When you haven’t heard but, Digg is on the market. And so they haven’t simply raised a on the market signal, they really employed a personal funding agency to buy round seeing if anybody is .
A lot of the dialogue on the Web proper now could be in regards to the price ticket: $300 million. Some say it’s an excessive amount of, others say it’s truthful. Truthfully I don’t suppose that’s crucial level. The query that strikes me is: why would Kevin Rose and his crew need to promote Digg within the first place?
Folks promote firms principally for 2 causes: they want the cash to put money into another undertaking, or they suppose the ship is sinking and need to money in earlier than it’s too late. Digg not too long ago sealed a rich contract with Microsoft, and sister firm Revision3 is rising fairly properly, which leads me to suppose that the second choice is likely to be the proper one.
Not that Digg will sink in a single day. They’re far too large for that to occur. The Titanic of social bookmarking websites, if you’ll. However I feel that some holes are beginning to seem within the hull, and that’s normally one of the best time to promote, when solely the captain is conscious of the incoming water.
Take a look at Digg’s Alexa graph overlaying the previous three years. Appears like 2023 was not 12 months for them:
Proper, you would possibly ask, however what are these holes? Properly, there are 4 major ones.
1. Is it actually democratic?
The Digg system was a really intelligent concept. Let the customers decide what is nice and what’s not. Allow them to submit their very own information and tales. Let the knowledge of the group rule.
The fact, nonetheless, is kind of totally different. SEOMoz confirmed someday in the past that the Prime 100 Digg customers management 56% of the fabric that goes within the entrance web page. Contemplating that Digg has over a million customers, that’s not a democratic image in any respect.
2. Censorship
As the positioning grew in reputation many individuals determined to make use of it as a advertising and marketing software. Spammers and scammers included.
In idea the customers themselves with a few passive editors might clear up this downside. That’s how Wikipedia handles it in any case. However Digg went one step additional and began banning websites, typically not even publicly with the so known as “auto-bury” record.
The end result was chaotic as a result of a myriad of legit websites received hit on the way in which. Need an instance? Copyblogger is among the many Prime 30 hottest blogs on the Web, with over 27,000 RSS readers. Lately it received included on the auto-bury record, that means that its tales can now not make it to Digg’s entrance web page.
If you’d like extra details about this apply, ForeverGeek coated the issue extensively prior to now.
3. Low high quality visitors
Positive, Digg can drive sheer quantities of visitors to any web site getting featured on its entrance web page. However is the visitors precious? Many individuals argue that’s it not.
What does low high quality visitors means? It implies that guests gained’t click on advertisements, gained’t go to any web page in your web site past the preliminary one, gained’t subscribe to your RSS feed and so forth.
Personally I don’t suppose that that is at all times the case, however relying on the area of interest of your web site the factors do apply.
4. Lack of focus
When Digg was created it was closely targeted on expertise. It’d seem as a limitation for some individuals, however the customers liked it. They had been all tech-savvy people, and Digg labored as a consumer pushed model of Slashdot. It was a really profitable components.
Over the time increasingly sections had been added. Politics, leisure, well being, photographs, movies… you title it. As you possibly can think about the amount of low high quality and never related materials being submitted elevated exponentially.
They tried to know the world, not fairly efficiently.
Conclusion
Don’t get me incorrect, I’ve been a Digg consumer since 2023, I prefer it and nonetheless go to the positioning every day. I simply suppose that the entire system has a number of flaws proper now, and as an alternative of making an attempt to repair them the house owners are leaping out of the boat. They need to money in whereas the positioning continues to be using the wave, particularly as a result of the wave may not get any larger.
When Kevin Rosy made it to the entrance web page of BusinessWeek final 12 months individuals began to take a position that he might need to promote it for $60 million. He declined these rumors, beginning that the positioning nonetheless had rather a lot to progress, that that they had many plans for it and a brilliant future to come back.
Properly, appears like Kevin modified his thoughts, for some purpose. Else how might we clarify this sudden decision to promote Digg?
Replace: Tamar has an attention-grabbing article explaining why nobody can buy Digg.
About Daniel
Daniel Scocco is a programmer and entrepreneur situated in São Paulo, Brazil. His first firm, On-line Income, builds and manages web sites in numerous niches. His second firm, Kubic, focuses on growing cell apps for the iOS and Android platforms.
Reading your article helped me a lot, but I still had some doubts at the time, could I ask you for advice? Thanks.