

Digg’s Biggest Problem Is Its Users And Their Constant Opinions On Things   - malte
http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/12/diggs-biggest-problem-are-its-users-and-their-constant-opinions-on-things/

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kixxauth
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.

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.

~~~
batiudrami
I think you're wrong about Apple and Facebook. I'd like you to be right, but
the fact is, you care about what they do and you feel alienated. You are not
the audience they target; you read news.yc. The market this article is talking
about will continue to use Facebook and buy new iPhones.

~~~
kixxauth
Hmmm, yeah. I guess I agree that the dictator approach does in fact land more
successful products. But, like Calcanus has recently spouted off "Facebook has
overplayed their hand", and I think the same goes for Apple.

It is true that I do not represent the mainstream, but Facebook's recent
privacy actions has caught the attention of the US Congress. Congress people
make a living by throwing grass in the air to see which way the political wind
is blowing. When Facebook draws the attention of Charles Schumer we're no
longer talking about just the news.yc crowd.

When Microsoft found themselves in the same situation in 1997 they went to
Washington DC, told congress that consumers didn't really know what was good
for them. When summoned by the US DOJ Bill Gates went back to Washington
personally to tell the DOJ that they didn't know anything about computer
software and were in no position to prosecute them.

This level of arrogance takes a company out of the tech industry echo chamber
and right into the nightly news.

------
eavc
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.

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

~~~
joubert
Bio-engineering might have been more advanced by now.

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faramarz
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.

Do what wufoo did for forms.

 _Should have sold when you had the chance :P_

~~~
hcho
Reddit for Independent(a UK newspaper) does not seem to work:
<http://reddit.independent.co.uk/>

Maybe there's not a market for their platform.

~~~
greyman
Yes, I remember NYT also tried something like this with reddit. I think the
main reason it didn't take off is that one single media entity just doesn't
have that much interesting content to keep it vibrant enough.

~~~
hcho
That, plus their readers do not seem to be interested in karma and point
games.

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petercooper
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.

~~~
greyman
I tend to like MG Siegler and Erick Schonfeld more, but admittedly overall TC
editorial strength improved a lot during the last years. Oh...and Paul Carr,
he's sometimes funny as well.

~~~
petercooper
I think it depends on what you're going to TC for. Excusing the eccentric Paul
Carr, most of the newer writers seem to be (or are trying to be) typical
journalist types. Just writing solid news. But if I wanted that, I think RWW
and Mashable are better.

Arrington, though, shoots from the hip, and has a "here's my opinion and
that's that" approach. He's sometimes wrong, but there's usually a good mix of
wisdom and irreverence in how he sees things.

But, as I said, it depends what you read TC for. Pieces driven heavily by gut
feelings rather than actual news are, of course, not for everyone :-) If Mike
sold/left TC though, I'd just go read wherever he blogged next because I care
more for his writing than "TechCrunch's."

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GFischer
A bit offtopic, but... using a Magic: The Gathering game card image for the
article? (Kithkin Rabble) (see
[http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiver...](http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=158695)
) (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.

------
commandar
"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."

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.

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

~~~
ojbyrne
Finally someone who agrees with me. I used to have a little mantra when I was
there - "For digg to grow, Kevin's got to go."

~~~
3dFlatLander
I'll agree with that. But, why does (did?) digg have to grow? I was a
dedicated user for the two first years and loved it. There was no better place
to get general sci/tech/computer news. I kinda feel like no aggregator stepped
in and gave those initials digg users a substitute once the site moved away
from news in those areas.

~~~
ojbyrne
$40 million in VC money.

------
terra_t
Digg is the case study I always bring out as to why "web 2.0 doesn't work" and
"we need web 3.0."

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.

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.

------
phatbyte
I sometimes feel that TC is becoming the Fox news of the web. Honestly...

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.

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.

------
petercooper
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.

------
DanielBMarkham
There is a bit of truth in here, and a bit of bullshit.

I think, long run, that you only ever have those 250K users permanently. The
rest are just passing through.

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.

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.

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.

~~~
ojbyrne
I agree with you, except I'd say "a lot of bullshit." I also find it kind of
ironic that the theme of the article is basically "Kevin, stop listening to
your users and listen to ME." Personally I think that's actually a bigger
problem - there's so many pundits (and Kevin knows them all) who pontificate
endlessly about what he should do. The best thing he could probably do is get
out of Norcal.

~~~
dmlorenzetti
It's also ironic that he builds his case (that Digg should follow its own
path, ignoring the wisdom of the crowd) around a couple of folk sayings, and
an internet meme about the iPhone.

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estacado
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.

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

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Bjoern
> "..by Michael Arrington on May 12, 2010."

Don't misunderstand me, but that was the point where I stopped reading.

~~~
omaranto
Wait: you read past "Arrington" and then stopped after reading the date?

