Digg is for Putz’s. They need a web playground and they have theirs. Great.
I want editor’s, not The National Enquirer. But, just like the National Enquirer is the biggest selling weekly, so too is Digg and copycat Netscape for bloggers chasing the supermarket dream with top ten lists.
So Read Write Web is reporting on the gaming here . Of course Digg is reporting it and every underwear clad editor in the country that uses Digg will flame that story to the top. Lot’s of great time wasted – even by me now :) I guess.
My friend Chartreuse made it to the front page of Digg with a controversial post on Paris Hilton . It was a good one.
It got him traffic, lot’s of retarded comments (137) and likely no stickiness. It’s like the running of the bulls. All that’s left to be picked up is a pile of steaming crap. Chartreuse was already influential. Now a bunch of Yutz’s are exposed to his site that don’t deserve to be their in the first place.
Great entrepreneurial idea and execution seems great but it is riddled with human social flaws.
I guess the point is that Gaming Digg is IN. It will stay IN and they will be pounded with this which further flaws an already flawed rating system. Not that editor’s are perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
I like my blogroll. Sticking with it for my news and info. Do the same. Everything worthwhile takes time.
UPDATE – The uber wise Brian Clarke recently posted on delicious being “The Goods” over Digg .
I noticed you have a Digg This link below every post …
Seriously, which are the current most popular and legit social bookmarking sites? I have a plugin with 9, and saw a plugin available with 13 (but didn’t have all the 9 from the other). I’ve thought about hacking the PHP to get a select list of the “best” but I have no idea which ones ARE the “best.”
Human filters are the best kind.
Back in the dark ages, there was this mailing list called bugtraq (still existent, now irrelevant) that you HAD TO subscribe to to be up on security. I had so many friends who were on it, I unsubscribed, because they would forward around anything important.
There’s danger in the blogroll-only thing, though, that you end up in an echoing circle with no new information.
(Still no blogroll.)
What cracks me up is that some people seem to think Digg will be around forever and fulfil its current role forever. Digg as it exists is absolutely transient. All the long lived “referral” sites (Slashdot, BoingBoing, Fark, Obscurestore) are run by editors.
Free reign of crowds sounds good but it ALWAYS collapses under its own weight. Eventually people want to trust a site and they realise they can only trust it if they know there are specific people making editorial decisions. Knowledge of bias is easier to deal with than having the illusion of objectivity shattered when you realise that the site you trusted is being gamed all the time.
Bill: for quick hits, it’s Digg and Reddit – the rest are jokes. But Howard is absolutely right about almost zero stickiness. That’s a much slower path. Maybe a bookmarking site like delicious or stumbleupon is better long term. I’ve written about this at some length in my blog if you want to see someone drone on about the topic.
ill – If I wasnt so lazy – i would remove this and should based on this post. You are right.
AAngry is correct on all counts as well.
Good comments
I have found some mart posts that say Delicious is the best. i agree and will update.
My take:
digg – full of morons, unfortunately that’s the social site to use for tech related posts
reddit – better group of tech people, a highly ranked post will stay on the front page longer
netscape – seems to be normal adult people
delicious – great for howtos, software, etc. not so good for news.
stumbleupon – bored cubicle dwellars looking for a 20 second flick
Getting popular on any of those sites will generate a one time spike that might last around a week, week and a half. Stumbleupon could last longer, but again is focused more on instant gratification.
I think what trumps all is getting mentioned on a top web site with the same audience. If you get that then the other sites will follow.