What is Digg?203 Comments
- xpose, on 10/12/2007, -35/+101Digg is much more innovative than slashdot. In fact, I don't even go to slashdot anymore :( If i happen to find myself back in 99, I just might revist them :) hehehe, just s joke =P
- johnsee, on 10/12/2007, -14/+75I refuse to believe Alexa is any good at measuring traffic. There is no way that slashdot (or similar large sites for that matter) jump around from 300 to 500 and back again in a week.
- illynova, on 10/12/2007, -7/+40By "overtake" you mean had a day or two more of traffic, right? That hardly counts as "overtaking".
- Godric, on 10/12/2007, -12/+44Slashdot hasn't updated its look since 1998. How in the world does a technology site stay so firmly rooted in days when Netscape, 25 gig harddrives, and OS 9 were new technology?
http://web.archive.org/web/19981111190256/slashdot.org/ - michaelzhao, on 10/12/2007, -4/+28Absolutely correct. I was just going to say this. Slashdot is much more professional and the stories are more in depth and usually more far ranging. Digg is more mainstream than slashdot as for as stories go. Lets take a look at the Digg frontpage and Slashdot's frontpage.
Digg:
iPodLinux on a 60GB Video iPod
Security Flaws Could Cripple Missile Defense Network
A Moore's law for razor blades?
Pulling the plug on standby power
The tech behind fake debit cards
A Guitar that TUNES itself
What Windows Vista will do for PC gaming
Artificial muscles for soldiers
AMAZING artwork of Halo, Final Fantasy and other games
This is just some of the Digg frontpage. Lets look at the Slashdot frontpage.
Slashdot:
US Government Seeks Open-Source Translation
On the Future of Science
SCOTUS To Hear Patentable Thought Case
Everglide s-500 Headphone Review
Suing Google Over Pagerank
Card Processing Software May Store CC Info
The Mythbusters Construct a Kit Bot
Super-Strong Synthetic Muscles Developed
FOSS and Disabled Communities Out of Touch
Mars Rover Spirit Down a Wheel
Although some of the Digg and Slashdot stories are the same. Often times, Slashdot offers less mainstream ones. Like the FOSS and Disabled Communities Out of Touch story. Also, Digg and Slashdot have different purposes. Slashdot's biggest advantage is its commenting system. Although Digg is catching up...people visit Slashdot for comments, whereas more people visit Digg more for more current stories.
So... comparing Digg to Slashdot, is almost like comparing Popular Science to Scientific American. Or comparing Scientific American to a science trade journal.
As for me, I visit both Digg and Slashdot. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -12/+35"How can Digg be more innovative than Slashdot? After all, it was Slashdot that started the game - Digg is just a different version of the same basic idea."
Uh, what game did Slashdot start? There were plenty of tech news sites. Slashdot just popped out ahead during the Linux boom. Digg is the first major USER-DRIVEN news site. No stuffy editors deciding what's important while ignoring your complaints. SlashCode is the biggest piece of abandonware on the net. - mongrel, on 10/12/2007, -25/+48Yes, but Slashdot is Ugly, always has been. Aesthetics go a long way in my book (and yet i still prefer Windows).
- ddrirc, on 10/12/2007, -7/+29It's sort of funny -- I didn't even know digg.com existed until I saw the slashdot post about it. I didn't really think I would end up spending much more time here, but now I only go to slashdot for the poll or if I think a story will have funny/interesting comments (I still get the RSS from it)
I spend most of my time on digg in the cloud view. - DrakeGTA, on 10/12/2007, -3/+25Not to bust anyone's bubble, this was a great accomplishment and well deserved. However, Alexia is not the best system for monitoring traffic.
I’m not sure this is the 100% truth, this is just something I read on a forum once, but I’m told Alexia works by counting hits from people who use the Alexia toolbar, and I would figure that less Slashdot users would have that tool bar (based on how everyone on /. claims to be using linux/OSX/FreeBSD/etc.)
If it’s true about the toolbar and Alexia only counts people who are using IE and have that toolbar installed. And if that’s all it’s counting, well, having more IE dummies then Slashdot isn’t a badge of honor.
But like I said, I don't know. Can anyone confirm this? - davidrussell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21They realized that the content is more important than the design. Although there are some very mature comment / story authors here, there are twice as many immature kids who post complete crap. If they all went away, Digg would instantly win in my books - but for now I keep it a balance between the two sites, depending on what I'm looking for.
- cluckNstrut, on 10/12/2007, -12/+29Digg measures things by advertising dollars. In that category they'll always beat slashdot. Slashdot is tactful. They also wrote the book on these sites. Slashcode is used on hundreds of successful sites on a wide range of topics. That's a contribution Digg will never be able to make. Digg's waving a "We Won!" banner and Slashdot never knew they were racing. Digg really reminds me of that pathetic kid who bragged the day his mom took the training wheels off....you know the one.
i've never even seen a moderately technical discussion on Digg. yes, there are fewer PhD's and other educated theoretical thinkers in the world than there are 'factoid consumers'. that certainly plays into Digg's hands.
REALLY smart people hang out on slashdot and don't give the comparison a second thought. Digg is for kids who want news tidbits spun into cute jokes.
And if you compare the founders themselves and their motivations, it's hard to take Digg seriously.
I haven't seen Digg creators hosting conferences or speaking to thousands about an industry they created.
Slashdot is the original. And Digg users find themselves way in over their heads if they get too far into slashdot threads. You will all grow out of Digg someday, and Slashdot will welcome you with open arms, assuming you have some brain cells left (not a requirement on Digg).
When's the last time you saw typo's in a story's headline on Slashdot anyway? At least they approach the field professionally and with the mindset of journalists. Digg may beat them to the story occasionally, but unless Digg links directly to an article, it means absolutely nothing. The comments here are pathetic, as usual. I just had to see what the digg fanboys would have to say.
Lastly, the whole time Slashdot has owned the market, when have they EVER attacked or criticized Digg (or even more blatant knock-offs like kuro5shin)??? That should tell you something about the maturity of the sites' respective founders.
Digg is just another dumbed down American citizen. - Ginjeet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16I think slashdot and digg are 2 different kinds of news sites. Like if you're a person who likes to catch funny/less serious news than digg is for you, but if you like to read some professional comments, than take a look at slashdot. Also note that slashdot has a better community (well at least older and more experienced).
I still visit both sites every day. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+20I generally find that Digg posts things faster than Slashdot, but that means that there's a lot of crap that makes it to the front page. I definitely don't read it from the front page, rather through my RSS reader. There's definitely a lot more output, but someone has to start thinking about how to throttle the cruft. In that, I find Slashdot far more refined.
- moltek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13i think digg and slashdot are different 'clubs' ... different vibe all over... so I wouldn't really compare them..what's the big deal ?
Also remember quality is usually better as quantity... - dasch, on 10/12/2007, -48/+60How can Digg be more innovative than Slashdot? After all, it was Slashdot that started the game - Digg is just a different version of the same basic idea.
- Protoss, on 10/12/2007, -7/+19Because the traffic isn't accurate.
- jonaizen, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15Not sure I buy that - I'd venture to guess that people with special search needs use Alexa for it's "related sites" functionality. If anything, more technically inclined people probably steer clear of it given that many spyware removal tools consider it spyware.
- Bogtha, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15The way in which Alexa measures traffic is described here:
http://pages.alexa.com/prod_serv/traffic_learn_more.html
Of particular note:
"Multiple page views of the same page made by the same user on the same day are counted only once. The page views per user numbers are the average numbers of unique pages viewed per user per day by the users visiting the site."
This means that reloading the front page of either site doesn't count, but it does mean that all the stories that you go into in the Digg submission queue count. Therefore Digg's heavy users will account for a lot more page views than Slashdot's heavy users.
Also, a *huge* thing to consider is how they measure such page views. Every GET request that is responded to with text/html seems fairly reasonable, yes? No. That would count every single time you click on thumbs up or thumbs down on a comment as a new "page view". That would count every single time you dugg a story as a page view (separate to you actually reading the story). Digg's Ajax interactions return a text/html media type, even if they aren't an HTML page.
Furthermore, if Alexa actually track *traffic*, then Digg are artificially inflating their traffic by other means. Have you noticed how all the images, even background images, seem to load slowly when you go to a new page on Digg? It's because the Digg admins have specified that the longest caches can hold Digg's images is one hour - you're reloading every image on the page every hour whether they've changed or not. Try observing the HTTP headers when you reload an image - the ETag changes even when the image doesn't, which means "conditional GET" won't work.
Web statistics are bogus at the best of times, but these measurements in particular seem to be susceptible to *heavy* bias in Digg's direction. - vann, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Really all this means is that people who are stupid enough to be using Alexa's toolbar spyware crap prefer digg to Slashdot.
I'm not sure that's exactly what we want to be saying. - seanlynch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Can anyone explain why the Slashdot and Digg graphs share a lot of the same peeks and valleys?
- saysaknow, on 10/12/2007, -7/+15Traffic decreases on the weekends.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9"They realized that the content is more important than the design."
Are you referring to Jon Katz's old articles, or perhaps Michael's censorship? Or Zonk's dupes? Do you mean the seven-paragraph front page essay posted by CmdrTaco about how he should have been able to keep his name in World of Warcraft because, goshdarnit, he's CmdrTaco of Slashdot? Or do you mean the wildly inaccurate headlines and summaries that don't get corrected until the story is off the front page?
When someone dupes or posts something inaccurate, the users here have a voice and can vote it down. Getting any response from the Slashdot editors--even if you're a subscriber--is like pulling teeth.
I agree there is a shocking lack of basic writing skills in both Digg stories and comments, but I'm seeing a slightly raising level of maturity that I think will grow as Digg continues to be #1, and the old-timers gravitate here. - violentgreen, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I much prefer digg to slashdot in terms of getting stories. As far as the comments go, slashdot is still ahead of digg for actual discussions. Slashdot IS the discussions. I often learn much more from the discussions than the stories their selves. Digg has a long way to go here but digg is hands down the top place to get the latest stories.
- moltek, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Well, I think it's quite hard to NOT update the look of a website in 8 years (specially with all the web trends happening) .. they're masters...think about it.. it's like being really sure about it... it's also about the content, and they've shown they're are quite 'serious' about it...
and also... per example .. did google change ? - steelaz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7From archived slashdot page of '98: "So IBM announces a 25 gig hard drive... does the world need this yet? Unless this is in a RAID, would you really want to trust 25 gigs on a single drive? What would you use this for?" :)
- DigitAl56K, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Good thing about Digg: Anyones comments have a good chance of getting published.
Bad thing about Digg: Anyones comments have a good chance of getting published.
I like Digg, I find a lot of good random stuff on here, but in my honest opinion at least 50% of everything that makes the front page is trash, if not more. And by trash I don't mean "things that don't interest me", I mean "incorrect, misinterpreted, blog spam, random links to AJAX tools or Photoshop tutorials, or articles regurgitated from last year".
What's the best feature of Slashdot over Digg? Probably that nobody posts "lol" comments on Slashdot... - phore, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9http://www.diggvsdot.com/
This is website kind of shows why digg is better than slashdot just by looking at who breaks stories first. - jboi, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10This seems to happen a few times every month ...
- mranime, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Sigh.
Good job for proving all the arguments against Digg. - Prophet, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7illynova: True enough, but there is a trend quite obvious from that graph. That is, that digg is going up, while slashdot is staying about level, or dropping.
It's likely that slashdot will rise to the top again, but for a short period. In fact, in early December, digg was on top, for a brief moment. Slashdot is behind the times, having only just recently changed to CSS, but will remain popular, due to it's stories, comments(though digg has a good commenting system now) and the loyalty of it's current members. I expect Digg will come out on top in the end, but it may take a while. - spadgos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Thankyou cluckNstrut, that was seriously the most intelligent thing i've seen on digg, ever. I feel the exact same way, thankyou for stating it so succinctly. Reading the comments on Slashdot, I actually come away knowing more than when I started, and usually with a smile too. Reading comments on Digg I come away with "ZOMGWTFBBQ!"-esque language burned into my brain. (case in point, goboi's comment: "tHAT IS sO sWEET!").
- robbh66, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4What wonderful and thoughtful commentary.
No wonder people consider digg users to be less mature than slashdot. - Terrin, on 10/12/2007, -7/+11It's just a simple traffic fluctuation.
- mbiesz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@michaelzhao -- I completely agree. The professionalism of the posted stories is proportional to the maturity of users on both sites, too. A typical comment on digg might be "this is cool digg++", while most comments on Slashdot are thoughtful and insightful ones such as that which you just posted. (Of course, funny ones also -- but not simply moronic ones most of the time.)
- d03boy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7@ intrepion
You honestly have no idea how many people's start pages are yahoo.com or msn.com do you? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I completely agree.
Slashdot still has a more mature audience and better replies to stories. Slashdot generally has a more knowledgeable audience when it comes to tech related articles but I think digg's new commenting system will encourage people to say more meaningful things and Digg will eventually blossom in all aspects. - Negyxo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Insanity i say. /. and Digg may provide similar content.. but the user base is different and should be considered two different mediums. Slashdot articles tend to be a bit behind the curve when it comes to timeliness but the quality of commenting and reviewing of the content it much higher. Digg has a much more hack & slash approach (ironicaly) but you get a colorful, well rounded, range of information. These sites shouldn't be compared as competitors, they can and will co-exist.
http://www.opencircuits.net/ - Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Does Netcraft confirm this?
- fluffyturtle, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7"Also remember quality is usually better as quantity..."
So very very true. Digg may have the quantity but sure as heck has a long time to go before it has the quality.
Still the best place for early news no matter what though, you just have to ignore all the users. - pohl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5You're looking at weeks. Each weekend is where traffic is at a minimum, and wednesday truly is 'hump day' in terms of traffic.
- jonaizen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I'm not sure I agree that Slashdot's design is wonderful - it may be functional, but pretty, well I guess that's a matter of taste. But they are keeping with the times, at least to some extent. I recent noticed that they allow me to tag stories. Not sure if it's an effort to compete with sites like Digg, but I found it interesting.
- ZachPruckowski, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I agree about the layout issue. If something works for Slashdot, they should run with it. Random change for the heck of it is foolish. That said, since the beginning, they added mandatory login, moderation, meta-moderation, "related stories", and the minor stories to the front page, and something I prolly missed. It's not like they're standing still.
- MikeSavior, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The new comment system here has greatly improved the community here at digg, but I personally go to digg for the stories, and slashdot for the discussion. Who cares who beats who? Both sites have strong points.
- fletchowns, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8alexa stats are *****, why did this make it to the front page
- diafel, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Yes, that's true, but it's a relatively accurate Internet ratings system. The Nielsen ratings system doesn't work by monitoring the TV sets of everyone in America, they use a select sample. Same with Alexa.
- ThinkBox, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Why dont oyu just move in with kevin? I mena, looks like your lips are already glued to his ass.
- Scarblac, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5The thing is, the layout gets the work done, and other than that, who cares?
- mkoko, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10I know I like digg better; more stories and they are up much quicker. Read about it on digg on Monday, read about it on /. Tuesday.
- beagle72, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Indeed, the Digg and Slashdot communities are different and both skewed in their own way. Digg's user-powered story system leads to headlines which sometimes completely misrepresent the article and are written in 4th grade English. On Slashdot, editors write headlines which completely misrepresent the article and are written in 11th grade English.
Digg comments appear to come from children who've recently unboxed their first computer, while Slashdot comments come from paranoid luddites who consider themselves both technologically savvy and yet at the same time, fearful and dismissive of every new technological innovation, and how they will be used by the government to spy on them and steal their souls.
And then there are Farkers, who are what you get when you combine Digg users, Slashdot users, and recreational drugs. - liquidcoooled, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree,
I see digg taking the fark croud more than the slash folks.
Sure, the subjects may be the same, but it just doesn't have the same flow as slash.
(Most annoyingly, take this comment, I'm replying to Negyxo, but the entry box is wayyyyyyyy down at the bottom of this list? WTF is this all about) -
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