Following last week’s secret alpha testing at Digg headquarters, today’s front page went crazy.
“The Secret Masters of Digg” to Speak at ROFLCon
February 18, 2010 By 1 Comment
While I don’t necessarily agree with the titling, it will be an honor to be on a panel with MrBabyMan and MSaleem at the 2010 ROFLCon. From April 30 through May 1, we’ll be touring the hallowed halls of MIT and rubbing elbows with some of the brightest content creators, meme creators, and memes themselves in this second annual event.
From the site:
“Another two days and two nights of the most epic internet culture conference ever assembled. Informed commentators suggest that this may be the most important gathering of humanity since the fall of the tower of Babel. And yes, we’re still looking to get Goatse.”
Toyota hits Digg and I must say I like it
February 16, 2010 By 3 Comments
When I first saw the advertisement that Toyota had placed on Digg.com, I was skeptical. After all, Digg and most social news sites in general are not considered a “PR venue” to help in times of crisis.
After reviewing their landing page and seeing exactly how they have integrated, I have to say that I like it.
With the recent Toyota recalls putting a major blemish on the formerly-bulletproof automaker, they have begun an aggressive campaign to regain the trust of their loyal consumers.
The Toyota landing page rests on the Digg.com domain and highlights stories broken down into three categories:
- About the Recall
- Toyota Responds
- Featured Toyota Articles
How Spam Killed Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon
December 25, 2009 By 16 Comments
The statement could be pushed over to just about any true Web 2.0 site where voting and popularity determine the success of a piece of content. Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace – overrun by spam. Mixx, Propeller, Yahoobuzz – spam havens.
For social news powerhouses Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon to be so changed by the presence of gobs and gobs of spam hits a little harder. They are the sites where I started my journey in Web 2.0. They are the shiny beacons of user-controlled, traffic-generating goodness that made mainstream media look to the people for their opinions and discoveries.
They are, for all intents and purposes, shells of what they should be, and spam is to blame. Perhaps more importantly, how they handled spam over the years has caused them to close their networks in one way or another through a series of witchhuntesque spam countermeasures.
Social News is Mainstream News
December 6, 2009 By 3 Comments
Social News sites like Digg and Reddit have built a reputation for being focused on 2 things: the offbeat and the tech-oriented. Mainstream media has shied away from using the social news aggregation sites because they didn’t believe their stories would do well.
Times have changed.
Social news is mainstream news. In a recent study, we discovered that Digg, the most prominent social news site with over 40 million visitors per month, has shifted to embrace mainstream media sites within their community. The top 50 sites once controlled 46% of the Digg front page, but this has dropped to 41% in recent months and is trending to continue to diversify.
Digg removes avatars, raises Digging limits
October 8, 2009 By 4 Comments
No more looking for spades, street signs, or red faces. Digg has gone to text links rather than thumbnails of the avatars on submissions. A few days ago, they raised the limit from 200 to approximately300, then apparently back up to “unlimited” (even though there is one report of a user banned because of Digging too much).
Server performance aside, is this an effort to reduce the rate of “blind digging” while not hurting their page views? Blind digging has always been an issue and will continue to be even if this change sticks, but it does make it less convenient to run through the front page or recommended upcoming pages looking for friends’ icons. [Read more...]
Digg Porn. Apparently, it’s acceptable now.
September 23, 2009 By 5 Comments
Digg is known for definitively dropping the “ban hammer” on those who post content that includes nipples. Apparently, the rules have changed.
This screenshot from a video has been modified to a PG-13 level, but the original video does include visible nipples that are not-so-hidden. While I have nothing against the submitter (nor anything against the video) I feel the double standard here. The content was pretty darn funny, as the nearly-4000 Diggs clearly says, but it just doesn’t belong on Digg.
Did Digg Just “Bait & Switch” Twitter Users?
July 19, 2009 By 69 Comments
UPDATE: This image speaks for itself:
UPDATE: Leo Laporte had Digg co-founder Kevin Rose on his show and asked him about this. You can see it on Twit Live – the Diggbar discussion starts at the 11:26 mark. Here is an excerpt:
- (Laporte gives Rose the background from an article on Techcrunch)
- Laporte: Is that true?
- Rose: That’s a good question.
- Laporte: You don’t know?
- Rose: I’ve been gone for 2 weeks so I don’t know what got pushed, what code got pushed and how it functions but my last understanding is that what we wanted to do is have it so that if you click on a Digg URL it takes you to the Digg stories so you can Digg it. Rather than providing a short URL service that just forwards and does redirection we would just do a URL service just for Digg articles. Just like the same way that Techcrunch does “techcrunch slash 85374″ – if you go to that you’re not going to go to some other site you’re going to go to techcrunch. That’s the story.
- Laporte: So you’re backing off on the original idea which is a general URL shortening service…
- Rose: Correct.
UPDATE: Digg has confirmed via email that this is not a mistake and the shortener is working as intended.
UPDATE: Let Digg know how you feel through Twitter. Send an @digg via @socialnews reply and your tweets will be posted here as well.
Either there’s an error happening with Diggbar or Digg just made a big mistake. Before, those who clicked on the links when not logged into Digg would be taken to the source image, article, or video.
Recently, the links have been switched to point to a Digg landing page if you aren’t logged in – the pages where the story is posted on Digg, not the original source.
No word from Digg regarding this. No blog post. No onsite message. No reply to a recent email. They dropped it in and now it appears that they’re seeing if it sticks.
I’m still holding onto hope that it’s a mistake and not a conscious choice. [Read more...]
Diggbar View Counts Are Back (sort of)
June 30, 2009 By 2 Comments
As Digg works to perfect its service and enhance one of it’s latest features, the Diggbar, they have re-added a nice component that was taken down shortly after launch: view counts.
Well, they’ve sort of brought it back. Looks like it’s still in beta or development or something because as of right now, the counts are way off.
Duped on Digg? Not Anymore (hopefully)
June 30, 2009 By 2 Comments
A few months ago we covered some of the updates that Digg had made to help prevent duplicated submissions. Now, Digg has (hopefully) lived up to its promise of combating the dupe problem once and for all.
In their blog post today, Digg announced that they are going to use some of the technology that they developed in their improved search function to find stories that are either the exact same story fromt he same site with different URLs or similar stories from different sources that are basically saying the same thing.
A minor point in all of this is that they have moved the duplicate detection to the front of the submission process rather than being the last step. This is a nice feature for those who spend a good deal of time crafting the right headline, description, and selecting the right category only to find out later that the story or some form of it had already been submitted.
