
Not Even Kevin Rose Really Uses Digg Anymore - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/17/not-even-kevin-rose-really-uses-digg-anymore/
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jackowayed
Wait, it's not even true that he's only done 7 actions in the last month. His
diggs just aren't sorted exactly chronologically

<http://digg.com/kevinrose/diggs>

There are 7 diggs in the past 17 days, then one from 2/8, then at least 6 more
that are within the last 30 days.

And comparing to Twitter actions is dumb. The real(ish) story would be if
there's been a precipitous drop in his Digging. Maybe it's been a long time
since he Digged a lot because he's gotten so busy. Or maybe he's never Digged
all that much and he's more of a lurker.

I'll leave figuring out if there has been a precipitous drop as an exercise
for someone who cares about Digg.

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batiudrami
What is with that bar graph? Who thought 'I'm sure our readers can't
comprehend the difference between '181' and '7', so we'd better put it on a
graph'?

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Stormbringer
A little thing we like to call 'visual impact'.

Frankly I'm just amazed whenever I see a graph online where somebody _hasn't_
diddled the y axis, or a 3d pie graph with massive chin that 'accidentally'
makes the lower slices look much more massive than the top slices.

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pak
Ah yes, not even the Steve himself can resist the ole pie chart chin trick.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2008/jan/21/liesda...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2008/jan/21/liesdamnliesandstevejobs)

Maybe he'd blame that on the default styling of pie charts in Keynote (tsk!),
but it'd take some extraordinary reality distortion to believe the Apple slice
landed at the bottom by accident.

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kloncks
What's so surprising about this? He's a busy man.

When was the last time Chad Hurley used his YouTube _account_ to do something?
How often do you think Zuck is on Facebook?

This is truly absurd. I don't often try to rain down insults at TechCrunch,
but this is over the edge.

Everything from the SEO-ified headline, to the factually incorrect content, to
the intellectually insulting bar graph, to finally the fact that there really
isn't even a story here even if the claims might be true...is just annoying.
This is over the edge.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
The key point in the article is that he's not so busy that he doesn't use
Twitter all the time. I think your point would be more valid if Hurley or
Zuckerberg were using another service 10 to 1 over their own.

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kloncks
Respectfully disagree.

Twitter's more akin to Email. Much more of a staple product.

It's like comparing how often Hurley emails/texts with how often he likes
things and uploads videos onto YouTube.

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MatthewPhillips
Fair enough.

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jacobbijani
This is so pointless and stupid. Maybe he's caught up in actually developing
the site? Or using a staging server with bleeding-edge features that aren't
reflecting his production account?

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bradly
The point of the article isn't that he isn't engaging online; it is that he is
doing it on another platform (Twitter).

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tuhin
And Digg andTwitter are both brilliant platforms for _totally_ different forms
of engagement. If Zuckerberg (@finkd) were to get more active on Flickr or
Twitter would one say that Facebook is not a great service anymore?

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jacobbijani
Right. How active do you think he is with his email client? Does that mean
he's not working?

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MatthewPhillips
I give them credit for trying to reinvent themselves but it seems it was just
too late. People use twitter to share links now.

Reddit has stayed relevant due to its focus on community.

~~~
icefox
According to wikipedia 96% of tweets are not news

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter#Tweet_contents>

I don't use twitter for news because I don't care to sift through the 96% of
drivel people seem to put up there. But your saying people actually do that?

How do people find good context on twitter? Do they follow people who only
post good news type stuff along with their boring friends?

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dangrossman
When you want news, go to the profile of a news organization, not a high
school buddy. If you want a stream of tweets, put a couple news organizations
into a list and read the list. <http://twitter.com/#!/reutersflash>
<http://twitter.com/#!/skynewsbreak>

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flexterra
Digg used to be my homepage until I got totally irrelevant to me. I tried
reddit for a while and got hooked by the quality of the content about
programming and python. The funny and pics sections are cool too.

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eam
Kevin's response via Twitter:
<http://twitter.com/kevinrose/status/48593910083239936>

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thunker
A poor refutation given that diggnation is released on a weekly basis but is
recorded once a month.

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ojbyrne
Pretty sure that's incorrect.

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thunker
I can't readily substantiate it because video and audio aren't Google-able but
it has been referenced on the show in passing, Alex has mentioned it in an
interview on how he schedules TRS, diggnation, etc and I believe Kevin himself
mentioned it once when asked about his own schedule at one point. The best I
can do is to point you toward Alex's once a month trips to SF:

<http://twitter.com/alexalbrecht/status/32545131399741441>
<http://twitter.com/alexalbrecht/status/42823598360109056>

~~~
ojbyrne
I admit to not actually being sure, but I bet Kevin flies the other way every
month, so they actually shoot every 2 weeks.

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staunch
They build you up and tear you down.

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Stormbringer
More like " _they_ build you up, and _you_ tear you down".

The demise of Digg is entirely self-inflicted.

My recollection is that amongst other things they:

Had a big pointless UI change

Arbitrary changes to how something shows up on the front page

Polluted the frontpage with 'sponsored links' (read as: advertising)

Layered ads on their ads ("I heard you like ads...") with a side-helping of
ads.

In order to increase click-through they were trying to make the ads look like
normal links... this is scammy. Once you start lying to your users, why should
they trust you? Once you lose their trust, how will you ever get it back?

\-----

Now I'm not saying advertising is evil, and I'm not saying they shouldn't try
to monetize. Gotta put food on the table somehow.

But honestly, I don't believe that they've dropped from 18 million to 12
million. 18 million to 1.8 million, _that_ I'd believe. Digg is like a ghost-
town now compared to what it used to be.

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timmaah
You forgot the diggbar

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Stormbringer
Well, I had _successfully_ forgotten the diggbar until you reminded me. :D

To do: add "bleach for the brain" to shopping list.

Honestly I never used it. Presumably there were those who loved it, those who
hated it, and those who went 'meh'. I remember it generating a lot of
controversy, I just don't remember what it was that it was supposed to do.

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acconrad
That's pretty sad. The worst part is they just mentioned that they sped up the
homepage by 75%, which is really irrelevant for a site that isn't technically
focused like Google. They're trying to appeal to the wrong crowd.

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fletchowns
Your comment seems to imply that they sped up the time it takes to load the
homepage by 75%, which is not the case. That figure was a in reference to how
frequently a new story hits the homepage.

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ojbyrne
Well it is the case, just not what's being trumpeted in the latest press
release. v4 was supposed to speed up page load significantly, that's why they
added the little page load timer at the bottom of the page.

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jarin
Completely off-topic, but I just noticed that when people reply to your
comments on TechCrunch it notifies you on Facebook. That is baller.

