Digg freezes manual story submissions as user anger mounts

http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/30/digg-freezes-manual-story-submissions-as-user-anger-mounts/

by ssclafani • 16 years ago

89 60 16 years ago

flipp2• 16 years ago

I think its getting pretty close to time for a revert back to Digg v3. Look at google trends for Reddit vs. Digg. When something's a failure, its a failure.

mcgraw3• 16 years ago

Release. Iterate. Repeat.

But at a pretty hefty cost. Definitely wasn't ready for prime-time, but it's here and they're going to be pretty busy over the next month or so re-integrating v3 philosophy and stabilizing the new back end.

_cbsz• 16 years ago

"Iterate" means "repeat".

flipp2• 16 years ago

This wasn't an iteration. This was changing pretty much the foundation of the site in a massive redesign they've been working on for months.

ojbyrne5• 16 years ago

I very much doubt they can do that. What they seem to be doing is adding the features of v3 back into the new architecture of v4. Not fun.

drivebyacct22• 16 years ago

I continue to find this funny as digg users file into other sites, reddit included, and talk about how great it is compared to digg, how happy they are that they "switched".

Number one, digg's story quality tanked during version 2 and the comments went along with it. Version 3 brought an even more broken commenting system, and more of the same run of the mill storieds. Version 3 also brought in some ridiculous lag, that for whatever reason, managed to post articles from Engadget, reddit, etc days later. Digg was the place to get tech news. With version 3, it was the place to get reddit's news from 3 days ago.

Now with Version 4 there are auto submitted "publisher" stories. This is what's causing people to jump ship? Frankly, if that's the reason they're leaving digg, I hope they stay away from the social news sites I'm on.

jcromartie• 16 years ago

I don't understand why users of services like Digg get so indignant about downtime. It's a free diversion.

ojbyrne5• 16 years ago

I understand your point, but people have itchy back buttons. They'll bitch for a bit, and then they'll leave. The people who should be getting indignant are the people running the company - it is an advertisement-supported website after all. Downtime = lost revenue.

sdh• 16 years ago

Broken axle? The whole cart has caught fire, the horses have fallen over dead, and the settlers have gone elsewhere. Digg v4 is a ghost town.

ronnoch2• 16 years ago

Reddit's logo today has the alien carrying a shovel... almost as if they're going to "bury" Digg.

zacharypinter• 16 years ago

The tooltip for the logo (I think it's one of the gold addons) says "pardon our construction: we're digging around for new logos this week"

seanalltogether2• 16 years ago

It's descended into mob mentality. Everyone just wants to watch it burn. I'm sure they'll have a sizeable chunk of readers left by the end of the week, but as for contributors and discussions, it might as well be a ghost town.

chopsueyar• 16 years ago

"You have died of dysentery".

trustfundbaby• 16 years ago

I think its a bit early to be writing obituaries.

This is a problem, but Kevin is attentive to his users and I'm sure they'll get through it ...

PS: Left digg a 2 years ago now, but I like their new design better than the last.

pavs2• 16 years ago

Wow. Just checked out the new site. (I actually like the new design) ~80 of the links right now are link back to reddit.com.

Crazy. No wonder reddit was slow as hell the whole day today.

skeletonjelly• 16 years ago

I hear there's holidays or returning from holidays in the US for schools/colleges as well? My information may be wrong

pavs2• 16 years ago

http://twitter.com/kn0thing/status/22560188509

vinhboy• 16 years ago

I asked this in the other thread already, but let me ask again.

So as startup founders, what do you guys think is the right move here? Do you do what your users want, or stand your ground and do what you think is best for the company??

timwiseman• 16 years ago

What your users want is almost always what is best for the company.

(Note that what your users want is not always the same as what they say they want.)

bruceboughton• 16 years ago

What your users want or what your customers want?

ojbyrne5• 16 years ago

If it was me, I'd be doing what they're doing - putting back the lost features, and trying to assuage disgruntled users.

I think the people in charge stopped thinking about what's best for the company long ago in favor of what's best for themselves. That also needs to be reversed.

rwmj• 16 years ago

If you've only got 30 users and you're aiming to get millions, then you might consider "standing your ground" (although even this situation is dubious -- it seems almost always better to build).

But as Digg has millions of users already, what your users want is the same thing as what is best for the company. You say sorry and revert back to the old site, then have a long hard think about what you did wrong and how to avoid making that mistake ever again.

quinndupont2• 16 years ago

I don't think there is any coherent point that the users want. Some want V3 because they don't like change, others want unicorns, others want to have fun burning Digg to the ground. I'd love to see it succeed, but I seriously doubt it will.

webwright• 16 years ago

I disagree. They have millions of users and their growth is flat-- but they've raised enough money that they really can't afford to be flat.

They need to see if they're being attacked my a vocal minority or a true majority. If it's the latter, a revert should happen. If the former, they should consider standing their ground.

See every major change Facebook has ever done. When people exploded about the privacy implications of having a news feed (Oh no!), should Facebook have punted?

nandemo• 16 years ago

I'm not a startup founder (yet). If I start a company it will have paying customers, not "users", so I wouldn't have that dilemma.

frognibble• 16 years ago

Facebook stood their ground for a few changes that users didn't like. For example, users hated the newsfeed when it was introduced. The newsfeed is now one of the most important features on Facebook.

The only big feature that I can think of where Facebook backed down is Beacon.

It's important to listen to users, but Facebook has shown that it's also important to ignore them at times.

gfodor• 16 years ago

..and another one falls to second system syndrome.

ojbyrne5• 16 years ago

Except of course that it's, oh, 4th system syndrome.

quinndupont2• 16 years ago

Somehow Kevin Rose has become the Web's babysitter. Product launches are hard, and having revolting factions of whiny Diggers has got to make it nearly impossible.

danilocampos• 16 years ago

I'm done with Digg.

There's way too much noise and not enough material that I genuinely care about. The community mostly sucks -- I read everything with comments sorted by upvotes.

Last week, when my hand-picked Digg RSS feeds stopped working, I deleted them from my reader and moved on. For me, at least, Digg's time has passed.

say_• 16 years ago

This is very disappointing. These community sites like reddit and the old Digg are great for finding funny and unusual content, but they are very poor for discovering new content tailored to specific interests. Twitter is barely serviceable for this purpose, but there's also a lot of fluff.

I was projecting my hopes of personalized content discovery onto My News, but it looks hopeless now.

drivebyacct22• 16 years ago

You couldn't be more wrong. Reddit's subreddit feature is it's best, most underutilized, and most ignored feature -- especially by its side seat critics.

(edit, it's/its)

esdi• 16 years ago

You're so right. I used to think reddit had deteriorated until I discovered subreddits. Some subreddits have very high quality and relevant content.

dstein3• 16 years ago

I got almost all my news from Digg for the past 3 years. Watching Digg self implode like this is somewhat sad to see. It is fascinating, and scary how fast it happened. And I think Digg is in pretty serious trouble here regardless of what steps they take now, or whether they deserved it. The userbase seems intent on kicking them into the ground now.

I think their primary mistake was tying an infrastructure change with a complete recoding of the site. It appears they didn't even had a backup plan of going back to the old site in case "something" didn't go as planned.

ronnoch2• 16 years ago

> I got almost all my news from Digg for the past 3 years.

Wow. That doesn't seem like a good thing.

sliverstorm• 16 years ago

I get almost all my news from HN, but that's not necessarily bad. If I was LOOKING for news, and using it AS A NEWS SOURCE, it would be. But I'm not- the news just sort of comes along for the ride.

dstein3• 16 years ago

Why? On average I found Digg's slice of news (current events + comedy + tech) pretty appealing, and it's format was better for skimming the news a lot better then the other aggregate sites -- including HN. I also got very comfortable with Digg not being "real time", such that I never had to seek out the news. Rather than trying to read everything, and follow every story from beginning to end, I just wait for the good stuff to bubble to the surface, and then I skim over just that.

mdolon• 16 years ago

I see it happening but I don't fully understand it. Digg v4 has been in beta for weeks now, if it is as bad as people are claiming it is now shouldn't that have come up during the beta period? And if it did come up and if the changes have been this protested even in beta, they're pretty dumb to try and force it over anyways.

Anyways, one thing @kevinrose did Tweet correctly is that this isn't the first revolt on Digg. Chances are it'll blow over like the other ones but who knows, maybe history won't repeat itself.

seanalltogether2• 16 years ago

The thing is, the previous revisions didn't represent a disruption to the community itself, just certain members within the community. This latest change effectively sends the message "the community isn't important, what's important is the readership".

I think what this revision failed to take in to account is the 80/20 rule. If digg loses the 20% that drove the community, the remaining 80% might not like what's left behind.

teyc• 16 years ago

Let's unpack this:

v4 has a host of changes

1) new code 2) ranking algorithm 3) ui

The new code and ranking algorithm are intimately tied. The key problem is that any election-based website has a single "correct" view, making phased beta difficult, but not impossible. This is complicated by the fact that Digg is a startup, and doesn't have infinite amount of money to solve this.

So, ideally, what is required is

1) a parallel run of the two algorithms, measuring some subjective quality of the results. (e.g. click throughs) 2) Notifying users that personalisation is being progressively turned on. Thus, breaking up the audience into cohorts (i.e. no single true view). 3) Using Eric Ries' style AB testing to continually tweak and split test, rather having a big deployment.

cletus• 16 years ago

Personally I think Digg is now in the same bucket as PointCast, if not to the same degree: they should've sold when they had the chance. Now they're basically irrelevant.

I mean just look at the language when Digg talks about your home page.... people still have home pages? Really?

siglesias2• 16 years ago

4 in Chinese culture is bad luck because it sounds like "dead." Apple's been there too this year.

lotusleaf19872• 16 years ago

So are you implying this is coincidental or do you actually believe in superstitions?

siglesias2• 16 years ago

That it's coincidence, obviously. If both Apple and Digg had launched v.13 of their products, with problems, then people would be more perceptive to it. Just imparting a little bit of culture, that's all. For those that don't know (and who knows, you might find it useful some day if you launch something in China), 4 is China's 13.

Digg freezes manual story submissions as user anger mounts

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