What is Digg?Sponsored by wix.com
339 Comments
- jhaydon, on 07/26/2008, -37/+381This is a pity, Google is really the only company I can think of that could actually improve Digg. Hopefully they'll change their mind down the road, or otherwise Digg might sell to the other company that has shown interest - Microsoft.
- teamparadox, on 07/26/2008, -12/+21Google and Microsoft would be a good fit for Digg. I know I know Microsoft EVIL! But really it might be a small step in the right direction for them. Im sure they huge infusion of cash wouldnt hurt digg either so long as MS kept the right people in charge.
- hugolp, on 07/26/2008, -21/+16Every company MS or AOL have bought online has gone down, so if you want Digg to close ask MS to buy it.
- Drahkar, on 07/26/2008, -4/+25Companies that joined Microsoft haven't closed, but they have gone in directions that most of the original users didn't like. AOL however is a death sentence for any application. They tie too much bloatware and ads to it.
- Atomic1fire, on 07/26/2008, -0/+3well
Having a website where your competitors users can tell you hot or cold might be good for you - LR2_, on 07/26/2008, -6/+38@hugolp
Ever hear of Weblogs, Inc. It's a subsidiary of AOL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblogs,_Inc. )
AOL owns Engadget, Joystiq, PS3 Fanboy and XBOX360 Fanboy, Autoblog DIY Life, and others.
Also, Microsoft has an awesome online track record. They own live.com, hotmail, msn, jellyfish.com, ...etc. I cannot begin to imagine how many sites they own that are in the top 1000 trafficked.
"Every company MS or AOL have bought online has gone down, so if you want Digg to close ask MS to buy it." ....LIES! - t0x2c, on 07/27/2008, -1/+2The only reason MS has such popular websites is because they force it on you, or atleast put the links much closer than anyone else can.
If you install windows, to say, play Crysis, there's a nice ad saying you should sign up for a live account. Internet explorer? Homepage is MSN. I wonder why they're the most trafficked sites. - hugolp, on 07/27/2008, -1/+1@LR2_ MS lost 1.6 billion dollars with those internet places only this year. And you call that succesfull pages? You have to be kidding.
- Muyoso, on 07/26/2008, -13/+142The thing is, Digg is garbage, and google doesnt want garbage. That is, digg has been losing readership for the past year. They should have sold at their peak, about a year and a half ago. There is no magical fix for digg. Digg has become nothing more than a place for various websites to push their ***** to the frontpage. It USED to be an awesome place for tech news, not its just a place for liberal blogs to spam their *****, Ron Paul stories, and pro Obama stories, why would google want that?
- AcidBurnz, on 07/26/2008, -7/+35Don't cry man, we're all waiting at Reddit for ya ;)
- marc123, on 07/26/2008, -17/+10IMO digg's liberal bias is reflective of the general consensus of the free thinking people of the world. It's not as right wing as the MSM granted, but their target audience is and will always be the 'sheeple' masses. The internet is a democratizing force and Digg is a great vehicle. MSM will always be a tool of the elite.
- TheCamino, on 07/26/2008, -3/+46
As a happy digger, I hate to admit it, but I am unfortunately in complete agreement about the above post.
Digg is dying because of the political douchebags, and people that are interested in bikini pics.
Stop it. Stop lighting it. It's turning a community into a political 'Flavor of Love.'
Communities are important, and Digg is overrun. When the community gets overrun, which is identical to a small town that gets overrun because it sits too close to a growing city, it ruins the experience for people. The ridiculous political overrun that has happened on Digg has felt akin to someone putting a strip mall next to my little farmhouse. This politicking is offending, ridiculous, never ending, and it ruins my Diggzone. You can't filter it, because it's being spammed on all aspects of everything.
Be selective on people. Have some form of moderation that doesn't become a douchebag free for all.
I keep coming back on hope, but more and more, if I keep seeing ridiculous liberal blogs (and most would consider me a ridiculous liberal), the Obama heads, and all that other political crap take more of my mindspace, I'll be FORCED to move out of my little country town. I don't need a seven hundred megawatt sign that says 'OBAMA!' blasting in my window every night, and disrupting my life.
I would take a guess and say that the vast majority of diggers left when the Democrat primary was in full swing, and I couldn't stand to even get into the board on digg for all of the intense douchebaggery that was going on. That should have been the red flag that something was wrong.
It almost drove me away. As an old slashdotter, and an old BBS person, I like the idea of digg participation, but honestly, it's getting to the point on the 'net to where 'we just can't have nice things.'
I am literally one more ridiculous political headline from removing it from my bookmarks.
I would hope that the Diggstaff would think long and hard about where they really want this site to go, and not make it another Facebook, self-glorifying, political spamhole. - fuzzmeister, on 07/26/2008, -2/+5http://siteanalytics.compete.com/digg.com+reddit.c ...
That seems to pretty clearly show that digg has not been losing readership, and is very far ahead of Reddit. - Hypermarkalan, on 07/26/2008, -1/+13It's not even so much of a particular political leaning that's killing Digg. It's the nonsense videos, obvious advertisements, and pure stupidity that make it to the frontpage. It's so obvious that a small group of "users" know how to game Digg's algorithm so that all the Frontpage stories originate from a few choice individuals (How much is Huffpost paying Digg to get damn-near all their stories greenlit?). I used to love Digg, but the quality level of the stories has dropped dramatically.
Also, Reddit seems to get stories upmodded and on the front page at least a day quicker than Digg. I can't count the number of times Reddit beats Digg on upcoming stories. - z0mb13, on 07/26/2008, -9/+3Good god you people pull some crazy ***** out of thin air. Digg is "losing readership" and "dying"? You may not like it as much as you did a year ago, but that doesn't make either of those statements true.
- Archimboldo, on 07/26/2008, -1/+8It's true. There are fewer stories that interest me these days. I still log in at intervals and occasionally find something interesting. The comments are usually low quality. Things get dugg down not because they are not thought provoking, but because it just doesn't match the a priori opinions or likes of the 16 year olds that seem to populate the site.
I'm already reading Slashdot more and think I'll checkout Reddit.
Flushhhhhhhh ...... - ivand67, on 07/27/2008, -4/+1Who the hell is stopping conservatives and people in the middle to push their ***** on digg? The reason there are more stories with a liberal bias on digg than conservative ones is because the type of people that use a site like digg are more likely to be liberals and vote for democrats.
There isn't a force or a SPECIFIC group of people working on making digg a place to push liberal views. - ivand67, on 07/27/2008, -6/+1And by the way, nerd, I'm glad digg isn't a place for tech news only. Hang out at slashdot with all the other geeks. digg should be a place for the masses where stories from all walks of life are dugg and commented on, not a little community site for people with YOUR specific interests.
I love all these people that come on here and complain about the content on digg, as if it's digg's fault. There will always be right-wing or left-wing propaganda and stupid or annoying stories on digg, AND reddit, AND stumbleupon, and any other imitation sites. If you don't like it, either get the ***** out or work on submitting better stories and looking for and digging better stories yourself. Whiner.
- urbano35, on 07/26/2008, -6/+3I don't understand. I mean they got Orkut, why not Digg?
Digg's popularity would've skyrocketed and the garbage it is now would become treasure.- MtheoryX, on 07/26/2008, -1/+7Yes, because going mainstream always means you have less garbage.
Don't get me wrong, I love me some Digg (check my profile for amount of activity), and I would love to see more people exposed to Digg; however, I have noticed that Digg is moving in a different direction already, and mainstream awareness would not help.
You think the lolcats and 4chan ***** is bad now? Just wait until Digg is exposed to the "other" 99% of web users.
This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good because Digg won't be poluted (or, at least, polluted more quickly) by stupid *****. It's a bad thing because I think Google could help a lot with scaling, monetization, and the broken Digg algorithm (after all, Google is pretty high up there in the rank of "those who know algorithms well)).
- MtheoryX, on 07/26/2008, -1/+7Yes, because going mainstream always means you have less garbage.
- haiduz, on 07/26/2008, -10/+17I think google made the right move. While the Digg Engine is great, and it has a huge presence online, and it a great way to drive traffic, I really dont think that it should be a good buy for a company like google for the folowing reason:
Digg and other social networking sites tend to have a very vocal minority community of over sensitive and fringe lunatics, racists, libertarians and 9/11 truther just to name a few. These guys make coordinated efforts to game the system and definately ruin the overall community because they the get illusion that their nut job out of stream views are getting some attention at digg. If I was at google, I would never want such a community be to associated with the google brand because of how damaging it could be to their reputation.- BassCadet, on 07/26/2008, -10/+9haiduz nailed it.
Digg has steadily become a tool of a variety of groups (9/11 Truthers, racists, Libertarians, etc) who all have one thing in common: they're obnoxious.
Digg executives lack the business acumen to weed out the undesirables and make their property attractive to prospective buyers. Why on Earth would Microsoft or Google want to spend millions so that they're bankrolling ignorant people spewing their Dennis Kucinich impeachment news items that are so far out on the fringe it is comical?
If Digg wants to become what it should be, NORMAL people's reactions to news items, it needs to start systematically targeting and elminating accounts which submit these ridiculous Ron Paul/9-11/McCain/Obama/Impeachment stories. - Scheissen, on 07/26/2008, -0/+5Wow
And liberals don't SPAM? What are those 5 articles a day just from Huffington Post then?
- BassCadet, on 07/26/2008, -10/+9haiduz nailed it.
- brettg102, on 07/26/2008, -3/+14Google already has a far better news algorithm than Digg will ever or could ever hope to be, called Google News. The fringe articles have the proper clout on Google News...you may see them every once in a while but it is very clear that they are the minority...hear, it is all you see. Huffpo, moveon, thinkprogress, etc. Those on the fringes of society have incredible urge to organize, which is very evident on digg...however, they are still the "lunatic fringe", and should be relegated as such. Google made a wise choice in staying away from digg.
Looking at the first 3 pages of 2008 Elections: 22/45 (48.8%) were Huffpo. 32/45 (71.1%) were openly far left publications. - DickyT83, on 07/26/2008, -0/+16I was looking forward to Giggle :(
- trevorjez, on 07/26/2008, -0/+2you do know that microsoft is serving advertising on digg, right?
- floort, on 07/26/2008, -1/+7Digg is dead. It does nothing but steal traffic from the host news source. It isn;t a news aggregator, it is a place for kids to rant. Digg users do NOT click on ads. RIP Digg.
- TheFinaleofSeem, on 07/26/2008, -0/+8I think the deal fell through when Google actually spent some time on Digg. Then they ran the hell away.
- inactive, on 07/26/2008, -0/+2the only thing that could improve digg would be getting rid of 90's of the people who come here
- DarkShroud, on 07/26/2008, -0/+6Just getting rid of the political news section wouldn't hurt.
- MiddleOfNowhere, on 07/26/2008, -0/+7"Google is really the only company I can think of that could actually improve Digg."
=
"Porsche is really the only company I can think of that could actually improve my driving skills."
No. Really.
digg is a social media site. If it takes big ol' Google to "fix" what's wrong about digg, than Web 2.0 as such has failed.
How can a user-driven site be "fixed" by a technology giant?
Take a look at the problem.
It's us, the users - not some algorithm.
And *we* need to fix it. Not by tweaking an algorithm, but by treating each other like human beings, not just avatars that can be spammed/insulted/manipulated to kingdom come.- doctordbx, on 07/26/2008, -1/+3"How can a user-driven site be "fixed" by a technology giant?"
For starters they could fix the 'bug' in the algorthim that pushes up posts with the words "iPhone", "Apple", "Ron Paul", "Kevin Rose" and a few other oddities that seem to make front page with very little diggs.
- doctordbx, on 07/26/2008, -1/+3"How can a user-driven site be "fixed" by a technology giant?"
- xsuite, on 07/26/2008, -0/+1The reason they backed down had something to do with alcohol and Latina midgets.
- hiimcliff, on 07/26/2008, -1/+1digg and facebook should merge. two very cutting edge sites. i like google but for some reason, i never saw google improving on digg, only ruining it. google knows functionality but not design and usability.
- ilgaz, on 07/27/2008, -0/+1Can MS stand to the fact that Digg runs on GNU/Debian Linux?
Not joking, that is that kind of company you are dealing with. MS is very bad alternative now.
- teamparadox, on 07/26/2008, -12/+21Google and Microsoft would be a good fit for Digg. I know I know Microsoft EVIL! But really it might be a small step in the right direction for them. Im sure they huge infusion of cash wouldnt hurt digg either so long as MS kept the right people in charge.
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