Digg in its overarching-drawn-out hype about the site re-inventing itself seems to be ready for the big reveal according to a sneak-peak video release secured this week by TechCrunch. Long considered the preeminent social bookmarking service, Digg lost favor this last year based on its control by a handful of top users called "power diggers" and an unwritten golden rule that "you don’t digg your own posts."
Known by many that Digg would penalize users who submitted their own content too frequently – early on, diggers resorted to "shouts" to get others to submit for them. When "shouts" were eliminated from the system, diggers resorted to Twitter to get others to submit for them. This game allowed many to circumvent the golden rule and have a slightly better opportunity of "popping" one’s submission to the top of Digg’s home page and guaranteeing copious amounts of traffic to their blog or article sites. The fly in the ointment however was that "power diggers’ (so often) controlled the front page’s 100 stories per day – it basically reduced the "less powerful" digger’s chances.
Now, fast forward to May 26, 2010 and you have Kevin Rose announcing to the world that not only is he reinventing his service to look more like Twitter than Twitter, he has also woken up to the idea that posting ones "own" material is not such a bad an idea, after all???
Writers and publishers "will now be able to auto-publish their content via RSS feeds to Digg, eliminating the need for someone (else) to add a story for the first time." And to boot – each new feed of your content will start off with an automated "one" Digg.
Now if that ain’t a complete 180-degree-reversal of the old Golden Rule, I don’t know what is. Perhaps in Rose’s "come to Jesus" epiphany, he realized the error of his ways, or more importantly, that his Digg user-base was dwindling significantly. In either case, IMHO, he has ticked off so many ex-Diggers along the way, this may be a case of "too little too late." Your thoughts?
In a related post, see "Has Digg Finally Dugg Its Own Grave?"
Digg digging its own grave!
