Digg’s Biggest Problem Is Its Users And Their Constant Opinions On Things

Arrington is absolutely right about Digg. They are pandering to users too much. Assuming they want mainstream traffic they should only listen to the users who represent the vision of a mainstream product.<p>However, Arrington is wrong about Apple and Facebook. They have stepped over a line somewhere and alienated themselves. Both of these companies have gotten mainstream media attention for their recent dictatorship activities. They are going to be paying the price for it. Don't forget how Microsoft got dragged into court in 1997. Arrogance.

Digg's biggest problem is the cartel that determines what stories will get to the front page. There's an illusion of democracy, but behind the scenes, there are people pumping and pumping to get their content to the front page for SEO purposes.

"If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said 'A faster horse'" --Henry Ford

Why doesn't Digg sell its platform? If not, licence news networks like CNN and FOX to use the platform, hosted or otherwise. Most news sites now have a "user generated" section that could take advantage of "digging" natively.<p>Do what wufoo did for forms.<p><i>Should have sold when you had the chance :P</i>

Proving, yet again, that Arrington is the best writer on TC. He nailed it, right down to the Digg culture issues. The Eddie Murphy defence is well worth picking up too - we've seen Steve Jobs engaging in some of this in his recent spate of e-mails.

A bit offtopic, but... using a Magic: The Gathering game card image for the article? (Kithkin Rabble) (see <a href="http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=158695" rel="nofollow">http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiver...</a> ) (and yes, I do play too much M:TG). I hope it's OK by the image owners (Wizards of the Coast). Some of the guys here sell stock images for a living, and they wouldn't like people using images without permission.

"In 2007, for example, Kevin Rose surrendered to a mob of Digg users who were upset that Digg was blocking stories publishing the decryption key for HD DVDs."<p>Interesting for me, as that was the point where I left digg for greener pastures. My account on reddit iterated up to being 3 years old a couple of weeks ago -- wiki says the HD DVD thing happened May 1, 2007. Makes sense.

Surely, Digg's biggest problem is Kevin Rose. Everything else seems to flow from Rose's 'persona'.

Digg is the case study I always bring out as to why "web 2.0 doesn't work" and "we need web 3.0."<p>Web 2.0 sites are held hostage by their user communities at two points in their growth: (i) when the site is just starting and (ii) when the site has grown to its "maximal" size.<p>The vast majority of Web 2.0 sites fail at the starting gate. The "lucky" ones then face a phase of explosive growth, in which a huge amount of capital is needed just to keep the lights running. Around the time that they're looking for an exit, growth has leveled off, and there's neither any need for big investors nor any reason for them to get in... No exit.

I sometimes feel that TC is becoming the Fox news of the web. Honestly...<p>I don't understand why the need for Digg to grow. I mean, what's the point ? They obviously have a already on-going user base, and don't tell me that 250k are all bitching users, I enjoy Digg a lot, it's a awesome site to start the day while drinking coffee in the morning.<p>Also, why are people talking about kicking Kevin Rose ? It's his project !! He invested money on it, he should be the last one to leave it if you ask me. I think the biggest mistake Digg made was bringing VC, I bet that deep inside KR feels the same. VC are poison to a company.

I'd love to dig up a citation, but I heard a quote when I was young that resonated with me. It goes something like "a seemingly erroneous dictator has more scope to impress than a committee of experts." More scope to mess up too, I guess, but brilliance rarely comes from a large group (e.g. the public) taking all the decisions together.

There is a bit of truth in here, and a bit of bullshit.<p>I think, long run, that you only ever have those 250K users permanently. The rest are just passing through.<p>It'd be great to think that rock-solid vision and saying no to users is great, just like it'd be great to think that listening carefully and delivering what an audience wants is great. Fact is, both are necessary and both have limitations.<p>Nothing stays the same. Audience participation is always changing. If applications were movies, some might be James Bond movies -- multiple creative attempts along the same pattern as visioned by founders continue to churn out winners. But most are Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure -- wonderful little passtimes that lots of people enjoy for a bit and move on.<p>Everybody wants to think that their Bill and Ted is actually a James Bond. But very, very, very few apps are. And then when their app isn't, people either crowd around and say there's not enough vision or not enough listening to the crowd. This is the difference between making something and bullshitting about making something.

Digg users are either power users who control what gets on there; or geeks who think they are the "cool" geeks, the ones that gets laid.

the big hurdle of our age will be getting over this whole democracy idea for the nth time.

&#62; "..by Michael Arrington on May 12, 2010."<p>Don't misunderstand me, but that was the point where I stopped reading.