Feb 26th, 2008 | Media 2.0, Social Media | No Comments
I don’t know whether Yahoo’s new Buzz feature will actually get any traction, or whether it will be lost in the sea of other Yahoo stuff, or whether it will be orphaned or otherwise screwed up in some way (in the past, any of those options would be a safe bet), but at least the company seems to be trying to do something interesting, which is worth a round of applause all by itself. I think the Digg gang can probably sleep safe at night for a little while, but Yahoo could turn out to be a strong competitor (given all of the caveats mentioned above, of course).
To me, there are two interesting aspects of the service: One is that most-Buzzed-about items will feed into Yahoo’s main news page, and the second is that search results will help determine what moves up the Buzz rankings. Those are two things that Digg can’t really offer — unless it does some partnership deals with Google, of course, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility. It’s true that Digg recently signed a deal with the Wall Street Journal, but I don’t think that’s going to do much to affect the placement of news stories over at WSJ.com anytime soon.
There’s no question that a story on the Yahoo News page can push a gigantic amount of traffic because of Yahoo’s size. It’s still one of the top three news pages on the Web, after all. And it’s possible that having Buzz-worthy stories on there will prove to be a big boost for some blogs and other sites — although Yahoo is starting with a fairly small group of 100 sources. As with Digg, of course, there’s also the risk that Buzz could be gamed. But it’s an interesting experiment nonetheless.
Jan 24th, 2008 | Media 2.0, Social Media | No Comments
Now that the sturm und drang over the latest changes to Digg’s algorithm has died down somewhat — after the villagers made it all the way to the castle with pitchforks and lighted torches in their hands, only to relent and make peace with the lords of the manor, after Kevin and Jay joined a podcast — I think it’s worth looking at what happened. I must admit that when it first bubbled up on Techmeme, I sort of wondered what all the fuss was about. So Digg tweaked the algorithm again; so what?
The reaction from top Diggers such as Dave “DigiDave” Cohn and Muhammad Saleem, both of whom I know somewhat through emails and the Twitterverse (DigiDave is involved with NewAssignment.net, among other things) was strong and swift. An “open letter” was posted complaining about the secrecy with which Digg goes about its business, the reports of “bury” bots aimed at specific posters, the lack of responsiveness to complaints, and so on. In his recap of events, Muhammad notes how quickly the issue snowballed, and also how quickly it was resolved.
My friend Scott Karp notes at Publishing 2.0 that what has been happening at Digg over the past year or so — the continual tweaking of the algorithm to try and prevent “gaming” of the site, of which the last tweak is only the most recent example — shows that a completely open social-media network is bound to fail, and I would agree. The only point I would make is that there has rarely ever been an example of a completely open network, just as there has rarely ever been a completely democratic country or a completely altruistic act. Human beings are complicated.
For better or worse (and in some cases both at the same time) Digg is a kind of living research project into “social media” and how it operates — or perhaps evolves is a better word. One day it will seem like the model for how a collaborative news-filtering engine can arise almost organically out of the primordial Internet ooze, and the next day it looks like a “tragedy of the commons”-style train wreck, or a kind of proto-democracy on crystal meth, eventually tipping over into self-parody and irrelevance. It’s like an unstable chemical soup, prone to explosion.
But it’s also probably the best real-time, experimental social-media lab we have right now, and it is fascinating to watch.
Dec 4th, 2007 | Media 2.0, Social Media | No Comments
So as Matt Marshall reports at VentureBeat today, the Los Angeles Times has taken a stake in Mixx — a relatively new Digg-style social-bookmarking site whose main claim to fame is that Mike Arrington recently said that people were leaving Digg to go there — and will integrate Mixx buttons into its site in the same way that the Wall Street Journal recently added Digg buttons to its news stories.
I have to admit that I don’t really get why the Times would do this (the paper has apparently bought a stake in the site as well). Don’t get me wrong — I’m in favour of having social-bookmarking tools integrated in a news site, whether it’s Digg or Mixx or Stumbleupon or del.icio.us or whatever. I think that’s a smart thing to do, because it encourages people to submit your stories to those sites, which can increase traffic and (hopefully) readership as well. But why get into bed with Mixx?
Some people — like my friend Jason at Webomatica — like Mixx, and I will admit that the site has a nice, clean look about it. But the fact is that Digg is still orders of magnitude larger. If you do a Compete.com chart of the two of them, Mixx is a flat line. The top most-recommended stories or links on Mixx have about 20 or 30 votes, while the top stories on Digg routinely get more than 2,000 votes.
Is the LA Times betting that somehow Mixx will become the next Digg? Or is it just looking for a social-bookmarking site to cozy up to because everyone else is doing it? Or maybe the paper is interested because the company includes a former USA Today exec, a former Associated Press exec and a former Yahoo exec. Either way, I don’t see what there is to be gained by picking one social tool over the others.
Nov 25th, 2007 | Media 2.0, Social Media | No Comments
Like my friends Mark Evans — who has mentioned it in comments on Rob Hyndman’s post and on TechCrunch — and Tony Hung of DJI, I am puzzled by Mike Arrington’s post on Mixx and how “Digg refugees” are making it their destination of choice. Digg refugees? I must have missed a memo somewhere. I know that there are all kinds of people who regularly get mad at Digg, but I wasn’t aware that there was a mass exodus.
I know that Mike only says that those who are dissatisfied with Digg “may” be heading to Mixx, but he sure makes it sound like a done deal. Why? Who knows. Slow news day in the blogosphere maybe? Mike says that Digg users “are showing an increasing amount of frustration with the Digg community, and many are leaving.” An increasing amount of frustration? That’s news to me too. And are many of the top Diggers really leaving? Mike mentions one: Greg Davies, who is interviewed here.
The only other evidence I can find for what Mike is saying comes from this post, which I can’t help but notice comes from a blog that claims to specialize in “social media SEO.” I’m not saying — I’m just saying. And even that one says that many of the top Diggers mentioned having left Digg, and haven’t even posted anything at Mixx. They’re just “checking it out.” Meanwhile, Mike admits that Mixx’s traffic is virtually zero compared to Digg. Why bother with the post then?
Nov 13th, 2007 | Media 2.0, Social Media | No Comments
Well, Rupert Murdoch has been dropping pretty big hints that the Wall Street Journal pay wall is a-comin’ down pretty soon — and it shouldn’t be too hard to make it crumble, since Digg just put a pretty big hole in it. As Kevin Rose describes in his rather economical post on the subject (I counted 38 words, not including his name), articles at the Journal will start carrying the Digg button, and any stories that get Dugg will be free for readers who come from the social-bookmarking site. Mike Arrington has a slightly longer post over at Techcrunch.
