. Rather than presenting a raw number of votes for a story, ThoofRank is expressed as a percentage. A story that exceeds 50% is said to be of above average interest to readers. If you want to include a little 'ThoofRank' badge on your blog, that is easily done. It's probably only a matter of time before it's included in WordPress plugins such as 'ShareThis'.

Thoof differs from Digg in that it allows users to improve upon stories, similar to wikipedia. Not sure how this will work in the long term, as I would have thought this would be opening the floodgates for spam and mis-use.

And the name, Thoof? My guess is that it came from someone with a speech impediment attempting to say 'Truth'.

It will be interesting to see how Thoof goes moving into the future. Is it different enough from Digg and Reddit to stand on it's own? Or will it just join the ranks of the "other" social news sites?