Digg, finally

This is just great. Mere days after I have what was my biggest story thus far on my blog, WordPress.com announces support for allowing items to be dugg within a post. See it in this very post. That digg button is for the massive edgeio post, which sadly missed out on the digg population – it would have meant some welcome traffic. All the more reason to blog more, right?

Design A Website

Can you design a website? Ever thought about it? Dan Huard’s Scopetech is looking for a redesign. They’re looking to launch on the WordPress platform and are looking for accompanying forums. If you’ve ever been interested in Web design, why not try a submission out?

Real Slashdigg

This is interesting, apparently slashdot is prepping a digg-like part of it’s site. There’s quite a bit of discussion going on. I’ll give you a synopsis.

• omg digg rulz all cuz even slashdawt is copying
• Slashdot has been around longer and it can do what it wants
• This is different because slashdot is an editorial site. The fact that the system is a copy is of no consequence, but the information used is.

Funny.

SargeDaddy

Remember when there was talk about Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht being in the superbowl commercial for GoDaddy? I hope you didn’t miss Martin Sargent there as well.

Another Digg Clone!

Wait, hear it out first though, it’s like digg, but for gamers!

Digg Removes Another Feature, Apocalypse Soon To Follow

Stop the presses, er, keyboards. Remember that feature on digg that wasn’t always there and then came on and nobody noticed and then it was taken away and everyone started making noise about it because writing something big about digg nets you traffic and attention? Me too. It seems digg has gone ahead and removed the feature that shows the number of stories you’ve had promoted to the front page.

Looking at the above image, I’m strangely still able to go on with my life. Will digg bounce back from this? What’s there to bounce back from? A company decided to make simple changes that will benefit the community in the future even if they don’t see it. What are users going to do? Go to reddit? Doubtful. Jump ship over to Netscape? Hardly. The hype machine chugs along yet again.

Netscape, The AntiChrist

On february 1st, Kevin Rose announced on the Digg Blog that they would be removing the top users list for digg.com WHAT? Remove the top users list? But now what will the digg community have to show who is better than who? Nothing, that’s what and it’s great. When people start competing against each other, quality will dwindle and that’s a fact. What the digg community should be looking into doing is making the site the best, better than any competitors, even if they are just shameless clones.

The reason for this is clear, people in the top users list have the e-belly to get stories to the top. Even users who aren’t in the top 100 are being spammed with emails to digg stories for financial compensation. (I’m ranked in the second hundred and received such an email even though I think it was automatically generated.) The power of digg is great and people with products to peddle know this and will do anything to get their site to the front page. It’s gotten as far as organized sites, such as spikethevote. The removal of the list is just one of the measures to take place. I’ve spoken with Jay Adelson, digg’s CEO on this before and he explained to me that they just can’t game the system effectively, if at all. It’s not as simple as who gets the most stories to the front page. It’s a whole lot more complicated and we’ll leave it at that.

But the digg community is smart, or should we say, the competitors are. It appears that with the help of digg’s API, a new top users list rose from the ashes of the old one, thanks to Netscape. Okay, let’s back up a bit. While the man responsible for the list, Christopher Fink says that he made the new list of his own volition, even though he’s employed with Netscape. Conflict of interest? To an extent. I understand that people can more than work on projects on their own. Google employees do it, in fact, it’s part of their job. But even if he did it on his own, knowing who he works for, can you blame the backlash it’s causing?

The mere fact that Netscape exists in it’s current state is something people still seem to be displeased about. The “new” Netscape looks a lot like digg. That’s a fact. Jason Calacanis, as per usual, has his say on the issue, chiming in with:

Most of the top users I’ve talked to over the years are very, very driven by that top list. They want to climb higher, they talk about strategies to climb the rankings, they build tools to get to stories first, and they lament their inability to sustain their position when they fall.

Interesting. I recall reading in some comment on the issue where someone said they liked to think of digg as a game, using the list as a way to gauge your strength, not unlike a Role Playing Game. That’s all fine and dandy, but as stated before, this is not where the digg community needs to focus right now, but rather on the competition. I like to think of this issue not unlike post counts in forums. After time, the post counts seem to run the forum, with users of forums seeing persons with high post counts as more important. Do away with the post counts and suddenly, nobody cares, they focus on the quality of messages posted rather than the quantity.

In short, mister Fink should really just accept the backlash for what he did, not to say he did anything that anyone else may not have done.

When Not To Blog

You know on TV there are shows like “What Not To Wear” and “How Dirty/Clean Is Your House”? Well, I honestly believe if TechTV still existed, there’d be a show called something along the lines of “When Not To Blog” or something like that. Why? Because people do this.

What is the thought process that goes into making one of these blogs that makes you think this is a good idea? You must have encountered this at some point or another, a blog all about links found on digg. There’s not anything wrong with this, mind you, but there is something wrong in thinking that being a lazy blogger will get you anywhere. When digg introduced it’s “post to blog” feature, everyone suddenly decided they’d be internet millionaires, riding off of digg’s success and make their own digg of sorts, where they auto-post all the stories that have interested them from digg on a blog. How wrong you are, my friend.

You see, unless you’re going to actually add something to the blogging community, don’t do it. Instead, what you should do is join a forum, participate with the links you’ve found, and actually get feedback from the community since doing it on a blog will get you nowhere. Honestly, how many blogs like this do you think have comments? But joining a forum will get you some sort of feedback.