The top 11 things I have learned from Digg
Digg.com is a social news/bookmarking website. When it started out it was good and focused on Technology. Last year they opened up a series of new categories and took on a ton of new users.
It has since become a haven of fanboys and Stalinism. This is my top 11 list of things I have learned from Digg.
1. It's not who you know but how many friends you have.
2. A snappy headline is better than good content.
3. The amount of advertising you can have before being called a splog is inversely proportionate to your Alexa rating.
4. The power of burying a story is always stronger than that of digging a story.
5. Digg defines democracy as a voting system where some users votes are "more equal" than others.
6. The "Bury Brigade" would make Stalin proud.
7. Un-banned means you can submit the link and digg will auto-bury it for you.
8. Content that criticizes Digg is always buried as spam or inaccurate.
9. Stories with "Nintendo", "Wii", "Apple" or "Kevin Rose" always hit the home page.
10. If your name is "Kevin Rose" you will always have a 100% popularity rating.
11. No matter how hard you try, some sites can never be buried or banned.
For those who do not know what Stalinism is I present this quick excerpt from wikipedia:
It includes an extensive use of propaganda to establish a personality cult around an absolute dictator, extensive use of the secret police to maintain social submission.
Great post! And you gave me 11 more reasons not to join! After reading about the Bury Brigade on Baron.vc’s site and following the ban-a-rama soap opera that John Chow has gone through AND reading your problems with it, I lost interest.
Not that I ever had much interest in it in the first place. I stay away from things that smack of popularity contests and cliques. I admit that I haven’t really checked out Digg and am only avoiding it based on what’s happened to blogs I enjoy reading.
Which reminds me: how are you feeling about Plime? Any new thoughts?
A new review on Plime will be coming soon.
Plime does require an investment on the users end, it is not a place to dump links.
When the site lost focus, you knew that they were going off. Looks like bigger doesn’t always equal better. I have turned to StumbleUpon for now.
12. Blind digging will get you banned but not blind burying.
I’m still waiting for the “bury all as SPAM” tool to come out.
I definately agree with you on all of your points. I use to read digg daily, but have gotten out of the habit because it’s the same stuff over and over. WII, Ubuntu, linux, etc. you get the point. I’m also interested in other stuff, but that usually gets buried and is really annoying. grrr
Not only is it the same subjects but it’s also the same websites! Right now there is an obvious splog getting front page stories because they cover the Wii. I went to this site and it is 75% advertising!!!
Hehe, I like this post Steve !!
If you like it link to it!
They banned my ass a long time ago, even the 2 IP’s I use. No clue why as I never spammed and submitted about 3 stories.
I take it you have static IPs?
I have dynamic IPs (DSL) so they can’t ban me in that manner.
I still like using it, Ive found some really interesting stuff on there.
I do visit Digg sometimes, but rarely digg or bury stuff. It’s also sometimes annoying to see stupid comments on Digg, by those so-called Digg fans.
Interesting how no one had the balls to submit this one to Digg…
You seem to forget that this site is on their “auto-bury” list. A list I asked Digg about and never got an answer.
They probably have an “upcoming customer questions” list and yours got auto-buried
:-D
[...] 3: Read this (the comments too): The top 11 things I have learned from Digg. Smite me if you think he’s not telling the truth. [...]