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The Unfortunate Investment of Social Media (and its Consequences)

February 1, 2008

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):

Digg hits Front Page with 235 Votes

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:

Digg hits Front Page with 142 Votes

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:

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Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson Respond to Digg Complaints

January 24, 2008

After Kevin posted to the Digg blog Wednesday evening that there were algorithmic changes to affect the impact of stories that will be promoted to the front page of the site, a “revolt” ensued and an open letter was written. An emergency Drill Down episode was held where numerous Digg users, including regular hosts Andy (MrBabyman), Reg (zaibatsu), and Muhammad (msaleem) spoke with other Digg users, including David Cohn (DigiDave), Karim (supernova17), JD Rucker (oboy), and Jay Fowler (SilentJay74). The initial sentiment was highly negative, and most concluded that the algorithm will penalize users who care much about the community and use it regularly. At first, a Digg embargo was proposed where no Digg users would submit or Digg stories until Monday, January 28th. Eventually, however, founder Kevin Rose and CEO Jay Adelson joined the chat and gave their feedback. Here’s what they said (also covered on Soshable and later posted on Brent Csutoras’s blog):

  • With regards to the new algorithm, Jay says, “algorithms are dynamic in nature. Give it time in your analysis of what’s going on. The math takes time to aggregate.” (Lesson: Stop noticing things the second that they happen.)
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Why Nobody Should Buy Digg

December 20, 2007

Digg Sucks!It hasn’t even been a week and my once positive outlook of Digg has come to a sour end. Yesterday, Brian Clark over at Copyblogger wrote that Digg is dead. You know, for awhile, I was giving Digg the benefit of the doubt. When I reported bugs, I got responses. Of course, when it came to the bury brigade, Digg never acknowledged those emails, neither by stating that there was a bury brigade or not. They simply ignored those accusations. Some might say that silence is agreement.

Not long ago, my friend Erik was banned for submitting a story to Digg that Digg construed as a denial of service attempt. However, when he apologized and vowed not to commit the crime again, Digg reinstated his account. He had to make a promise, but once he did, he was back in. The process took no longer than two hours.

A few weeks later, my friend Mike submitted a somewhat NSFW story to Digg. He, too, got banned. He asked Digg about his banning, and they almost immediately responded to him. When he promised not to violate the rules, they reinstated him. Again, the process did not take long at all.

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Thoughts on Digg’s Latest Features: Thumbs Up

December 17, 2007

Thumbs UpWhen I was at Pubcon last week, Digg launched its highly anticipated images section. And while you’ve all come to expect my rants about Digg, I simply cannot deliver that this time around.

I’ll start by saying that I was at first skeptical about the pictures section. Truthfully, I understand the reasoning behind separating videos and podcasts from news: videos and podcasts require more attention whereas many news stories already include pictures and adding an images section can be construed by some as redundancy. However, I’m not complaining about the new changes — at all. In fact, the new Digg pictures launch has been bunched up with other great features that I’m quite happy about. For example, Digg has finally acknowledged that productivity and lifehack websites deserve a section of their own, so they launched a “Lifestyle” section with its more universal taxonomy. I’m glad I no longer have to put those stories in “offbeat news.” :)

Let’s walk through the new features and what has changed on the Interface.

First, when you go to Digg’s submit page, you’re now greeted with three options. Are you submitting a news story? Is it an image? Is it a video?

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Kevin Rose: Digg’s Biggest Hypocrite

November 7, 2007

You know what I find funny? When rules of a website say one thing and the founder of the website goes against everything the Terms of Service stand for.

Kevin Rose, I’m talking to you.

I left this alone (save for a comment on a recent submission of yours) because I thought you might learn. However, it’s sadly not the case and clearly your fan base is clouding your judgment.

Allow me to point out two infractions made, perhaps intentionally, on your part.

Infraction #1:

Digg’s FAQ (Submitting Section, Question #3) says that duplicate submissions are bannable violations. Here’s the exact wording:

# Is it a duplicate story if I submit a similar story but from a different source?
That isn’t for us to decide. Sometimes there is a better story from another news outlet. We let our users determine that aspect of duplicate submissions. It is, however, a duplicate story if you submit the same story from the same source. We strongly discourage the submission of duplicate stories as it only steals credit from the first submitter. If we find abusive duplicate submission behavior from users, their accounts may be banned.

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