Like the vampire at the end of a horror flick, Digg refuses to die quickly. The IT technology forum was founded in 2004 and quickly shot past Slashdot in readership and market valuation, driven by a popular method where users would submit articles and vote on which ones would make the home page. Founder Kevin Rose was featured on the cover of Business Week; Google nearly paid $200 million for Digg in 2008 before walking away. The downturn started in 2010, triggered by a botched site redesign that led to wholesale desertion of the site's regulars.
In 2012, the New York City startup studio Betaworks bought Digg's software, domain name, and records, for $500,000 (Digg's patents were sold separately to LinkedIn for $4 million; the engineering team went to the Washington Post for $12 million).
Betaworks went to work on the site, junking the system of users voting on articles, and replacing it with a combination of AI software (monitoring twitter feeds and other web crawling signals) and human editors. The re-launched site was "data driven", in their words. And the new owners didn't seem to be as full of themselves as the old ones; after Obama stood for an AMA on competitor Reddit, Digg tweeted "We asked Dukakis but he turned us down". Monthly visitors are at 8 million, up from 1.5 million at the site's low point.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by zafiro17 on Monday September 22 2014, @12:15PM
I remember at one point visiting a site called "Digg vs Dot" that monitored whether stories made it to Digg or to Slashdot faster. The point was to show Digg was getting the news faster than Slashdot was, but the reality showed it was actually about 50/50. In the end it didnt' matter - Digg bit the dust when people started gaming the system. I think the idea of users voting articles up has been all but totally put to rest now. It just doesn't work.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Monday September 22 2014, @12:30PM
"I think the idea of users voting articles up has been all but totally put to rest now. It just doesn't work."
Works on pr0n sub reddits, or so I've heard.
Hacker news is hard to say if its good or not. As the propaganda arm of y-combinator, that will always seem to override rational voting in that sub-genre. Outside that sub-genre it doesn't seem to experience much intentional vote gaming. However there is some pretty bad start uppy groupthink moronity.
Everywhere else, you are correct, it gets badly gamed.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Monday September 22 2014, @01:50PM
in a moderated system, if the weight of the user applies unequally? Perhaps this is a missed feature - number of upvotes vs weighted score.
After all we all listen to groups of people around us , according to their backgrounds?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday September 22 2014, @02:03PM
You bring up a good point. One way to interpret that Reddit pr0n subreddits in that unequal weight scheme is the mods aggressively tag or drop the banhammer when something ridiculous is going on (this subreddit is about XYZ and you posted ABC, so tagged as ABC or sometimes even the banhammer drops)
How something like Digg (Or HN) could avoid the mods and the readers converging on the same groupthink is a puzzle. The pr0n subreddit solution is to make so many subreddits that every imaginable categorization exists as a subreddit, in each of them groupthink is fine. A categorization like 4chan has is probably a unique optimum to maximize chaos, diverse enough to attract diversity and small enough to make them fight. "all one big page" like HN or SN might not attract the diversity of opinion of a 4chan /pol plus or minus some EtOH implemented as a fuel source, for example, perhaps thats the only hope for that strategy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pnkwarhall on Monday September 22 2014, @04:35PM
It's not a puzzle -- there is no solution to avoiding groupthink, because groupthink (or 'self-selection bias') is part of the nature of any socially-curated website. Each of the sites you mentioned has a different way to influence the outcome of this process, but the process is still very active, and I argue that it's an unavoidable trend.
As a natural outcome, groupthink isn't a "feature" to avoid. It's a feature to manage.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 4, Funny) by Tork on Monday September 22 2014, @04:07PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2, Insightful) by zafiro17 on Monday September 22 2014, @12:26PM
Just visited Digg.com for the first time since like what, 2005? 2006? I can't even remember the last time I went to that page. And it looks pretty nice. I see they're going for the big picture, small text look of so many other sites, but it's hard curating content these days - you need good editors, you really do, or you get all sorts of crap on the front page.
I still think there's a place for this sort of website. Although my own preference remains a decent RSS reader and a great list of feeds.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 3, Informative) by CoolHand on Monday September 22 2014, @02:34PM
I agree.. While it's certainly no SoylentNews, some of the articles there are a fun read, and the site is easy on the eye to boot..
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 3, Funny) by kaszz on Monday September 22 2014, @12:45PM
It seems so familiar somehow.. "The downturn started in 2010, triggered by a botched site redesign that led to wholesale desertion of the site's regulars." :P
(Score: 2, Informative) by BananaPhone on Monday September 22 2014, @01:31PM
ahem, It wasn't botched.
It was user driven but the owners wanted to control what went on the home page.
They pulled a Slash-Beta on the users and 90% of them went to Reddit and nearly killed Reddit due to volume.
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Tuesday September 23 2014, @12:41AM
fuckbeta fuckbeta fuckbeta fuckbeta fuckbeta...
Oh, wait...
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Kilo110 on Monday September 22 2014, @01:07PM
The article attributes the decline to the redesign. While I'm sure this was a factor. I know many were sick of the vote gaming and the inside clique. It felt too much like high school.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by zafiro17 on Monday September 22 2014, @01:34PM
I'm not the one who modded you insightful, but I would've. That's exactly it - these sites work best when there's a sense of community participation. I think intrinsically, the casual Digg user - like me - felt like he was on the outside looking in, watching some elite cabal mess with the votes. So yeah, exactly like the miserable high school experience I was so happy to escape.
The trick is getting people to feel like their participation is valued and welcome, and that they too are part of the inside group. Reddit does this magnificently - not because of their algorithm but because of the way people behave there. Moderation has something to do with it, but users matter so much more.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Tork on Monday September 22 2014, @04:09PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @06:56AM
Assuming that "arguement" is just a misspelling of "argument": What do you think a discussion should be based on, if not on arguments?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday September 23 2014, @05:11PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday September 22 2014, @01:54PM
The content is awful, "Willie Nelson Taught Maureen Dowd How To Smoke Marijuana". Unfortunately, I'm not making that up. I guess it depends on your definition of news. Something that could affect you, or something you could somehow affect or participate in, or maybe its one of the very few things that will be taught in history books so you may as well learn it today. The genre they seem to be aiming for is more "clickbait". Why 8 million monthly visitors go there for their clickbait instead of a zillion other clickbait sites is mysterious. It could be shallow as a rain puddle WRT graphics art design or font choice.
"Digg refuses to die quickly" "The downturn started in 2010". Slow is more like IBM since 1980 or the domestic automakers since the 70s or the republican party since the neo's coup. Maybe just an editing error, cross out "quickly" and the article improves. One technique I use in my own bad writing is if the piece improves when you cross something out, then delete it. Maybe someone's paid by the word...
One problem with a long lived anything, is you take enough pivots and merely continually having something respond to a domain name on port 80 doesn't really mean anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22 2014, @01:58PM
The one I cringed at was "IT technology forum" - of course it should be "IT forum". It seems I always make at least one mistake like that.
- AC submitter
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 22 2014, @02:08PM
They probably are clueless, but it could be a subtle jab at IT as it descends into security theater and buzzword bingo and using really old stuff, if you take the tech out of IT you could have a place for IT drones AND real world modern technology.
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Monday September 22 2014, @06:18PM
Just went to Digg for the first time in several years. Clickbait seems to cover most of it.
I'm obviously not the audience, but I can't figure out which group would click on the majority of articles.
It seems to be a lot of random stuff, with the hope that something holds your interest for more than 3 seconds.
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Monday September 22 2014, @02:29PM
As much as I complain about the submissions, I will take our model over an automated script any day.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22 2014, @02:42PM
American Music Award?
??
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Monday September 22 2014, @03:56PM
"Ask me anything." There's also "AMAA" - "Ask me almost anything."
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 2, Funny) by knarf on Monday September 22 2014, @05:44PM
American Medical Association, an evil rock band composed of four of the five Illuminati Primi. Their main mission is to attempt to immanentize the eschaton. Know your classics [wikipedia.org]!
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Monday September 22 2014, @03:32PM
I spent a few minutes unblocking a few things, but article text would still not show up.
therefore, I declare this site (digg) USELESS to me.
hey, I gave it a chance and it was too javascript and ad-laden. fuck it. not worth it.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MrGuy on Monday September 22 2014, @04:08PM
Digg isn't really back. The NAME digg.com is back.
The new digg.com shares very little with the original. The core concept is different. The community is largely different. The stories carried are significantly different. This is de facto a brand new news site.
The only thing it really shares with the original digg is the fact that it's a news site, and a domain name. And the latter only because, rather than start from scratch, the owners of the new news site bought the digg brand at firesale prices to get some name recognition for their new thing.
This is somewhat like someone buying up the pets.com* ** domain name, and turning it into a photo sharing site for people to take pictures with their dogs (instead of being an online pet supplies store), and calling it "the new pets.com." No it isn't - it's a completely different thing that happens to share a domain name.
This isn't as different as my example, but I think there's a question worth asking as to whether this is really "digg is back!" or more a "someone else has digg's brand now."
* Do kids these days even remember pets.com and the dot-com bubble? I feel old.
** Does someone actually have/use the pets.com domain name? I'm betting someone does, but I guess I'm too lazy to check and see. Maybe it IS a photo-sharing site!
(Score: 1) by Kymation on Monday September 22 2014, @04:19PM
I just had to go check. It redirects to Petsmart. So the proper answer was "A competitor bought the name at firesale prices."
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Monday September 22 2014, @07:28PM
Good point - new team, new design, new purpose, new editors, new software, new content, and new target audience. But other than that, it's the same old Digg. Except better! ;)
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 23 2014, @07:00AM
Actually, the brand is the one thing that isn't new. :-)