8 great digg-like social networks for designers in 2008
December 19th, 2007 by Dustin Brewer
There are a lot of social networks available for every niche you can think of, some of them aren’t as good as others and the good ones always need a little attention. I’m sure a lot of you have been to a few of these but should be members of all of them. Interaction is important when it comes to social networks. Ensuring that you do your part as a member and contribute to them by voting on content or contributing to a conversation.
When it comes to social networks for designers the design of the site is a huge selling point, we don’t want to look at a poorly designed web site frequently. We need style in our social network designs.
The list of great social networks for designers
#1 designfloat
http://designfloat.com
Designfloat is an excellent social network that provides a ton of information all within separate categories that designers and developers would be interested in. This rising star has really got quite a bit of attention lately from the design community at large. It seems to have mostly good topics that are actually interesting and worth voting for.
The topics range from web standards, branding, marketing, advertising, design resources and print design. The site is simple and straight forward and even allows users to vote on the article without ever creating an account. A handy feature that ensures good content can easily rise in popularity without having to entice visitors to become a member.
#2 9rules
http://9rules.com
The 9rules site is more then just for designers, it has a wide range of topics for just about anything. It gives you politics, anime, Web++, blogging and even humor. The site typically leans towards design and technology though. 9Rules is a full circle social network with forums (notes) and RSS feeds from 9rules members. It has blogs and a point system that allows you to give points to notes and comments. You can easily spend a ton of time on the site, it is a web 2.0 forum with extras.
#3 design:related
http://www.designrelated.com/
This is an excellent site to find designer related articles. You must sign up to vote for the articles but you can find a wide arrange of topics on the front page regarding any number of different topics. A good portion of them aren’t necessarily web related or even computer related design fields. They still provide some great topics and inspirational articles from all over the web about nearly anything.
#4 design snack
http://www.designsnack.com/
This site allows visitors to vote on web designs and discuss improvements or their opinions on why they might not like the design. A great site to find some fantastic advice or inspiration for web design. The system is very subtle and provides featured sites on the front page that have received good reviews and ratio of positive votes.
#5 pixel groovy
http://www.pixelgroovy.com/
Another excellent site to find design topics of any kind. It is all tutorials about how to create various design elements or CSS objects. You can usually find fantastic design tutorials on this site and vote them up if the tutorial is well done. I have always recommended that even if you feel you have mastered web design to do at least one design tutorial a week for inspiration. I find them to be very helpful for discovering news ways to do things in your design field.
#6 Command Shift 3
http://commandshift3.com
This is less of a digg-style social network for designers then a fun way to look and vote on various submitted web sites. It works just like Hot or Not did but without voting on girls, you vote on websites. You can find some of the very best designs and some of the very worst designs on this site. Overall it can be a fun little game to go through the site and choose which design you like better. Some of them are a no-brainer but others it can be tough to decide which site is better. It really can make you think about “why” one site is better then the other. You can truly find some good self-created inspiration from choosing which site you like the best.
#7 Dzone
http://dzone.com
This site is really less for designers as it is for developers. It goes over very intimate topics on programming and code heavy topics. You can still find some pretty good news on it. There is limited sorting though, because it has such a focused topic it seems that pretty much all of the articles simply get listed on new links or popular links. A wonderful site for developers and programmers to find topics that will spark their creativity.
#8 Developers Niche
http://www.developersniche.com/
This is a great site for web designers to find and vote on articles related to coding, markup and design. The site itself really needs a facelift, but the overall quality of articles submitted seems to be pretty good. The site is relatively new so it needs some time to grow but it could easily develop into a real player in the digg-like social networking scene.
Designer social networks can provide hours of inspiration
It is easy to feel inspired when you go through some of these sites. It seems for designers the most difficult part of the job at times is to find inspiration. Whether it be from nature, other designs or a box of cereal we all have to find it somewhere. These sites are a fantastic starting point for any creative task and should be the first place to start when searching for a little quick and dirty inspiration (after you visit this site of course).
Popularity: 100%
December 19th, 2007
Fantastic list, I love designfloat and design:related. i visit those two the most
December 19th, 2007
Excellent, I had somehow never heard of DesignSnack and DesignRelated before.
Thanks for the links! Chris
December 19th, 2007
Great list, Dustin. Hadn’t heard of several of these. Thanks.
December 19th, 2007
I’m glad everyone is getting something out of this list. I intend to do some more lists in the future for various things that have helped me.
There will be several web developer/ designer/ marketer tool articles I’ll be writing in the near future also.
December 19th, 2007
Very nice list, I personally visit design related on a daily basis, not much of the other ones but you’ve turned me onto them. I think that some of them are lacking and have felt that DF has been for a while so I am in the middle of startup community that will be geared as a ‘one stop shop’ for beginning web designing/development. Shameless plug: http://www.dailycoder.net
December 20th, 2007
Thanks for this list, and the discovery ;)
December 20th, 2007
@Robert G: What are some of the features that your site will have? I’m curious.
December 20th, 2007
Dustin:
DailyCoder will try to be a mash between freelanceswitch, webworkerdaily and designfloat, with a primary focus on the young up and coming developer/designer who may not have any idea what so ever where to start. Granted there are plenty of great resources out there like webdesignfromscratch but I still often find young designers/developers struggling to understand.
I personally love working with wordpress so that will be another focus.
DC will have a voting system much like designfloat and designrelated, but be updated much more often with much more links and content to server the ‘daily coder’
I’m looking to take the best of whats out there and centralize it, and hope it works heh.
December 20th, 2007
Excellent list Dustin. Some are new to me. Looks like it’s doing very well at Design Float.
December 21st, 2007
Great list. Design Snack has some amazing work and Command Shift 3 is awesome just as a psychological experiment — very addictive!
December 21st, 2007
[…] 8 Great Digg-Like Social Networks for Designers from Dustin Brewer. […]
December 21st, 2007
great list but i hate developers niche, i think you were a little too optimisitic about that site. maybe if they had a deign that didn’t make me want to puke it would be ok
December 21st, 2007
Is there anything that you guys dislike about these types of sites, or specifically about one of these sites listed? Ways to improve upon their concept etc?
December 22nd, 2007
8 Great Digg-Like Social Networks for Designers…
[…]Useful list of niche social media sites if you are a web designer.[…]…
December 23rd, 2007
Great list there’s also pixel2life.
December 23rd, 2007
[…] 8 great digg-like social networks for designers in 2008 - web design news These sites are a fantastic starting point for any creative task and should be the first place to start when searching for a little quick and dirty inspiration (after you visit this site of course). (tags: design inspiration social-bookmarking social resources networking community webdev) […]
December 23rd, 2007
[…] 8 great digg-like social networks for designers in 2008 - web design news - These sites are a fantastic starting point for any creative task and should be the first place to start when searching for a little quick and dirty inspiration (after you visit this site of course). […]
December 23rd, 2007
[…] 8 great digg-like social networks for designers in 2008 - web design news - These sites are a fantastic starting point for any creative task and should be the first place to start when searching for a little quick and dirty inspiration (after you visit this site of course). […]
December 23rd, 2007
[…] 8 great digg-like social networks for designers in 2008 - web design news - These sites are a fantastic starting point for any creative task and should be the first place to start when searching for a little quick and dirty inspiration (after you visit this site of course). […]
December 23rd, 2007
[…] 8 great digg-like social networks for designers in 2008 - web design news - These sites are a fantastic starting point for any creative task and should be the first place to start when searching for a little quick and dirty inspiration (after you visit this site of course). […]
December 23rd, 2007
[…] 8 great digg-like social networks for designers in 2008 - web design news - These sites are a fantastic starting point for any creative task and should be the first place to start when searching for a little quick and dirty inspiration (after you visit this site of course). […]
December 23rd, 2007
[…] 8 great digg-like social networks for designers in 2008 - web design news - These sites are a fantastic starting point for any creative task and should be the first place to start when searching for a little quick and dirty inspiration (after you visit this site of course). […]
December 23rd, 2007
[…] 8 great digg-like social networks for designers in 2008 - web design news - These sites are a fantastic starting point for any creative task and should be the first place to start when searching for a little quick and dirty inspiration (after you visit this site of course). […]
December 23rd, 2007
[…] 8 great digg-like social networks for designers in 2008 - web design news - These sites are a fantastic starting point for any creative task and should be the first place to start when searching for a little quick and dirty inspiration (after you visit this site of course). […]
December 23rd, 2007
[…] 8 great digg-like social networks for designers in 2008 - web design news - These sites are a fantastic starting point for any creative task and should be the first place to start when searching for a little quick and dirty inspiration (after you visit this site of course). […]
December 23rd, 2007
[…] 8 great digg-like social networks for designers in 2008 - web design news - These sites are a fantastic starting point for any creative task and should be the first place to start when searching for a little quick and dirty inspiration (after you visit this site of course). […]
December 23rd, 2007
I like digg like sites and some of them mentioned here are a good daily read as well
one more in the block is http://itdiscover.com
December 24th, 2007
There are so many out there though now that I have I have begun looking, I thought that perhaps in this industry there only a few, but there appear to be about 10 or so.
December 26th, 2007
[…] 8 great digg-like social networks for designers in 2008 - web design news - These sites are a fantastic starting point for any creative task and should be the first place to start when searching for a little quick and dirty inspiration (after you visit this site of course). […]
December 29th, 2007
[…] Brewer puts up a nice list of 8 great digg like sites for designers. Mark writes an interesting post as well. He gives you 10 ways to let people know that […]
December 29th, 2007
[…] muy útil de Dustin donde recopila 8 sitios estilo Digg para diseñadores (aunque no todos son exactamente así), al cual simplemente le agrego el que conozco en español y […]
January 29th, 2008
[…] 8 Great Digg Like Social Networks for Designers in 2008 - Dustin Brewer compiles an awesome list of Digg-like sites including my favourite DesignFloat […]
January 29th, 2008
[…] 8 Great Digg Like Social Networks for Designers in 2008 - Dustin Brewer compiles an awesome list of Digg-like sites including my favourite DesignFloat […]
February 14th, 2008
[…] Design 方面的东西，也想收集一些这方面的资料。偶然看到 8 great digg-like social networks for designers in 2008 这篇文章，感觉不错，推荐给大家。该文向你推荐了 8 个关于 design 方面的 […]
February 28th, 2008
[…] It is well known that writing a list is going to be easy for people to scan through quickly and get the jest of the article without reading too much. Just about any relevant list is going to get some major attention if written well on any social network. You don’t want to just copy a list, you have to create creative content just the same. Like writing about digg-like social networks for designers. […]
July 2nd, 2008
Very nice, I think you should add http://www.designbump.com/