If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery Digg would be at the top of the heap. The site that popularized social news has been copied, cloned and even spawned Pligg, an open source Digg style script.
If Pligg opened up Digg style clones to site hosts and developers, coRank takes the concept to the mass market; users who either can’t or don’t want to host Pligg on their own domain. coRank is to Digg clones what Blogger once was for blogging.
coRank has evolved from its earlier incarnation as a stand alone Digg clone. The new coRank is now a fully customizable hosted social voting platform. Users can set up social news sites through easy to use menu options without the need to edit code. Like Blogger there is a range of templates available, including one that looks just like Digg. The options are surprisingly broad. Users can customize everything from the name of voting members through to the names given to the actual voting system. Everything from user banning through to privacy options and user statistics has been included.
Although the entire morality of an army of Digg clones may be a passionate topic for debate, there’s little doubt that social news continues to grow. Ethics aside coRank is a notable point in the progression of social news development. In time coRank is an idea that is sure to be cloned itself.