RSSDigg: From Cult Favorite to Mainstream
By Ed Oswald | Published June 22, 2006, 8:00 PM
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The method that Digg uses to rank a submitted story has also become an issue with the launch of the new Netscape.com. In an interview with BetaNews last week, Netscape spokesperson Andrew Weinstein made claims, echoed by Calacanis in similar press reports, that stories could self-perpetuate on Digg.
Both Adelson and Rose were adamant in debunking this claim. "It's completely untrue," Rose quipped. "We have proof." Adelson went on to explain that Digg does indeed use a velocity formula much like Netscape does, and that it has been well publicized that Digg's method takes into account a number of factors.
"Any story on the front page has never stayed there for more than six hours max ever," Rose added.
Additionally, the two took issue with claims that Digg needs some type of moderation in order to continue to operate effectively. On several occasions, inaccurate reports have made their way to the top of Digg, such as reports of former Sun CEO Scott McNealy's firing, which was one of the most recent occurrences.
Digg believes that putting an editorial staff on top of the site's premise would not work, as it takes out the social aspect. "Every user has the admin power to report stories," Rose said. "The community is very good at removing inaccurate stories from the queue."
Adelson also said that Digg was committed to neutrality and balked at the AOL concept as a type of censorship, where the opinion of the "anchor" superseded that of all other users. Additionally, with the backing of a large corporation behind it, there is a greater chance that Time Warner's opinion could play a part in editorial decisions in Netscape, he said.
"Digg isn't censored. There's no agenda," Adelson argued.
Neither Adelson nor Rose expressed any concern that having to compete with a large corporation like AOL for the eyes of the Internet public would affect the site's opportunity to grow. "We'll counter AOL with innovation," Rose said.
More features are on tap for July, including Flash integration and other enhancements that Rose says "will blow you away." Within Digg, there is a belief that "we've only got 10 percent of digg deployed," Adelson said, saying there is a long list of objectives for future versions of the social news site beyond this next release.
Additionally, the site plans to continue its commitment to the open source community, releasing the Digg code base as an API so that others can innovate on top of the platform.
While the AOL spat may have seemed to create some bad blood within Digg on clone sites, Digg does not plan to take the legal route against others any time soon.
"We'll take action to protect our trademark," Adelson said. "We won't chase Web sites for copying." However, the site does have a few patents on the way, and if need be, would sue to protect its technologies.
"[Digg] won't become the generic portal," he continued. "But we'll be associated with sorting the information overload on the Web."
I myself am a user of Digg and I find it fair that the creators make money out of it. Their job is not to censor the content, but maintaining and develop their system. That's no doubt a big task. As long as Digg sustain it's community of eager users, I'll continue visiting.
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|Digg has the potential of being a huge sounding board, an international public forum.
When you look at digg wanna-be, Netscape -- you have another division of AOL, with conflicts, probable censorship and ethical bankruptcy of the AOL corporate culture.
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|Bravo Digg -- it is actually replacing the AOL of old. Remember? Before AOL was taken over by folks who threatened you with violence when you correct them on message boards?
We need something like Digg. And if Digg weren't here, something else would be.
If Netscape continues to copy Digg, we should remember that AOL owns Netscape, and that AOL has violated almost every online law and ethical rule.
I don't trust Netscape, and I won't use Steve Case's new car rental business. Even if it is only $1 per day for a fully-gassed Mercedes. I won't give my credit card or debit card number to people who steal, defraud and deny.
Boycott Netscape, Time-Warner, Warner Brothers, Viacom, and every sponsor, partner, investor and even the subscribers. Punish everything associated with the beast of the Internet, and ask your elected officials why Steve Case is not in jail.
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|Digg is retarded. I've been there maybe twice to see what the big deal is and I just can't see it.
What is the big deal? Am I the only one who doesn't care about Digg.com?
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|I concur. The site desing alone the last time I went there scared me off.
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|Digg is a community website so it is run by its users. They do have to make money in order to run the site.
Don't be so 1 minded!
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|8.5 million unique visitors per month and doubling every month. Can you even image their Adsense revenue alone and only 15 employees.
It would be nice if they shared their profits among the drone workers who post news articles and rate them while thiking all the time that they are benefitting the community.
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|I use digg, but I don't understand the business model. It's also increasingly annoyingly slow and I hold no love or loyalty for the site. I probably check out 1/20 of the stories, and often pang for at least some editorial control, many of the links are fluff, need mirrors, spam, blog spam, blog redirects, etc.
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|Digg asks users to post articles, rate them, read them. People waste hours of time doing just that. Then digg makes money off collecting data and selling that to companies, makes money off the Adsense ads without doing any jounrnalistic work.
Fricking good idea to make money. Let others do your job!
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