Filed under: Internet, Features, Social Software, Analysis, web 2.0
Digg's failing democracy
Digg has a problem. What was once a haven of obscure, insightful, and breaking news has become a cesspool of dated headlines, generic brand commentary, and fan-boy-blog spam. What happened? Why do the vast majority of front page links come from "popular" websites who feature a prominent "digg it" button on every article? Is there some conspiracy afloat? Is digg rewarding websites that send them a lot of traffic?Can we demand a recount?
Sadly no. Digg's problem isn't one of cronyism or corruption, it is far worse. Digg has always been a poorly planned community. There, we said it.
To make matters worse, digg's phenomenal growth illustrates its own failure. If it were a nation, we would call it a failing state with a bumming population. A population easily and unwittingly manipulated by the craftiness of other large and powerful websites.
Need proof?
Of the 15 front page articles this morning:
- 7 were from popular blogs that featured the familiar "digg it" badge
- 5 were from popular sites that featured a prominent submit to digg button
- 2 were from popular mainstream news sites
- 1 was from a small town newspaper.
How could this happen? Have diggers simply stopped caring about their own community?
Aside from mindlessly digging everything that hits the front page, diggers no longer have any noticeable impact on their own website. They are a shadow of their former fired-up-federalist selves. Like all good "voters" they simply vote for the so-called top tier candidates, unaware of/uninterested in the process by which those candidates were placed before them. These days the reality is that most successful digg stories need exposure on a high traffic website to push the link over the hump and onto the front page.In short, like most real world Democracies, digg is becoming nothing more than a rubber stamp for the powerful, the prominent, and the well funded.
So are there any places for disillusioned diggers to flee to? This wouldn't be Download Squad if we didn't have a few suggestions up our sleeve. Here are a couple of our favorite social news sites that kept and improved their communities during the era of the big digg.
- Techmeme - The actual links are often indistinguishable from digg itself as it suffers from the same "big site" vulnerability. That said, the links are typically fresher and the commentary (provided by hand selected blogs) is much more useful and interesting than digg's comment system. Of course, that isn't saying much when you consider that diggers are just a hair-breadth more intelligent than those of Youtubers.
- Reddit - Reddit appears to function a lot like digg on the surface, but it actually has a very different algorithm to rank stories. Reddit combines age of link, user karma, and number of up-votes to place a story. Breaking news can climb to the top quickly while interesting news can stick around until everyone has had a chance to read it. Numerous subreddit communities also exist and each is distinctive in content, focus, and identity.
- del.icio.us - The classic web 2.0 bookmarking site probably has the most unbiased link voting system: how many people wanted to add this link to their personal bookmarks? There is no link commentary and breaking news is nowhere to be found, but the popular bookmarks rarely disappoint in terms of their usefulness.
- SlashDot - An oldie but still a goodie. For the best commentary, humor, and insight on any tech topic it is hard to top SlashDot. This is not a democracy as such, but it still covers many of the same topics as digg and is simply a vastly more enjoyable experience.