
What Started The Downfall of Digg - transburgh
http://www.shoemoney.com/2007/12/18/what-started-the-downfall-of-digg/
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jgrahamc
This particular article is rather poorly written, but if its title has a ?
appended it makes a fun discussion topic.

My take is that Digg's downfall (if it happens :-) was sealed long ago by
Kevin Rose's personality. One only has to watch Diggnation with their stupid
drinking antics and Beavis and Butthead humor to know that the audience Digg
was courting was pretty low brow.

Then, suddenly, Digg tried to extend outside tech news and be a general
purpose new site. Big mistake since low brow doesn't mix with Science, World
News, etc.

The only positive thing I can say for Digg is that at least the comments there
aren't as bad as on YouTube.

Or maybe I'm just bitter because I got banned from Digg and publicly branded a
'spammer' by a Digg employee.

~~~
davidw
I think the "why do social sites decline" thing has been pretty thoroughly
examined, but they all seem to trend downwards.

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kyro
The fact that one is submitting a story to an entire community means that
users will resort to submitting stories that are either very sensationalistic
or are 'funny', to appeal to the widest audience. And that's where I think
Digg's flaw is. They put too much emphasis on 'making the front page', so
users then adopt the motivation of submitting the most ridiculous garbage to
get on the front page. On Diggnation, frequent front pagers became
celebrities, and being a frequent front pager was a status symbol. Unlike
here, where we're not concerned about making it in the top 10, but rather that
we submit quality stuff. It really is all about the niche.

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Xichekolas
_users will resort to submitting stories that are either very sensationalistic
or are 'funny', to appeal to the widest audience_

If you replace the word 'users' with the words 'TV news' you also have a true
statement.

It's a general problem with all things consumed in mass. The lowest common
denominator is pretty low.

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eru
Perhaps we should strive for the greatest common divisor?

~~~
Xichekolas
Don't we elect the greatest common divisor every four years or so?

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drubio
Its interesting how they come up with $300 million valuation.

This is the second post I've seen where they value each user at $77 Dlls,
which is exorbitant based on click through monetization, simply look at a how
much Google is really willing to pay for an actual user having Google as their
home page and monetizing their searches, which is likely more profitable to
them than content.

I'll give you the Firefox/Google Toolbar signup with numbers, via AdSense they
pay out from $1 dollar to .10 cents for each user you sign-up for Firefox with
the Google Toolbar -- the range depends on the country the user is in, with $1
dollar going to north america and .10 cents to the lower bracket countries,
those which I assume have less advertisers.

With this model Google ensures that each time a user opens Firefox and makes a
search they will exposed to their ads, even considering a huge premium on the
signup, its a long-way from actually paying $1 dollar for every user to $77
dollars.

If Google's 'user value' is any indicator, then at this rate Digg would be
worth something around $3,896,103, assuming the user count is accurate, all
users are located in North America and they don't apply some type of discount
rate for not being able to make Digg a user's default home page.

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stillmotion
Digg is hardly worth $300 Million. $11M Tops.

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vitaminj
Digg, like reddit now, suffered from a bout of tyranny of the masses. Hard to
come back from there.

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mattmaroon
I'm not convinced Digg has experienced any sort of downfall yet.

