When I first wrote about GlobalGrind.com, it was in its alpha phase as a start page geared towards the hip-hop generation.

You could search pre-existing content and feeds or add your own to the GlobalGrind.com ecosystem. Think NetVibes, but with curated content that had a hip-hop perspective. Granted, the start page concept wasn’t a new idea — Yahoo! has been running a start page product for years. But I found the portal-to-the-black-blogosphere twist interesting and the ability to customize my page a compelling enough reason to return (had they worked out the kludginess of the interface).

Fast-forward 5 months and a Run’s House-debut later and GlobalGrind.com is reborn as … a Digg-wannabe?*

No really. They remade it into an ‘urban’ version of Digg — except ‘diggs’ are called ‘grinds’ and there are separate categories for “Entertainment,” “Hip-Hop Culture,” and “Gossip” (among others). And no, I don’t understand how those categories are different either.

It’s entirely possible that GlobalGrind.com could take off and be a raging success, but I am skeptical. Creating a half-a**ed rip-off an innovator rarely works.

Previously

• GlobalGrind.com launches beta
• GlobalGrind.com: Niche audience start pages?

*And they didn’t even have the good sense to run a prettied-up version of Pligg. How much of that $4.5 million investment did they burn up by redeveloping the site?