A frequent theme at NewAssignment.Net has been the proliferation of socially driven news sites into offbeat territories. Sites like Digg, Netscape and Newsvine have changed the way people find news stories – but now the technology is being harnessed to do much more.

The latest? Do The Right Thing, which quietly went public last week. Although at first glance it appears to be another Digg-clone, a closer look reveals a different purpose all together.

DoTheRightThing.com is a community driven site that collects information about the social impact of a company’s behavior. For example, if you want to find out if Wal-Mart has “done the right thing” – you would have to search for information that is scattered all across the Web. At best one can turn to an official scorekeeper, like the Dow Jones’ sustainability index. But these top-down self-appointed judges of a company’s behavior have come under scrutiny lately. A recent Harvard Business Review article by Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer had this to say:

While rigorous and reliable ratings might constructively influence corporate behavior, the existing cacophony of self-appointed scorekeepers does little more than add to the confusion…. The result is a jumble of largely meaningless rankings, allowing almost any company to boast that it meets some measure of social responsibility - and most do.

The solution? Give the consumers, employees and everyday people the tools to rate a company’s social impact and they can do it faster, better and smiling all the way.

“Its important to create a system that has a balance of accountability and free form. And we really like the Digg model because it’s a balance between a Wiki and a forum, and neither would have worked for Do The Right Thing,” said Ryan Mickle, founder of Do The Right Thing.

How it works: Company names are submitted by users for a 60 day evaluation period, similar to an IPO evaluation. During this stage the crowd pulls any information, historical or current, relevant to a company’s social performance. At the end of that open period – a social performance score is created. Right now there are 54 days left on the evaluation period for Starbucks, Wal-Mart and Whole Foods Market. And after the 60-day initial rating a company’s score can always change as new information is collected.

Do The Right Thing is not a Digg-clone. It’s not even a “news site,” although news stories will play an integral role.

The goal as Mickle put it is to “create a virtual exchange, a way that companies can be held accountable and recognized for the things that they do.” It was only while searching around for a model to create this exchange that Digg’s technology was employed. Which raises the question – with such an instant and powerful way to judge the collective conscious, what other models can use the technology pioneered by socially driven news sites?

Can it be used to collaboratively create a Web application through DuggSpace? (Now called The Rival Project).

What about a system to raise money, covered here as socially driven charity? (Also see the Robin Hood Fund).

Or perhaps socially driven news sites can change their focus from judging popularity to other metrics of a news story such as reliability. NewsTrust is pioneering this effort, which you can read about in these three posts.

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David Cohn is the editor of NewAssignment.Net’s blog.