The consequences of Digg’s upcoming changes
Sometimes, expansion is not the right way to move forward. But, tell it to the shareholders, VCs, investors, and the new 30 people you’ve just hired. Hell, tell it to any business owner: expansion is simply the natural way to run any business. Digg, some might remember, started out as a purely technology-focused social news site.
Then, Digg expanded to cover a much wider variety of topics - politics, videos, sports, business, entertainment, gaming. A logical course of action? Perhaps. But somewhere along the way, the “news” part of the equasion - which, truth be told, was never explicitly written anywhere; officially, Digg is a social content, not a social news site - got lost. With the growth of Digg’s audience, hitting the right frequency and riding the wave became much more important than reporting on the latest news.
And, in spite of the common argument that Digg is not about news, I still think that delivering the news from the depths of the Internet is one of the most important aspects of Digg. I don’t really care about funny pictures: there are hundreds of sites which specialize in that sort of thing, for example, Madville and Linkswarm come to mind. I care, mostly, about news which only social media can deliver, picking it up from social networking profiles or smaller blogs: stories like the one about Flickr censoring its users.
Now, Digg’s Kevin Rose reveals plans to expand Digg even further, probably by adding product and restaurant reviews in the mix, as well as personalizing the site in such a way that actual popularity of a certain news item won’t have that much of an impact - whatever that means.
I’m not necessarily saying that all this is a bad thing, but we have to be honest here and admit that the Digg of old is going to vanish. A parallel with its huge old-school community-powered news competitor, Slashdot, is inevitable. 2 years ago, Slashdot delivered tech news, and Digg delivered tech news. Right now, Slashdot still delivers tech news. Digg…well, Digg offers a lot of fun stuff to browse through, acting like a huge lens of its community, but is it news? With product and restaurant reviews, the news factor is going to disappear altogether.
And, you know what? I happen to like Slashdot. It does one thing, and it does it well. I’m not saying that Digg should never expand - although I definitely prefer the old, tech-focused Digg to the new one - but maybe they should consider expanding in a different way.
My suggestion? Instead of adding more bloat to Digg, leave Digg as it is, and build a platform - call it DiggWorld or something - and experiment with the new stuff there. Or transfer the Digg concept to new sites, focused on something else. Consider the possibility that maybe Digg users simply like Digg as it is.
June 2nd, 2007 at 6:42 am
I just dread that they don’t become a MySpace kind of thing and someone else builds a network like digg and all the users of that community start hating digg. Much like how digg users hate Myspace.
Your suggestion does make sense, maybe they should just start a whole new site dedicated to more “social” activities rather than implementing it on digg itself.
June 2nd, 2007 at 9:01 am
Digg.com members can already promote their Digg profiles within a large network of dating/community sites. Passions Network is a network of over 100 individual online dating/social networking sites, each with a very specific focus or interest group. Within the network, a feature called ‘Other Places’ allows members to add links to their profile on other sites where they spend time (and where dating is not a focus). Digg.com is one of the many sites available for members to add into their accounts, and a link leading directly to their Digg profile is automatically added, if they choose to add their Digg username. The idea is to give Digg members who are interested in social sites with a dating focus, the option to promote themselves in communities of interest. With over 100 sites, the options include Nerd Passions, Gaming Passions, Trek Passions, Intellectual Passions, Shy Passions, etc.
March 3rd, 2009 at 7:44 am
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March 3rd, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Hello
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March 24th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
That was silly. Why you’ve start to writing this?
April 11th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Sounds reasonable.
June 17th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Todos hablan de la crisis financiera, y hoy, Thursday q bueno q encontre esto, algo diferente, siempre hace falta