Digg v4

Digg v4

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Overview

Digg v4 was a version of Digg launched on August 25, 2010. Its release invited a massive backlash from its users, who left en masse to rival site Reddit .

Background

Digg is a social news website where users can submit links and vote on stories submitted by others, which brings the top voted submissions with most “diggs” to the top of the homepage. One of the early adopters of news aggregation model in online publishing, Digg’s voting and submission system went onto inspire many other similar sites, most notably Reddit.

Digg was developed in November 2004 by American entrepreneurs Kevin Rose[1], Jay Adelson[2], Owen Byrne and Ron Gorodetzky. The name “Diggnation” was initially suggested[3] but Rose settled on the name “Digg” after he unsuccessfully attempted to purchase the domain names dig.com and digdig.com.[4] After Rose invested $6,000 into the site that was meant to be a down payment on a house[2], the site launched on December 5th, free of advertisements. The initial goal of Digg was to focus on news stories rather than of sharing bookmarks for static sites people would visit regularly.

Previous redesigns

Since its launch in October 2004, Digg has undergone numerous redesigns. In May 2005, Digg 2.0, featuring friends, one-click voting buttons and non-linear promotion algorithm, was implemented. In January 2006, Digg 3.0, featuring expanded categories beyond its tech-related news section, was unveiled. In August 2007, Digg introduced another redesign to the homepage and profile features.

Development of Digg v4

As early as 2009, Rose said that "it’s time for Digg to get a little bit more real-time in nature". He hinted that Digg was working on what he considered as "the biggest overhaul to how everything works behind the scenes"[5], and he expected it to be completed "some time in the next six months". However, the launch date was pushed back to as far as late April 2010[6].

On March 9, 2010, John Quinn, VP of Engineering, announced on the digg blog that they are "rolling out a new client and server architecture"[31]. According to him, the most significant infrastructure change is abandoning MySQL in favor of Cassandra, an alternative NoSQL database management system. He cited "the increasing difficulty of building a high performance, write intensive, application on a data set that is growing quickly" as the cause of the change.

On April 5, Rose returned to his post as the CEO, replacing Adelson[7], who has been CEO since the beginning. Despite Adelson wanting a quick launch, Rose opted for further testing and set the launch date two months further[6]. On May 28, a list of new features was released, as well as previews of the new interface[8].

In preparation for the launch, limited alpha testing began on July 1[9] and registration of new users was temporarily disabled on August 2[10]. Invitations for beta testing began on August 19[11].

Notable developments

Launch

On August 25, 2010, Rose personally announced the launch of Digg v4 on the official Digg blog[12]. Its launch was marked with a two-hour downtime, increased latency and periodic errors when connecting to Facebook[13]. The downtime also led to the introduction of the "Fail Ox" error message that shows up when the site becomes inaccessible[22].

Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore, through his weekly column on CNN, spoke in favor of the new version and declared that Digg "might be on to a winner". Further, he said that "it's in the company's [Digg's] interests to cater to this group [publishers]" because they "are able to generate significant traffic for Digg by using the site's widgets and buttons"[14]. Despite Cashmore's statement, a poll conducted by Mashable among 24,821 respondents indicated that 83.22% preferred the old Digg, compared to 7.62% in support of the new Digg[30].

Power users like Muhammad Saleem and Andrew "MrBabyMan" Sorcini felt excluded from the feedback process and complained about the changes. Although they have acknowledged that the site loads faster than before, they noted that the focus was shifted to mainstream publishers at the expense of smaller publishers. They also disliked the new design and the loss of features like the time stamp on previously-submitted links and the "bury" button[15]. Sorcini, in particular, warned, "…If they launched this version of Digg, the regular usership would abandon the site."[44] Rose responded through his personal blog on the issues raised by the power users[29]:

  • Mainstream outlets and power users have been given more power over the front page.
    All diggs are still equal, nothing has changed there. Our directory of recommended users will eventually open to the entire world. We will sort users, not on popularity (followers), but based on how good you are at finding/digging content (similar to wefollow.com). This will remove the popularity contest and put the focus on quality diggers.

  • Timestamps have been removed. This is a bug, hope to have this fixed soon.
  • The bury button is gone. By removing the bury button we have put a stop to the bury brigades. The "hide" button next to every story also acts as a "report" button, if enough people hide a story a site moderator is notified and we review it for TOS violations.

A later analysis by power user JD "0boy" Rucker revealed that Digg's front page was dominated by 6 publishers and Leo Laporte for the past 3 days[16], which, according to Rose, resulted from "the users' diggs."[21]

Quit Digg Day

Join Digg! Login Search Users or Stories digg My News Top News Digg it t Top in 24 Hours 7 Days 30 Days Submit a link Sprint Most Recent WHAT WILLYOU DOFIRST WITH EVO THE FIRST4G PHONE? Top News All Topics Business Entertainment Gaming Lifestyle Offbeat Politics Science Sports Technology World News 274 diggs Every time I take my dog on a walk... reddit.com-submitted by tittilating to pics [link] [86 comments]> 1054 Get it now digg 25 Comments Save was browsing deviantART and i found this little gem reddit.com-submitted by heroofwar to pics [link] 125 comments> 335 di digg り bet 32 Comments Save Kratos from God of War gets a kitten... reddit.com-submitted by tf2fan to gaming [link] [111 comments] > 貝29 Comments Save Top News in all Topics 368 diggs digg ed Foursquare Surpasses 3 Million Users Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men. Or At Least Stop Blaming Me F1 2010 -Game/Real Life Comparison Actually looks pretty good reddit.com-submitted by xmlrobot to gaming [link] [11 comments]> 441 402 diggs World's largest tidal turbine (1MW) to be deployed later this summer in Scotland 500 digg 29 Comments Save Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men. reddit.com-submitted by acangiano to programming [link] [88 comments] What. The. f**k. "An influential Israeli rabbi has said God should strike the Palestin. 495 467 diggs I had heard Mirror's Edge was short, l guess they added this feature to make it a much digg 54 Comments Save 497 The original Farmville reddit.com submitted by Collin3388 to gaming [link] [73 comments]> Who else loves the classic style? 462 diggs 499 digg 32 Comments Save Beware of Dog Graduates in the UK warned of a record 70 applicants for every job, some sectors have over 200 ap... reddit.com-submitted by EthicalReasoning to worldnews [link] [21 comments]> Is It Zooey Deschanel or Katy Perry? 463 diggs 306 Graduates in the UK warned of a record 70 applicants for every job, some sectors have o... digg 22 Comments Save Who else loves the classic style? reddit.com-submitted by cadence82 to pics [link] [67 comments]> The original Farmville 499 diggs 462 digg 37 Comments Save 497 diggs I had heard Mirror's Edge was short, I guess they added this feature to make it a much longer game reddit.comsubmitted by friggle to gaming [linkl [13 comments>

On August 30, 2010, Digg's users staged a revolt that was soon called as "Quit Digg Day"[20], where they began to vote up all links that are automatically submitted by Reddit through RSS, causing the Digg front page (shown above) to be dominated by links to Reddit. On that day, according to Reddit, they gained almost 9000 new users and 250,000 visits from Digg (which contributed to 1/7th of their traffic)[25]. In response, Reddit changed its logo to resemble Digg's (as shown below) and immediately released an announcement for new users[26].

reddit whatshotL new pardon our construction: we're digging A around for new logos this week comment share

Meanwhile, Digg briefly disabled content submissions to the site[27] and fixed the source diversity part of its algorithm[28].

Notable reactions

Comments from competitors

Soon after Digg released previews of its new version, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian posted on his personal blog an open letter to Rose[17], where he speculated that "this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling", and that it is "cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg," which, as he quotes Rose's statement from Digg's debut in 2004[18], "give the power back to the people."

On August 31, 2010, Fark founder Drew Curtis commented:

They just scrapped their existing site, replaced it with a new one, and told everyone it was Digg. That's what everyone's angry about: it's not Digg, and they really resent being repeatedly told that it is.[19]

Web Comics

There was once a broken soda machine. It was But it was rumored the machine would sometimes Noone was quite sure what the trick was, but slow, unpredictable and often ate your change. spit ooins back along with free soda. Soon everyone twas fun to watch or try your luck had a theory on how to manipulate its odd qui You need your friends to tilt the machine. Nah, it's all in the timing. CH CHING CHING! Come on damn you. Whoa Jackpot Most failed and no one always succeeded, but some were clearly better at it than others. there was no possbility of users ever influencing it noone really liked the soda anyway Then one day the vendor repaired the machine so But then it was just another soda machine and again. He thought he'd maximize his profits. Ive got skils!Without us inserting those coins you'd have ng digg 0 Follow Mashable on the New digg Repaired is Broken by noomment

On August 28, 2010, comic artist "nComment" published an allegorical comic (above) entitled "Repaired is Broken" that compared Digg to a soda machine. The old Digg was portrayed as a "broken soda machine" that "often ate your change" but "would sometimes spit coins back along with free soda", while the repairs represented the changes between the old and the new Digg. In the end, nComment, still using the soda machine analogy, dismissed Digg as "just another soda machine and no one really liked the soda anyway". Sorcini later posted a link to the comic at Reddit[23] and got 644 votes (68% positive) before being archived.

LIFEBOATS REDDIT YTMND . ウ FREE BAY SEA OF TROLL BHMEMES DELICIOUS TROLL WIKPEDIA PAGES IRC ISLES

On October 6, 2010, Randall Munroe released his 802nd xkcd comic, entitled "Online Communities 2"[24], as an update to his previous map of online communities. A portion of the map (above) shows lifeboats from Digg approaching Reddit.

Aftermath

Shortly after the launch of Digg v4, Digg's staff was reorganized. Rose chose Matt Williams of Amazon to take over his position as CEO[32] after two months of searching for a replacement[33], allowing him to return to his previous role as Chief Architect[32]. Meanwhile, Quinn, the main proponent of Digg's adoption of the Cassandra database management system[31], was fired[34].

On October 2010, Williams announced that Digg has laid off 25 of its 67 employees[40] (among them Chas Edwards, Digg's Publisher and Chief Revenue Officer[41]) and hinted on "a new strategy for Digg".

Decline in traffic

According to data from Google Trends (above), Digg's relaunch caused a brief boost in search queries for the site. However, it also caused an even bigger boost on the amount of search queries for Reddit. Two weeks later, the search queries for Reddit have outnumbered the search queries for Digg.

Similar trends have been reflected on data gathered by Alexa[35], Quantcast[36], Compete[37] and StatCounter[38]. Also, Alan "MrGrim" Schaaf, creator of Imgur, reported during an IAMA session that Digg went down from being the second most active referrer to Imgur (just after Reddit) to either fourth or fifth[39].

Postmortem analyses

On July 12, 2012, it was reported that Digg sold its assets for $500,000 to the New York City-based tech firm Betaworks[42], which owns bit.ly, news.me, Chartbeat and a number of other online services and products. Many tech business news articles about the acquisition described the deal as less than ideal for the pioneer of social news aggregation, especially in comparison to BusinessWeek magazine’s valuation of $200 million in 2006 and the $45 million funding it has raised since its launch in 2004[43].

Differing explanations have been raised for Digg's downfall. CNet, citing the rise of Twitter, Google, and Facebook, declared Digg to be dead as early as 2009[45]. However, one Forbes blog post attributed Digg's fate to the migration of its users to Reddit[46], and another viewed it as suicide[47].

Rose, in an AMA interview at Reddit, admitted that the site's traffic was already in decline before the launch of Digg v4 yet identified it as "the catalyst that caused a major decline". Further, he said that "[they] should have focused on [their] existing community and not tried to be someone else (Twitter, Facebook)."[49]

References

[1] WikipediaKevin Rose

[2] Wikipedia – Jay Adelson

[3] Webdesigner Depot – The History and Controversies of Digg

[4] Bloomberg Businessweek – Valley Boys

[5] TechCrunch – Interview with Digg's Kevin Rose: The State of the Union

[6] The Next Web – Digg Relaunch Reportedly Pushed Back 2 Months

[7] The Next Web – Kevin Rose To Return To Digg CEO Position – Jay Adelson To Become An Advisor

[8] TechCrunch – Exclusive Video And Screenshots Of Digg Version 4

[9] Digg Blog – Digg4 is Alpha. Really Alpha. Don't worry, we got this. (Archived from now-lost original)

[10] Mashable – Digg Halts New User Registration As It Prepares to Launch New Version

[11] TechCrunch – A Thousand Invites Of The New Digg Empire Descend Upon You

[12] Digg Blog – Digg Version 4 (archived from now-lost original)

[13] Gigaom – Digg Trying Hard -- Maybe Too Hard -- to Stay Relevant

[14] CNN – The new Digg: Don't believe the snipe

[15] CenterNetworks – Power Diggers React To New Version of Digg

[16] Media Caffeine – The Digg Debacle in One Graph (Archived from now-missing original)

[17] Alexis Ohanian (via Wayback Machine) – An open letter to Kevin Rose

[18] Owen Bryne's YouTube channel – Kevin Rose shows off digg.com on The Screen Savers

[19] Fark – A quick note on Digg v4, and some of Fark's favorite Headlines of the Week for 8/22 – 8/28

[20] Huffington Post – Angry Users SLAM Digg With Links From Rival Reddit

[21] Twitter – Kevin Rose on Twitter: @0boy the promotion is based on the users diggs

[22] TechCrunch – Move Over Fail Whale, Digg 4's Got A Fail Ox

[23] Reddit – 'Reddit vs. Digg war' comic artist nComment on the new Digg V4. SPOILER- He nails it.

[24] XkcdOnline Communities 2

[25] Reddit Blog (via Wayback Machine) – Everything went better than expected

[26] Reddit Announcement – reddit 101, or: click this if you're new around here! [updated]

[27] Venture Beat – Digg freezes manual story submissions as user anger mounts

[28] Twitter – Kevin Rose on Twitter: Digg update: As mentioned on TWiT yesterday, we're working hard to fix the source diversity part of the digg algorithm, more news soon

[29] Kevin Rose Blogg – Digg v4: release, iterate, repeat. (Archived from now-missing original)

[30] Mashable – Web Faceoff: New Digg vs. Old Digg

[31] Digg Blog – Saying Yes to NoSQL; Going Steady with Cassandra (archived from now-lost original)

[32] The Next Web – This Is Digg’s New CEO: Matt Williams

[33] The Next Web – Digg’s Looking For A New CEO

[34] TechCrunch – As Digg Struggles, VP Of Engineering Is Shown The Door

[35] The Buzz Media (via Wayback Machine) – Digg Traffic Continues to Fall

[36] Forbes – Facebook Didn't Kill Digg, Reddit Did

[37] Compete Pulse (via Wayback Machine) – Digging a Little Deeper Into Digg's Downfall

[38] StatCounter – Redd Monday for Digg

[39] Reddit, IAmA subreddit – I'm the Imgur guy, AMA (part two).

[40] Digg Blog – Important development at Digg (archived from now-lost original)

[41] AllThingsD – Exclusive: Digg Publisher and Chief Revenue Officer Departs for Start-Up

[42] Wall Street Journal – Once a Social Media Star, Digg Sells for $500,000

[43] Wired – After Raising $45M, Digg Sells for Pennies on the Dollar

[44] Forbes – The Lessons For Facebook, Twitter And Reddit In Digg's Demise

[45] CNet – Digg is dead: Twitter killed it and Google helped bury the corpse

[46] Forbes – Facebook Didn't Kill Digg, Reddit Did

[47] Forbes – Reddit Didn't Kill Digg, Digg Killed Digg

[48] Reddit – I am Kevin Rose, Founder of Digg. AMA!

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