Bye Bye Digg
I have been using Digg, the social news portal where users vote on stories submitted by users, for more than two years and I loved it at the beginning. Nowadays when I visit the Technology section of Digg I see what I already read in my feed reader. There is Lifehacker, Mashable, Gizmodo, Torrentfreak and Arstechnica on the frontpage who seem to make the frontpage no matter what they write.
The news that I read yesterday are popular on Digg today which is a shame in my opinion. I'd love to see an experiment where one of the mentioned websites is posting a bull story that leads to a "Haha, fooled you" page on their website. My guess would be that it would still make the frontpage.
I also like the hypocrisy. When a blog hits the frontpage one of the first comments is a summary of what has been said or a link to the source of the article. As if the blog did nothing but to copy. Now, when Lifehacker, who have several two paragraph posts on their website is linking to a source writes an article like this it makes the frontpage and no one is posting the link to the real site in the comments.
Besides this it is possible to purchase any number of Diggs desired for a very low price. (25 Diggs $6 for example) which turns that website into spam hell. Sure, the guys who like to bury articles are working day and night to keep the competition from appearing on the Digg frontpage but they don't stand a chance against articles that gets lots of votes fast.
Digg has become a useless site because of these reasons and I decided to delete the bookmark. Bye Bye Digg, it was a nice time.
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I posted this very thing on Digg, two days ago…
I got Dugg down.
I have been on Digg since 2005 but have now moved to Reddit. It is better but there is too much Ron Paul and USA election SPAM.
I became disillusioned with digg as well. I wrote a long post about why here: http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=5160.0
In general I just think that the whole way it works brings out the worst in crowd-think, and instead of discovering new stuff we get hyper-focusing on a few items that either have catchy titles or, as you mention, have been written about by the big guys the day before.
-mouser
As a member of the Mashable team and only speaking for Mashable, I have to disagree with you on several points. Obviously, I follow Digg and keep track of any “Dugg” articles. Mashable does get Dugg often as we do have some great articles, however, reaching the front page only happens several times a week, if we are lucky. However, thank you for the compliment, and I wish it were true ;) but it’s not (just speaking for Mashable…)
However, I agree with most of your article. Well written and well put.
I couldn’t disagree with you more. Do a little searching the upcoming/most section of your categories and you’ll see some groundbreaking stuff there that just might not make the front page. Not to mention that Digg is a great place for potpourri lovers like myself.
wow, I’m so naïve. I thought articles were dug purely for their content and not purchased. I’m sure it’s the case with some articles but this really opened my eyes. I tried to use Digg for a bit but could never really get into it
I agree that Digg is fake nowadays. But I can’t deny that Digg can bring us lots of hits and also many incoming links to the post.
Last month I’ve been stumbled nearly every week and my traffic was really high, however, it went back to normal after a week.
As for digg, I got digg 2 years ago and it did increase my traffic long term. That was 2 years ago, might be different now.
I’ve become a bit disenchanted with Digg as well – though not necessarily for the same reasons. I still need a site to filter the “raw content” coming in from all those tech (and other) sites, but Digg is starting to do more harm than good in that regard (bad signal/noise ratio).
So I’ve recently subscribed to Reddit‘s RSS feed, and that proves to be a much more satisfying experience so far (not least because the feed links go directly to the respective article) – though I have not ditched Digg just yet.
yeah in many cases it has become a spammers tool, though even google news gets hit with these sub par copy/paste news sites who keyword stuff titles… but in most digg front page stories, the deserved cream rises to the top.
Great move. Digg is now being controlled by certain groups and it is now equal to any mainstream media source. They are now equal to the same networks they condemn.
On the other hand, one needs a good place for good news. Can you blog your suggestions?
Thanks
You have to remember that the sites you mention often have the latest news and the hottest scoops. Sure, they have an advantage because they are already known to the public, and they are often dugg by some of the top diggers, but content still matters (not all articles make it to the frontpage).
I entirely agree, but I think this is less the concern of a social news portal than that of the mentalities of their subscribers, which too often tend to search for fame rather than to share information objectively. In fact, it seems to be the con of the Web : too little consciousness for the power provided.
I’ve just read an editorial about this in the german magazine c’t – it ends: “web 2.0 revolution is eating its childrens”.
Thanks for opening my eyes (I did not know that I could buy diggs…)