May 16, 2008
marco: I saw this widget on a blog tonight. Nine of the ten stories are list posts — useless “10 best”, “10 worst”, “10 scariest”, “10 biggest” posts made for Digg-bait and quick skimming. List posts are the McDonald’s of online writing: they require no thought, provide no intellectual value, and guarantee lots of cheap traffic and comments. I can hardly even listen to Diggnation anymore, previously one of my favorite podcasts, because the “stories” are so inane and useless. This is every Diggnation episode now: (long intro, description of this episode’s alcohol) “Hey, here’s a funny video about cats!” “Guy gets hit in the crotch with lightsaber by 5-year-old” (commercials) (stupid emails) Digg’s current state of affairs is just sad. They’ve hit a wall of mediocrity and community isolation. I can’t imagine that their traffic is growing significantly. All attempts to broaden Digg’s appeal have failed — the fundamental idea simply doesn’t scale beyond a single narrow userbase. They can’t go anywhere else with this. No wonder they’re trying to sell it. They know it’s time to move on. I typically don’t reblog other people’s text-based Tumblr posts (especially those that don’t follow me, nothing personal, but it feels like doing that is this odd online version of sucking up), but this hit on several problems I’ve had with Digg and why I’ve never really gotten into it. Digg’s theory centers around “the crowd knows best what the crowd likes.” That philosophy doesn’t work for me. I prefer to find my own list of people/sites online that I know consistently produce or link to quality content. Some of these are professional news organizations, some are the more well-known bloggers and others are personal friends. Those closest to me typically find me the most interesting, because we share a base of similar cultural taste, however, we seek our news and content from vastly different places. Larger bloggers aggregate the best stuff and what’s new. And news orgs give me the depth I’m looking for. Digg ignores that preference almost entirely. Just because you have friends on Digg, that doesn’t mean they’re digging and actively sharing with you things you might like. If someone IMs me a link, it’s targeted to me and my interests much better than someone’s “recently dugg links” ever will be. That’s just what THEY think is cool, not what they think I think is cool. Plus, who wants to visit a site that’s constantly digging up Ron Paul stories?

marco:

I saw this widget on a blog tonight.

Nine of the ten stories are list posts — useless “10 best”, “10 worst”, “10 scariest”, “10 biggest” posts made for Digg-bait and quick skimming. List posts are the McDonald’s of online writing: they require no thought, provide no intellectual value, and guarantee lots of cheap traffic and comments.

I can hardly even listen to Diggnation anymore, previously one of my favorite podcasts, because the “stories” are so inane and useless. This is every Diggnation episode now:

  • (long intro, description of this episode’s alcohol)
  • “Hey, here’s a funny video about cats!”
  • “Guy gets hit in the crotch with lightsaber by 5-year-old”
  • (commercials)
  • (stupid emails)

Digg’s current state of affairs is just sad. They’ve hit a wall of mediocrity and community isolation. I can’t imagine that their traffic is growing significantly. All attempts to broaden Digg’s appeal have failed — the fundamental idea simply doesn’t scale beyond a single narrow userbase. They can’t go anywhere else with this.

No wonder they’re trying to sell it. They know it’s time to move on.

I typically don’t reblog other people’s text-based Tumblr posts (especially those that don’t follow me, nothing personal, but it feels like doing that is this odd online version of sucking up), but this hit on several problems I’ve had with Digg and why I’ve never really gotten into it.

Digg’s theory centers around “the crowd knows best what the crowd likes.” That philosophy doesn’t work for me.

I prefer to find my own list of people/sites online that I know consistently produce or link to quality content. Some of these are professional news organizations, some are the more well-known bloggers and others are personal friends. Those closest to me typically find me the most interesting, because we share a base of similar cultural taste, however, we seek our news and content from vastly different places. Larger bloggers aggregate the best stuff and what’s new. And news orgs give me the depth I’m looking for.

Digg ignores that preference almost entirely. Just because you have friends on Digg, that doesn’t mean they’re digging and actively sharing with you things you might like. If someone IMs me a link, it’s targeted to me and my interests much better than someone’s “recently dugg links” ever will be. That’s just what THEY think is cool, not what they think I think is cool.

Plus, who wants to visit a site that’s constantly digging up Ron Paul stories?