Recently it has been getting harder and harder for sites to hit the Digg homepage and a lot of people are getting frustrated.
The Digg moderators (the ones that everybody knows exist but Digg has always denied, kind of like MI6) make sure that only the sites & stories they like reach the homepage.
When Digg first started the algorithm was simple – the stories with most Diggs reached the homepage. Now the algorithm makes it so hard for stuff to hit the homepage it is just full of old news and content from a select band of trusted sites that are approved by the editors.
By next year this is what the homepage will look like:
The site is being killed, one step at a time.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
LoL, i was expecting some wacky story titles about the future and Google or something similar.
This is even better
No, it’s just going to be an RSS feed from XKCD.
lol, well I wouldn’t take it as far as that picture (obviously you were exaggerating a bit) but I do see it looking like you described. A front page full of articles from those trusted sites and very rarely something new from a newcomer site we hadn’t heard of. I can get my news anywhere… I go on digg to discover new sources and new things. Digg has almost completely transformed away from that.
No one goes on digg for the news anymore. They go on there for the social environment. So they might as well just add profiles and forums and make it one big social and get it over with. And stop masquerading as a news source.
I’ll end by admitting that even though I criticize the childish 12 year old environment that digg has become. I also go on digg to read the hilarious one liners in the comments. I often skip right past the news and start reading the comments because I swear sme of those guys need to be professional comedians. They’re that good.
Exactly. Digg needs to restrain the police or better yet re-train them, and get the real user-generated content to the front page like the good old days.
Theoretically digg does need moderators, to keep the spam and trash like that out, but they need to readjust how they evaluate what is making it the front page.
It should be damn simple: X number of people dugg the story. Hey, it’s popular. Now it goes to the front page. Not so hard…
I have more than 400 friends in Digg, and never hit the homepage, still thinking whether should I hit or not. Why? Because traffic coming into my blog from sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are mostly bouncing, or silly traffic. Why should I spend my valuable time trying to hit the homepage while there are many other things to do?
Digg is getting full of spammers and breaks the algorithm while trying to stop them. RIP
haha, that was awesome, Patrick
Tamar’s article was good, and you made the topic more interesting Patrick
Great one!
They better just switch back to the old algo as fast as possible. Some people obviously didn’t like it, but it’s better than the new one. Digg does seem to be losing market share as well. Twitter recently surpassed it in Google trends:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=digg%2C+twitter
When rumors began to swirl that Microsoft was going to buy it, people thought that might kill it. But it seems to be on its way to killing itself.
I used to be a huge fan of digg and went there daily for the latest tech news and quirky stories.
Lately, I don’t bother as much as it’s become a political haven – I care about the US elections, but I don’t need to see stories on the front page every single day about Hilary lying etc…
What happened to the good stuff – Once upon a time you could go there and read ALL of the front page stories, now I’m lucky if 2 or 3 stories from the first 5 pages are worth reading…
Good post PArtick – and I completly agree – Digg is finished unless they turn it around.
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I turned off politics and all the other stuff I hate the day it was added so that doesn’t bother me too much.
More comments from Patrick AltoftPatrick, that is a beautiful thing. If only it really did look like that…
Can’t believe I have not been using this feature…
I thought about it when it first appeared on Digg, but was worried I might miss something.
Think I’m going to go and update my preferences…
Thanks Patrick
I’ve noticed Digg is getting more and more saturated with main stream media and its harder to hit the front page.
LOL! although it my be sprinkled with Google colors… hehehe
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