New Digg Loses its Identity Further

August 27, 2010 By Ian Bell

Does the new Digg design let sites like Mashable and others easily overtake the Digg frontpage due to their massive audiences and social fans?

The new Digg design launched earlier this week, and as an avid Digg fan, I was excited to see the new changes. The old Digg worked fine and had a nice mix of content from various genres such as business, offbeat, sports, politics and my favorite, technology. There were a lot of features the site had that I didn’t really care for either such as following “friends”, and I didn’t like the darn pop-up window that asked me to share the story I just dug on my FaceBook or Twitter pages. I like reading about Kevin Rose and really admire the guy for standing up to those that threatened to change his company vision. I am not sure what happened this redesign, but it strikes me as a huge mistake.

Tonight when I went to Digg.com, I immediately noticed that Mashable was promoted to the front page a total of ten times, and that was without scrolling down and hitting the load more button (which I am sure would reveal more Mashable links). Now, I am not an expert of Digg, and I did read Kevin Roses blog which outlines the new changes to Digg, but I just can’t get past why Mashable is up the front page so many times now where before they were only up there a few times a day (if you know why, I would love to hear it in the comments below).

If I wanted to see Mashable all the time, I would add their Google Extension to my Chrome browser, or plugged their RSS feed into my reader. I also have FaceBook and Twitter accounts and get notified of stories that my friends are currently reading and would like to share with me. Listen, Digg is not a replacement for Twitter or FaceBook, it’s not an RSS feed placed into a webpage and it’s certainly not the Mashable headquarters (that would be Mashable.com). What Digg is to me is a potpourri of mixed stories that have a certain uniqueness and specialness to them worthy of getting my vote. A collection of the best, if you will. It’s apparent to me that the company has lots it’s soul, and there is no amount of redesigns that are going to fix that. Time for Kevin Rose to go back to his roots and create something truly unique with Digg, step out of the “me-to” line and beat to a new drum. Save Digg my man!

I posted a video recording my computer screen, you will likely have to make it full screen and up the HD resolution to see it clearly.

Update: I just read this article at ReadWriteWeb, and it sounds like Digg users are pretty upset with the new Digg as well. This quote from the article hits the nail on the head: “This caused many long-time Digg users to accuse the site of “becoming too much like Facebook and Twitter.”This caused many long-time Digg users to accuse the site of “becoming too much like Facebook and Twitter.”

Update: After further investigation, it looks like Mashable is using the Digg company feed that automatically submits all Mashable stories to Digg. You can tell by looking at the story on Digg and seeing who submitted it (in this case Mashable). My guess is that Mashable fans are then Digging it up.

Showing 34 comments

21tiger at 7:01pm 26th December 2010 Weird. You see stuff on the Front page that has like 5 diggs. Good thing K.Rose diversified his holdings!
Stuart at 7:47pm 20th October 2010 Thats too bad to hear that digg is not doing so well, personally I like the new digg and I actually just read a good article about using the new digg site to generate more traffic and how to get more followers on digg. Its definitely worth a read http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Get-More-Followers...
woodrowbears at 10:20am 30th August 2010 Lucky the fall of digg coincides with the rise of niche sites like http://stock.ly I will never ever go back to digg.
grcore at 8:26am 30th August 2010 Digg is gone, they have betrayed its userbase. RIP Digg. Reccomendation to sites like Mashable and Techcrunch, if you want top placment on news aggregation sites, come up wih content that PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT TO READ. Your money is better spent on good journalism than buying the front page of any site. Digg refugee (switched to Reddit)
bobjr94 at 11:24pm 29th August 2010 I havent been to digg for a few days..WTF did they do ?
tailormypc at 12:29pm 29th August 2010 I think this is the biggest mistake Digg has ever made. What made Digg a fun place was that everything was user submitted and has a certain quirkiness about it. By making all the popular stories fed through sites such as Mashable it removes the fun of exploring new things.
some guy at 8:24am 29th August 2010 For 7 or 8 years, I've habitually checked Fark and then Digg every morning. Now that's becoming just Fark. One thing I love about Fark is that humor is cultivated while Digg usually was pretty angry. Now it's really angry.
@ehmkec at 8:02am 29th August 2010 Don't blame the programmers. Having retired from that profession, it is not usually our fault. We have better ideas than management - about 99% of the time. Blame the terrorists - they have won.
Karl at 5:42am 29th August 2010 its 'New Coke' all over again- I've just deleted my digg account. I guess we had a good run.
Ted at 11:30pm 28th August 2010 :( why digg.. WHY?! Rose you have made a horrible mistake, theres a reason I closed my Facebook account, its because I don't give a poop about peoples boring lives, so why change something beautiful into mainstream crap for 12 year olds??... I'm off to reddit..
jerry at 8:26pm 28th August 2010 I nave been reading digg for a while now and ive never ever posted a comment until know, going to switch to reddit.
@advertific at 8:07pm 28th August 2010 Nice Article. IMO, The auto feeds from major publishers combined with the inability to bury has radically changed the dynamic of what is appearing on the site. But it looks like changes are in progress because top news is not being updated, maybe a fresh code push is brewing, who knows. My blog: http://advertific.com/the-power-struggle-at-digg/
brach at 3:55pm 28th August 2010 This article now has over 400 diggs and it's not on the front page. Why???
1. ioman at 5:21pm 28th August 2010 542 now. Obviously someone at Digg doesn't want this up there on the FP.
2. @ggarron at 7:22pm 28th August 2010 Hi, I was also wondering why this was not in front page!!, Yes I can imagine why..
MoJo at 3:04pm 28th August 2010 I've had Digg on my bookmarks for a long time until today. It now truly is a waste of time visiting. RIP Digg.
DownWithRose at 12:59pm 28th August 2010 Just go to reddit.com everyone, you get the same stuff that you see on digg just a day earlier and participate in a ton of community created content. I used to go to both sites, but with digg v4 I'm now limited to one...
1. Wes at 8:49am 29th August 2010 Problem is that reddit is so ugly, it isn't any easier to read then digg v4. That said i've boycotted digg
guest at 11:47am 28th August 2010 89.99% Kevin's Fault.
Jay Singh at 9:32am 28th August 2010 Ian, it's me Jay I used to work with Dan. I just wanted to commend your article and thank you for standing up against these negative changes they made.
1. Ian Bell at 7:53pm 29th August 2010 Hi Jay! Glad to see you on here. Bummer we didn't make Digg frontpage, even though it had 500+ Diggs on it. I hope all is well, stay in touch!' Ian
brach at 6:45am 28th August 2010 et tu Kevin?
Guest at 6:36am 28th August 2010 One of the only media stories praising the New Digg is written by... the founder and CEO of Mashable! http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/social.media/08/26/c... Digg users are in pretty open and unanimous revolt... 3 days in and things are only getting more agitated. Any comments not attacking the new Digg are getting buried deeply. It looks like a user revolt.
Surferess at 4:11am 28th August 2010 Sorry SciGuy, I was trying to upvote your comment, and the thumbs are switched from what I'm used to. Now it wont let me fix it. :
sciguyaj at 3:04am 28th August 2010 Oh yeah, to answer the original question: the reason one mainstream site has several articles on the front page at once is because it's posting a lot of articles at the same time which means the rss feeds are all being submitted at the same time, and based on the new digg algorithm since it's a mainstream site,, they'll all the hit the FP, and in about the same amount of time. It doesn't matter if it's a real news story, or something as simple as a site update announcement, it will all hit fhe front page if it's a mainstream siting using rss.
sciguyaj at 2:15am 28th August 2010 It's not hard to figure out what's happening. The new Digg algorithm works pretty much the same way Yahoo Buzz algorithm works. Rather than relying on votes (or diggs) alone (if at all) they factor in things like how many hits the article is getting, how "relevant" it is by comparing how popular the subject matter is in search engines. And how many RTs and FB shares it's getting. In other words: It's how popular a site already is that decides if it will make the front page, not how many diggs it gets. I'd explain more, but it won't let me explain in depth here.
1. sciguyaj at 2:24am 28th August 2010 Basically, RTs, page hits, FB shares, are more important than digg votes.And we're not talking about hits, RTs and FB shares the page is getting from digg, but from the actual site! In short, people who have never even heard of digg, and have no clue of it's existence, have more influence over what goes on the front page by RTing it, or sharing it with friends on FB, and just being on the site, than hardcore digg veterans voting for it on digg. That's why every auto rss sub from a mainstream site will hit the front page even with little or no digg votes, and why independent sites and blogs with 100 diggs, don't.
shadiwsoawn at 11:08pm 27th August 2010 The only thing digg.com did was bury itself in a quagmire of bad decisions. People will go to reddit like rats off of a sinking ship... but the ship didn't sink, it just went underwater overnight. I can't believe they screwed their entire userbase over. I mean they spent MONEY on messing things up! I don't want a job there now, but what an ideal job it must've been to code all of that. As the coders work, they must've known what was going to happen... but I imagine they took their paychecks and stashed what pittance they were granted well. Poor guys. It was a good run. If anything it's a good lesson in "Internet History" of what *not* to do. /me sits back and munches on popcorn
Carrie Jones at 8:51pm 27th August 2010 So, I just went to Digg after reading your article thinking you were full of BS, and I am seriously blown away. There are 3-4 Mashable articles in a row on the front page of Digg for a total of 9 right now. Is Mashable gaming their site to get on there? How does a single site overtake Digg like that? I like Digg a lot, but agree that I do not want to see the same damn sites on there all the time. I want to see the best that's out there. And I especially miss the science stories they used to link to.
1. Jerry Wilcom at 8:53pm 27th August 2010 Carrie, There have been a number of articles out there claiming that companies game Digg by paying the top posters to promote their sites stories. I don't think that is the case here because Mashable has never been on the frontpage so many times before. I just think that Mashable has such a huge following on their social networks that they are getting promoted a ton by their users. For the rest of the Digg readers, we are being overrun and will eventually go somewhere else. Clearly the Digg algorithm is broken here. Kevin will need to work on it some more, or add an exclusion algorithm for large sites like Mashable.
  1. Andy at 11:14pm 27th August 2010 The Digg algorithm isnt broke nor will it be 'fixed' anytime soon. The founder of Mashable, Cashmere, wrote an article for CNN praising the new Digg and telling Rose to ignore all the complaints. Now you know why.
    
    Andy at 11:16pm 27th August 2010 Also, Mashable fans, should such a thing exist, aren'tAndy digging up the stories. The new sorting algorithm is designed to give power-users and sponsors greater capability to reach the main page than before. The new Digg needs to be shut down/
  2. sciguyaj at 2:44am 28th August 2010 Fat chance, Kevin made the new digg just for mainstream sites! He doesn't want independent sites on the front page now. He changed the algorithm so that it practicably ignores actual votes, and goes on how popular a site is (by seeing how many hits and shares it's getting from other services) he doesn't care what actual digg users are voting for, only what's popular on mainstream sites! Mainstream sites just dump their RSS feeds into digg, and don't worry about getting digusers to vote for them, because digg goes on how much traffic the site is already getting, putting popular articles on the front page.
2. Jason Howard at 8:57pm 27th August 2010 I actually see this too. 4 stories in a row, then 3 stories in a row, and a couple singles totaling 9 out of the 16 top stories on Digg. Complete ownage. Grats to Mashables for figuring out how to do that! The load more button doesn't work for me on Digg right now, so I can't tell how much ownage Mashable has on digg atm, but I think it's freaking great when people figure stuff out like that.