• In Brief

    The trajectory of a social news site

    Ohmynews visitorsThese social news sites such as Digg, with their armies of citizen journalists, will sweep all media before them. Right? Uh, actually, the pioneer of participatory media, a Korean site called Ohmynews, has stalled. In 2003, when articles about the future of news still seemed fresh, Wired magazine gushed that the Asian guerrilla news operation pulled an astonishing 2 million daily readers. By now the audience must include the country's entire web population. Not so much. Ohmynews gets 800,000 unique visitors a day, according to an estimate given the San Francisco Chronicle, which concludes: "It faces growing competition in South Korea, has failed to catch fire beyond its borders and, most important, has lost its luster as the must-read, latest new thing."

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