This is a guest post from Pierre Far, who recently launched a very cool program called Social Alerter which notifies you as soon as your website has a solid chance of hitting the Digg or del.icio.us frontpage.

We have all engaged in debates over the past few years about social media. Is it new? If so, how? Even a recent thread on Cre8asite Forums discussed this, kicking off by someone stating they find social media very intimidating.

Then and Now

In the good old days, say from the 1850s onwards, marketing was mostly a one way “communication”: companies advertized their wares via local media like newspapers, magazines, and traveling salespeople. We certainly we had word of mouth back then, but it was geographically limited to a large degree due to travel and communication constraints. Ideas and product use spread slowly: what was a very popular product in one town was not necessarily popular in another nearby town.

Awhile ago, I used Twitter to talk about one of my favorite cold remedy vitamins, Airborne. It was then that two friends suggested Zicam to me. When stocking up on medication for the winter months, the high recommendations of Zicam had me buying the oral mist.

On Sunday night, after a rather interesting Superbowl XLII, I felt the onset of a cold. As most of these cold medicines suggest, you should take the medicine at the first sign of illness. I immediately thought of my Zicam and was eager to try it out to kill the cold before it really gets bad.

Monday morning, to continue to fight off whatever this may be, I took the recommended dosage of Zicam a second time. I went on my day realizing that I had lost the sense of taste. I ate leftover nosh from the game: really spicy salsa and chips. The spiciness did not impact me. I had some Hershey Kisses. The chocolate taste was dull, as if almost not there.

A week ago, I gave a relatively unbiased account of the “Digg revolt,” a response to Kevin Rose’s post that there were to be algorithmic changes to Digg that likely will impact only the top submitters. After seeing how it panned out, I have to say that I’m not impressed.

Here’s a screenshot of a story that became popular with a whopping 235 Diggs. It was taken the night of January 28, 2008 (approximately 11PM EST):

While Digg typically allowed stories to hit the front page within 80-120 votes (the latter being more rare than normal), it’s now requiring almost double the number.

In comparison, here’s another anomaly (for its time). This is a Digg submission from August 17th:

The problem is quite evident that the most dedicated and seasoned users are feeling the brunt of the impact. And so, it’s time that I acknowledge what people have been saying for a long time: I think Digg has jumped the shark.

Here’s why: