On October 24, 2006, Atlanta, GA based HiddenMarket.Net, a social network, was launched to gain appeal from business professionals.  According to Tech Journal South, HiddenMarket.net is a “free, social business intelligence network connects members tap to a variety of business news, information, job openings, and other resources [source].”  I immediately signed up for an account to see what potential HiddenMarket has.

HiddenMarket has about 7 key features: News, Cloud, My Faves, My Groups, My Lenses, My Messages, and My Profiles.
News: reports the latest additions to HiddenMarket.  The current news is that Scott Burkett is proud to announce “Finally, our open beta period is here!” 
Cloud: is a feature that encourages users to search for the various tags that are associated with news that is retrieved by HiddenMarket.
The news that is retrieved by HiddenMarket is known as intel.  If you dictionary.com the word, “intel,” you would be surprised to find out that it is a synonym to “information” as well as well as the semiconductor company.

My Faves: is a section that contains your desired intel articles.  You can also sort these articles by creating folders.
My Groups: is fairly self-explanatory.  Users can create groups, join groups, and interact with people on HiddenMarket.
My Lenses: is a more advanced means of searching for articles.  As you search for articles like I searched for IBM below, you can choose whether you want to subscribe to RSS feeds pertaining to your keywords or simply read the articles.  Once you click on the searched article and click on it, a snippet of the article appears in the area where the Lead Preview Area frame is in the screenshot below.  The article preview also displays the tags that are associated with them and shows the usernames of the people that have tagged this article has a lead.  This is definetely an interesting feature.

My Messages: This feature is also self-explanatory, but there is a message that pops-up when you want to check out the feature that it is not available during Beta phase. 
My Profile: is a location that displays your bio, groups associated, intel stories, bookmarks, friends, and interests.  You can also place a picture with your profile.

After pondering around the difference between Digg and HiddenMarket since they both seem to be centralized around users interacting around news feeds, it seems that HiddenMarket allows users to spend more time discussing issues in the news today whereas Digg has more of a hit-and-run approach to the news.  The news on Digg moves so fast and aggressively that you barely have time to discuss what is happening.