Why no one should buy Digg
I’m a big fan of Digg and have been for a while. Of all the websites out there they are probably the highest mentioned one on this site over the past six months. During that time there is always speculation that someone is close to buying them up and in all honesty I came to a realization today that nobody should buy Digg.
I don’t mean that companies shouldn’t look at a Digg acquisition, but take a step back and look at everything that Digg stands for and ask yourself if you can really see it prospering under corporate rule. There is enough speculation about how Fox News portrays Obama or if Microsoft is cheating by paying people to edit their Wikipedia articles and it is easy to imagine those powers using Digg to their advantage.
Who is to say that Yahoo wouldn’t buy Digg and start to plant articles that shine them a in a brighter light than Google? We already know that the ones who write the history books are the ones that control past events, but do we need a corporation to control what the web is going to talk about in the next year? It isn’t scary to think what can be done with Digg under the wrong hands, because if shady stuff starts to overshadow the good stuff people will leave and go elsewhere, but I’m sure not too many people want to see that happen.
It seems that everyone’s exit is to get bought up by Google or Yahoo, but where does that leave the independent social web that we have been so hard at work trying to build? Nobody is saying we should turn away millions of dollars, but in our celebration of Web 2.0 acquisitions we are failing to see that we are losing the principles of what made Web 2.0 so great in the first place: openess, freedom and us.
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http://digg.com/tech_news/Why_no_one_should_buy_Digg_from_a_Digger
By Digger on January 27, 2007 8:40 pm
[...] I ’m a big fan of Digg and have been for a while. Of all the websites out there they are probably the highest mentioned one on this site over the past six months. During that time there is always speculation that someone is close to buying them up and in all honesty I came to a realization today that nobody should buy Digg.read more | digg story [...]
By Hello =o » Blog Archive » Why no one should buy Digg, from a Digger on January 28, 2007 6:36 am
The main reason nobody will buy digg at the moment is that while the system for news submission and the concept are good. The quality of the user base is not.
It’s all well and good having lots of “editors of the news” on a site but unfortunately, the quality of digg submissions has taken a real nosedive in recent months so it’s now only certain topics and keywords that make the homepage.
Suffice to say, any blog entry about digg will be dugg and hit the homepage.
By jamble on January 28, 2007 11:32 am
People who use the words ‘Web 2.0′ should get the crap beaten out of them.
Twits who herald 2.0 as a milestone event:
“…we are losing the principles of what made Web 2.0 so great in the first place: openess, freedom and us.”
should get the crap beaten out of them, twice.
By rob enderle on January 28, 2007 11:50 am
Please shut up with your typical corporation evil babble.
By Juje on January 28, 2007 11:51 am
I couldn’t agree more… but sadly it’s just a dream to think that digg can go untarnished.
All media is owned by companies, and these companies have an agenda. CNN, FOX, NPR — each gets influenced by owners, advertisers, and/or donors.
Digg isn’t immune to it even now.
/tin foil hat on
Who knows for sure that so many google stories don’t hit the front page because digg uses adsense? Maybe “the boys” get a free iPod everytime apple hits the front page. Are the guys who put VC into digg asking for their other companies to hit the front page?
/tin foil hat off
The truth is that digg requires expensive servers and IT people to handle the digg traffic. It’s not a question IF they will sale, but when.
By davak on January 28, 2007 11:54 am
People won’t leave digg, trust me on that. The quality has sunk in the last 2-3 months, but we’re still flocking in droves. Take a look at what makes it to the site every week, it’s basically articles from the same 5 sites being frontpaged each week, sprinkled with a few news stories from the same few news outlets, lightly sprinkled with youtube/metacafe videos and a few actual new sites.
Overall, I think companies already have control over Digg – notice that Apple seems to have a nice PR pumping factory from Digg, and they are quite aware of Digg’s presence – they even drop by to read some of the stories and try to manage their PR (ex: When a digg story made the frontpage about how his laptop was messed when he bought it and Apple stores wouldn’t fix it or accept fault, Apple a few days later resolved the problem and asked him to post about it on his blog – so that it would get re-digged and Apple’s PR could be restored *smart move on their part*).
So it’s already being controlled to some degree, not to the extent that they would like – but I think it’s inevitable.
By DonaldDuckWearsNoPants on January 28, 2007 12:01 pm
haha i find it ironic that you have google ads right under this article
By Dave on January 28, 2007 12:01 pm
Very interesting points. If I owned Digg, and I know this is bad, but I would sell out. Not to the point of selling the website, but to the point I was making so much money, that 60 million dollars was a reality.
By m0ose on January 28, 2007 12:22 pm
you are crazy
By Jack on January 28, 2007 12:30 pm
digg is the next craigslist.org?
By nitemode on January 28, 2007 12:34 pm
[...] I don’t mean that companies shouldn’t look at a Digg acquisition, but take a step back and look at everything that Digg stands for and ask yourself if you can really see it prospering under corporate rule. There is enough speculation about how Fox News portrays Obama or if Microsoft is cheating by paying people to edit their Wikipedia articles and it is easy to imagine those powers using Digg to their advantage.read more | digg story [...]
By diggme.info Digg Me » Why no one should buy Digg, from a Digger on January 28, 2007 12:51 pm
“we are losing the principles of what made Web 2.0 so great in the first place: openess, freedom and us.”
This is a bad article, with a cheesy ending, that got dugg because of the keyword “Digg”, so there’s already an agenda here.
I think you should both shut up AND get the crap beaten out of you.
By Gaffa on January 28, 2007 1:18 pm
if Yahoo made it to the front page, it would be buried
By Daniel on January 28, 2007 1:19 pm
No, the reason nobody should buy digg is because it’s simply the break.com/ebaum’s world of web 2.0 news. Digg has an increasingly narrow audience, but that audience is also made up of the kind of people most prone to delusions of grandeur: young males.
Anyway, your argument is fundamentally flawed since digg’s front page is already dominated by spam and astroturfing. That so few users actively recognize this is a testament to the appallingly low IQ of the digg community.
By Don on January 28, 2007 2:16 pm
“We already know that the ones who write the history books are the ones that control past events”
I have to disagree with you there as you are implying that all of our history is bogus?
I have to agree that no one should buy digg.
By Ali on January 28, 2007 2:21 pm
Welll, Digg just took something like $8.5M right? In general terms (I don’t know the specifics so I’m just going for the general view) that’s not actually a good thing because
1) It means you need more money. Ideally the sooner you start running without more funding, the better.
2) Digg owners now own a smaller piece of the cake, although I bet it’s still over 50%.
By nobody on January 28, 2007 2:28 pm
But think of it from an another angle..Digg makes cheap money by paying certain diggers and also gets paid for getting certain topics to the top..These are little known facts, but with good proof..
Probably these things will stop with an acquisition…
By Anand on January 28, 2007 3:31 pm
And the quality of the Myspace userbase is higher? It’s all about how many eyeballs a site provides. The big media companies don’t give a shit about what kinds of stories hit the Digg front page, as long as those stories mean users will keep coming back to Digg(and they do).
By Ilya Lichtenstein on January 28, 2007 3:58 pm
[...] Now let me give you an example of what’s going on. Check out Who dugg or blogged: Why no one should buy Digg, from a Digger it is a Digg submission for an article by Paul Scrivens of 9 rules fame. You’ll find that Sicc has blogged about it too if you go to the bottom. [...]
By The Mysterious Trail of Digg User Sicc: An Example of How Digg is Used for Shady Spamming and SEO at Baron VC on January 28, 2007 5:59 pm
Mate,
you have a very good point and i do agree with you.. nice article..
By Sc0rian on January 28, 2007 6:43 pm
Digg is great. No doubt. But I honestly don’t think it was built with an “exit plan”
Yahoo! has been very good to recent acquisitions. I use them a lot. For example, del.icio.us & Flickr have remained thriving communities with lots to share.
WARNING! WARNING! CONTENT WILL BE CENSORED! THE THOUGHT POLICE WILL CONTROL THE WAY YOU VIEW THE WORLD! THEY HAVE AN AGENDA! THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
By Robert on January 28, 2007 8:21 pm
Well hell, there are others like Digg that would sell, no doubt/
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http://www.newspoo.com
By Newspoo on January 28, 2007 9:11 pm
[...] read more | digg story [...]
By Why no one should buy Digg, from a Digger « Digged Stories on January 28, 2007 11:09 pm
Forget about FOX news… CNN is doing enough to bring Barack Hussein Obama
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07005/751395-192.stm
By spankbot on January 29, 2007 3:53 am
I agree, and right now I don’t see how a large corporation could effectively monetize Digg and make it profitable, beyond the sale of advertising.
By Zach Katkin on January 31, 2007 2:21 pm