5 ms·

Digg’s Biggest Problem Is Its Users And Their Constant Opinions On Things

51 points by malte 16y ago

faramarz 16y ago
Why doesn't Digg sell its platform? If not, licence news networks like CNN and FOX to use the platform, hosted or otherwise. Most news sites now have a "user generated" section that could take advantage of "digging" natively. Do what wufoo did for forms. Should have sold when you had the chance :P
- hcho 16y ago
  Reddit for Independent(a UK newspaper) does not seem to work: http://reddit.independent.co.uk/ http://reddit.independent.co.uk/ Maybe there's not a market for their platform.
  - greyman 16y ago
    Yes, I remember NYT also tried something like this with reddit. I think the main reason it didn't take off is that one single media entity just doesn't have that much interesting content to keep it vibrant enough.
    - joubert 16y ago
      Agreed. In the mornings I would read NYT, Reuters, Bloomberg, NPR, Google Alerts, and HN. One source isn't good enough.
    - hcho 16y ago
      That, plus their readers do not seem to be interested in karma and point games.
- mseebach 16y ago
  The platform, from a technological POV, is utterly uninteresting. It's quickly replacing the blog for the X in "Build an X in [webplatform of the week] in 15 minutes".
estacado 16y ago
Digg users are either power users who control what gets on there; or geeks who think they are the "cool" geeks, the ones that gets laid.
petercooper 16y ago
Proving, yet again, that Arrington is the best writer on TC. He nailed it, right down to the Digg culture issues. The Eddie Murphy defence is well worth picking up too - we've seen Steve Jobs engaging in some of this in his recent spate of e-mails.
- greyman 16y ago
  I tend to like MG Siegler and Erick Schonfeld more, but admittedly overall TC editorial strength improved a lot during the last years. Oh...and Paul Carr, he's sometimes funny as well.
  - petercooper 16y ago
    I think it depends on what you're going to TC for. Excusing the eccentric Paul Carr, most of the newer writers seem to be (or are trying to be) typical journalist types. Just writing solid news. But if I wanted that, I think RWW and Mashable are better. Arrington, though, shoots from the hip, and has a "here's my opinion and that's that" approach. He's sometimes wrong, but there's usually a good mix of wisdom and irreverence in how he sees things. But, as I said, it depends what you read TC for. Pieces driven heavily by gut feelings rather than actual news are, of course, not for everyone :-) If Mike sold/left TC though, I'd just go read wherever he blogged next because I care more for his writing than "TechCrunch's."
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
There is a bit of truth in here, and a bit of bullshit. I think, long run, that you only ever have those 250K users permanently. The rest are just passing through. It'd be great to think that rock-solid vision and saying no to users is great, just like it'd be great to think that listening carefully and delivering what an audience wants is great. Fact is, both are necessary and both have limitations. Nothing stays the same. Audience participation is always changing. If applications were movies, some might be James Bond movies -- multiple creative attempts along the same pattern as visioned by founders continue to churn out winners. But most are Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure -- wonderful little passtimes that lots of people enjoy for a bit and move on. Everybody wants to think that their Bill and Ted is actually a James Bond. But very, very, very few apps are. And then when their app isn't, people either crowd around and say there's not enough vision or not enough listening to the crowd. This is the difference between making something and bullshitting about making something.
- ojbyrne 16y ago
  I agree with you, except I'd say "a lot of bullshit." I also find it kind of ironic that the theme of the article is basically "Kevin, stop listening to your users and listen to ME." Personally I think that's actually a bigger problem - there's so many pundits (and Kevin knows them all) who pontificate endlessly about what he should do. The best thing he could probably do is get out of Norcal.
  - dmlorenzetti 16y ago
    It's also ironic that he builds his case (that Digg should follow its own path, ignoring the wisdom of the crowd) around a couple of folk sayings, and an internet meme about the iPhone.
Bjoern 16y ago
> "..by Michael Arrington on May 12, 2010." Don't misunderstand me, but that was the point where I stopped reading.
- omaranto 16y ago
  Wait: you read past "Arrington" and then stopped after reading the date?
kixxauth 16y ago
Arrington is absolutely right about Digg. They are pandering to users too much. Assuming they want mainstream traffic they should only listen to the users who represent the vision of a mainstream product. However, Arrington is wrong about Apple and Facebook. They have stepped over a line somewhere and alienated themselves. Both of these companies have gotten mainstream media attention for their recent dictatorship activities. They are going to be paying the price for it. Don't forget how Microsoft got dragged into court in 1997. Arrogance.
- batiudrami 16y ago
  I think you're wrong about Apple and Facebook. I'd like you to be right, but the fact is, you care about what they do and you feel alienated. You are not the audience they target; you read news.yc. The market this article is talking about will continue to use Facebook and buy new iPhones.
  - kixxauth 16y ago
    Hmmm, yeah. I guess I agree that the dictator approach does in fact land more successful products. But, like Calcanus has recently spouted off "Facebook has overplayed their hand", and I think the same goes for Apple. It is true that I do not represent the mainstream, but Facebook's recent privacy actions has caught the attention of the US Congress. Congress people make a living by throwing grass in the air to see which way the political wind is blowing. When Facebook draws the attention of Charles Schumer we're no longer talking about just the news.yc crowd. When Microsoft found themselves in the same situation in 1997 they went to Washington DC, told congress that consumers didn't really know what was good for them. When summoned by the US DOJ Bill Gates went back to Washington personally to tell the DOJ that they didn't know anything about computer software and were in no position to prosecute them. This level of arrogance takes a company out of the tech industry echo chamber and right into the nightly news.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    And even within a group like news.yc, you don't always get a true representative sample of opinion. Yes, there've been many posts and comments about how Facebook sucks, but there are also lots that don't care. And those minority are also less likely to post about it, too. I was pretty active on these discussions at first, but by now, I don't even read the comments section of a post with "Facebook" in the title. It's just turned into one big giant circlejerk, and it's boring. It's easy to think that a site has a 'hivemind,' but there isn't really a consensus of opinion.
philk 16y ago
"If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said 'A faster horse'" --Henry Ford
- joubert 16y ago
  Bio-engineering might have been more advanced by now.
commandar 16y ago
"In 2007, for example, Kevin Rose surrendered to a mob of Digg users who were upset that Digg was blocking stories publishing the decryption key for HD DVDs." Interesting for me, as that was the point where I left digg for greener pastures. My account on reddit iterated up to being 3 years old a couple of weeks ago -- wiki says the HD DVD thing happened May 1, 2007. Makes sense.
jgrahamc 16y ago
Surely, Digg's biggest problem is Kevin Rose. Everything else seems to flow from Rose's 'persona'.
- ojbyrne 16y ago
  Finally someone who agrees with me. I used to have a little mantra when I was there - "For digg to grow, Kevin's got to go."
  - 3dFlatLander 16y ago
    I'll agree with that. But, why does (did?) digg have to grow? I was a dedicated user for the two first years and loved it. There was no better place to get general sci/tech/computer news. I kinda feel like no aggregator stepped in and gave those initials digg users a substitute once the site moved away from news in those areas.
    - ojbyrne 16y ago
      $40 million in VC money.
  - gsmaverick 16y ago
    And Kevin left and had not been at Digg for more than a year and yet nothing spectacular happened.
nazgulnarsil 16y ago
the big hurdle of our age will be getting over this whole democracy idea for the nth time.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
eavc 16y ago
Digg's biggest problem is the cartel that determines what stories will get to the front page. There's an illusion of democracy, but behind the scenes, there are people pumping and pumping to get their content to the front page for SEO purposes.
GFischer 16y ago
A bit offtopic, but... using a Magic: The Gathering game card image for the article? (Kithkin Rabble) (see http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=158695 http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiver... ) (and yes, I do play too much M:TG). I hope it's OK by the image owners (Wizards of the Coast). Some of the guys here sell stock images for a living, and they wouldn't like people using images without permission.
terra_t 16y ago
Digg is the case study I always bring out as to why "web 2.0 doesn't work" and "we need web 3.0." Web 2.0 sites are held hostage by their user communities at two points in their growth: (i) when the site is just starting and (ii) when the site has grown to its "maximal" size. The vast majority of Web 2.0 sites fail at the starting gate. The "lucky" ones then face a phase of explosive growth, in which a huge amount of capital is needed just to keep the lights running. Around the time that they're looking for an exit, growth has leveled off, and there's neither any need for big investors nor any reason for them to get in... No exit.
petercooper 16y ago
I'd love to dig up a citation, but I heard a quote when I was young that resonated with me. It goes something like "a seemingly erroneous dictator has more scope to impress than a committee of experts." More scope to mess up too, I guess, but brilliance rarely comes from a large group (e.g. the public) taking all the decisions together.
phatbyte 16y ago
I sometimes feel that TC is becoming the Fox news of the web. Honestly... I don't understand why the need for Digg to grow. I mean, what's the point ? They obviously have a already on-going user base, and don't tell me that 250k are all bitching users, I enjoy Digg a lot, it's a awesome site to start the day while drinking coffee in the morning. Also, why are people talking about kicking Kevin Rose ? It's his project !! He invested money on it, he should be the last one to leave it if you ask me. I think the biggest mistake Digg made was bringing VC, I bet that deep inside KR feels the same. VC are poison to a company.

51 points by malte 16y ago

Why doesn't Digg sell its platform? If not, licence news networks like CNN and FOX to use the platform, hosted or otherwise. Most news sites now have a "user generated" section that could take advantage of "digging" natively. Do what wufoo did for forms. Should have sold when you had the chance :P

hcho 16y ago
Reddit for Independent(a UK newspaper) does not seem to work: http://reddit.independent.co.uk/ http://reddit.independent.co.uk/ Maybe there's not a market for their platform.
- greyman 16y ago
  Yes, I remember NYT also tried something like this with reddit. I think the main reason it didn't take off is that one single media entity just doesn't have that much interesting content to keep it vibrant enough.
  - joubert 16y ago
    Agreed. In the mornings I would read NYT, Reuters, Bloomberg, NPR, Google Alerts, and HN. One source isn't good enough.
  - hcho 16y ago
    That, plus their readers do not seem to be interested in karma and point games.
mseebach 16y ago
The platform, from a technological POV, is utterly uninteresting. It's quickly replacing the blog for the X in "Build an X in [webplatform of the week] in 15 minutes".

estacado 16y ago

Digg users are either power users who control what gets on there; or geeks who think they are the "cool" geeks, the ones that gets laid.

petercooper 16y ago

Proving, yet again, that Arrington is the best writer on TC. He nailed it, right down to the Digg culture issues. The Eddie Murphy defence is well worth picking up too - we've seen Steve Jobs engaging in some of this in his recent spate of e-mails.

greyman 16y ago
I tend to like MG Siegler and Erick Schonfeld more, but admittedly overall TC editorial strength improved a lot during the last years. Oh...and Paul Carr, he's sometimes funny as well.
- petercooper 16y ago
  I think it depends on what you're going to TC for. Excusing the eccentric Paul Carr, most of the newer writers seem to be (or are trying to be) typical journalist types. Just writing solid news. But if I wanted that, I think RWW and Mashable are better. Arrington, though, shoots from the hip, and has a "here's my opinion and that's that" approach. He's sometimes wrong, but there's usually a good mix of wisdom and irreverence in how he sees things. But, as I said, it depends what you read TC for. Pieces driven heavily by gut feelings rather than actual news are, of course, not for everyone :-) If Mike sold/left TC though, I'd just go read wherever he blogged next because I care more for his writing than "TechCrunch's."

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

There is a bit of truth in here, and a bit of bullshit. I think, long run, that you only ever have those 250K users permanently. The rest are just passing through. It'd be great to think that rock-solid vision and saying no to users is great, just like it'd be great to think that listening carefully and delivering what an audience wants is great. Fact is, both are necessary and both have limitations. Nothing stays the same. Audience participation is always changing. If applications were movies, some might be James Bond movies -- multiple creative attempts along the same pattern as visioned by founders continue to churn out winners. But most are Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure -- wonderful little passtimes that lots of people enjoy for a bit and move on. Everybody wants to think that their Bill and Ted is actually a James Bond. But very, very, very few apps are. And then when their app isn't, people either crowd around and say there's not enough vision or not enough listening to the crowd. This is the difference between making something and bullshitting about making something.

ojbyrne 16y ago
I agree with you, except I'd say "a lot of bullshit." I also find it kind of ironic that the theme of the article is basically "Kevin, stop listening to your users and listen to ME." Personally I think that's actually a bigger problem - there's so many pundits (and Kevin knows them all) who pontificate endlessly about what he should do. The best thing he could probably do is get out of Norcal.
- dmlorenzetti 16y ago
  It's also ironic that he builds his case (that Digg should follow its own path, ignoring the wisdom of the crowd) around a couple of folk sayings, and an internet meme about the iPhone.

Bjoern 16y ago

> "..by Michael Arrington on May 12, 2010." Don't misunderstand me, but that was the point where I stopped reading.

omaranto 16y ago
Wait: you read past "Arrington" and then stopped after reading the date?

kixxauth 16y ago

Arrington is absolutely right about Digg. They are pandering to users too much. Assuming they want mainstream traffic they should only listen to the users who represent the vision of a mainstream product. However, Arrington is wrong about Apple and Facebook. They have stepped over a line somewhere and alienated themselves. Both of these companies have gotten mainstream media attention for their recent dictatorship activities. They are going to be paying the price for it. Don't forget how Microsoft got dragged into court in 1997. Arrogance.

batiudrami 16y ago
I think you're wrong about Apple and Facebook. I'd like you to be right, but the fact is, you care about what they do and you feel alienated. You are not the audience they target; you read news.yc. The market this article is talking about will continue to use Facebook and buy new iPhones.
- kixxauth 16y ago
  Hmmm, yeah. I guess I agree that the dictator approach does in fact land more successful products. But, like Calcanus has recently spouted off "Facebook has overplayed their hand", and I think the same goes for Apple. It is true that I do not represent the mainstream, but Facebook's recent privacy actions has caught the attention of the US Congress. Congress people make a living by throwing grass in the air to see which way the political wind is blowing. When Facebook draws the attention of Charles Schumer we're no longer talking about just the news.yc crowd. When Microsoft found themselves in the same situation in 1997 they went to Washington DC, told congress that consumers didn't really know what was good for them. When summoned by the US DOJ Bill Gates went back to Washington personally to tell the DOJ that they didn't know anything about computer software and were in no position to prosecute them. This level of arrogance takes a company out of the tech industry echo chamber and right into the nightly news.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  And even within a group like news.yc, you don't always get a true representative sample of opinion. Yes, there've been many posts and comments about how Facebook sucks, but there are also lots that don't care. And those minority are also less likely to post about it, too. I was pretty active on these discussions at first, but by now, I don't even read the comments section of a post with "Facebook" in the title. It's just turned into one big giant circlejerk, and it's boring. It's easy to think that a site has a 'hivemind,' but there isn't really a consensus of opinion.

philk 16y ago

"If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said 'A faster horse'" --Henry Ford

joubert 16y ago
Bio-engineering might have been more advanced by now.

commandar 16y ago

"In 2007, for example, Kevin Rose surrendered to a mob of Digg users who were upset that Digg was blocking stories publishing the decryption key for HD DVDs." Interesting for me, as that was the point where I left digg for greener pastures. My account on reddit iterated up to being 3 years old a couple of weeks ago -- wiki says the HD DVD thing happened May 1, 2007. Makes sense.

jgrahamc 16y ago

Surely, Digg's biggest problem is Kevin Rose. Everything else seems to flow from Rose's 'persona'.

ojbyrne 16y ago
Finally someone who agrees with me. I used to have a little mantra when I was there - "For digg to grow, Kevin's got to go."
- 3dFlatLander 16y ago
  I'll agree with that. But, why does (did?) digg have to grow? I was a dedicated user for the two first years and loved it. There was no better place to get general sci/tech/computer news. I kinda feel like no aggregator stepped in and gave those initials digg users a substitute once the site moved away from news in those areas.
  - ojbyrne 16y ago
    $40 million in VC money.
- gsmaverick 16y ago
  And Kevin left and had not been at Digg for more than a year and yet nothing spectacular happened.

nazgulnarsil 16y ago

the big hurdle of our age will be getting over this whole democracy idea for the nth time.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

eavc 16y ago

Digg's biggest problem is the cartel that determines what stories will get to the front page. There's an illusion of democracy, but behind the scenes, there are people pumping and pumping to get their content to the front page for SEO purposes.

GFischer 16y ago

A bit offtopic, but... using a Magic: The Gathering game card image for the article? (Kithkin Rabble) (see http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=158695 http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiver... ) (and yes, I do play too much M:TG). I hope it's OK by the image owners (Wizards of the Coast). Some of the guys here sell stock images for a living, and they wouldn't like people using images without permission.

terra_t 16y ago

Digg is the case study I always bring out as to why "web 2.0 doesn't work" and "we need web 3.0." Web 2.0 sites are held hostage by their user communities at two points in their growth: (i) when the site is just starting and (ii) when the site has grown to its "maximal" size. The vast majority of Web 2.0 sites fail at the starting gate. The "lucky" ones then face a phase of explosive growth, in which a huge amount of capital is needed just to keep the lights running. Around the time that they're looking for an exit, growth has leveled off, and there's neither any need for big investors nor any reason for them to get in... No exit.

petercooper 16y ago

I'd love to dig up a citation, but I heard a quote when I was young that resonated with me. It goes something like "a seemingly erroneous dictator has more scope to impress than a committee of experts." More scope to mess up too, I guess, but brilliance rarely comes from a large group (e.g. the public) taking all the decisions together.

phatbyte 16y ago

I sometimes feel that TC is becoming the Fox news of the web. Honestly... I don't understand why the need for Digg to grow. I mean, what's the point ? They obviously have a already on-going user base, and don't tell me that 250k are all bitching users, I enjoy Digg a lot, it's a awesome site to start the day while drinking coffee in the morning. Also, why are people talking about kicking Kevin Rose ? It's his project !! He invested money on it, he should be the last one to leave it if you ask me. I think the biggest mistake Digg made was bringing VC, I bet that deep inside KR feels the same. VC are poison to a company.