Digg is one of the more visible examples of crowdsourcing, but some people I’ve talked to recently just don’t dig it. If you’re among them, here’s a first-timer’s guide that makes it a little clearer:

“If you have ever felt like you had to dig around the Internet for good content, you might want to look at something called Digg (digg.com). Digg was started as an experiment in October 2004 by Kevin Rose. By December 5th 2004, the site was officially launched. After running for approximately a year, the site surpassed 100,000 users and as a result they were able to raise $2.8 million to help take the service to the next level. Shortly thereafter, digg.com grew to over 500,000 users and over 8.5 million unique visitors per month.

“The concept was to give people the chance to “dig” user submitted tech-related stories in order to get the most popular stuff in front of an audience that was interested in seeing the latest and greatest on the Internet. There are two main things that you can do on Digg. The first is to submit stories that you think the community will like and the second is to digg stories that you like.”