Digg did not listen to warnings of a popular resource user

A popular user of the Digg project, who was distinguished by calm behavior, said that he had warned the leadership of the popular resource many months ago about the negative reaction that the resource was facing now.
“Keep in mind, I was the first to express my concern about this situation to the Digg team in March, when I was invited to watch Digg Alpha (the new version of the portal), so that they were aware of what was going on,” said Andy Sorchini, also known as MrBabyMan (in the photo above, he, together with co-founder and CEO of Digg project Kevin Rose).

There has been a lot of criticism, constructive and not so much, that the site received from its users recently, since Kevin Rose launched the new, fourth version of the site. Users accused Rose and his team of emulating the yellow press on the Top News page.

The fact is that after the launch of the new Digg, many popular functions that the users of the resource liked, disappeared from the site, the mechanism for displaying articles in the top has changed, and frank advertisements and “yellow” headlines began to appear among the popular news, which ordinary news media sin for the sake of increasing traffic. Rose said his team is actively working to correct the "source of contention."

“I think the Digg team certainly expected a reaction, but hardly so strong,” said Sorchini. “I think that they sincerely want the site to be equally suited to the needs of both companies and individual users, but when it comes to the preferred direction of development for the site, they take the word money, enabling the site to continue to exist.”

Sorchini lives in Los Angeles and works as an editor on TV. Digg has always been a site on which he could spend some of his free time. For all the time he brought almost 4,500 articles to the top, and they were published on the main page. There are only a few people who knew the third version of the site better. Given the large number of errors in the next version, the conclusion suggests itself that the reorganization was done in a hurry.

“I honestly don’t know what could motivate developers to launch a site of this magnitude with so many errors,” complained Sorchini.

Many visitors believe that due to the increased negative reaction of users, the popularity of the portal will decrease and sooner or later it will lead to the closure of the project if no changes are made. But MrBabyMan does not think so. “Due to the participation of large companies in the project, Digg is now too“ big ”to just die. But, unfortunately, they do not listen to the words of their key users, who ensured the popularity of the site. Digg seems ready to lose them, in order to ensure the operation of its new business model. Has the number of visitors dropped? Perhaps this is due to the instability of the site at the moment. But I believe that at least a month should pass before discussing the fate of Digg, ”said Sorchini.


Andy believes that the changes to Digg are similar to what happened to Napster many years ago, and should serve as an example for its owners. “This is equivalent to what happened after Napster became legal,” he said. “The name has remained the same, but the service has become completely different. Napster version 1.0 was a place where users could integrate and share content. Unfortunately for Napster, the immense popularity and one-sided coverage with emphasis on the illegality of media content led him to the finale. What related the newly discovered Napster to its ancestor is just the same name. It has become a legal resource with paid content. But now we can say that the new Napster turned out to be profitable in the end, and sites that want to go the same way will lose their soul. (which happened to Napster) "

Last week, he wrote to Rose, and asked not to forget about the ordinary users with whom the site is developing. And he drew attention to competitors who are gaining popularity, while earning and maintaining a balance between ordinary users and the desire to please companies that pay money for publications.

So far, Digg’s response to the complaint has been to return some of the most popular features of the old version, such as RSS feeds and the section where articles fall before appearing in the top. Sorchini believes that this is good news, but advises Digg to return all the best that was in the third version of the site, while maintaining the general concept of the fourth version.

It's hard to say exactly what will happen to Digg and its users next. Discontent has grown into something more and looks serious enough. Rose spent a lot of time assuring users that changes would be made. Perhaps they will soon reassure angry users. Time will tell.

by materials venturebeat