Digg
(Redirected from Diggnation)
Categories: Websites | Podcasts | Blogs
Digg is a website with emphasis on technology news. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. News stories and websites are submitted by users, then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system. This differs from the hierarchical editorial system that many other news sites employ (such as Slashdot).
Contents |
How Digg works
Readers can view all of the stories which have been submitted by fellow users in the "digg all" section of the site. Once a story has received enough "diggs", roughly 25 or more within a certain time period, it is automatically promoted to the top of the main page. Should the story not receive enough diggs, or if enough users make use of the problem report feature to point out issues with the submission, the story eventually falls out of the queue.
Articles are short summaries of stories on other websites with links to the stories, and provisions for readers to comment on the story. All content and access to the site is free, but registration is compulsory for certain elements, such as promoting ("digging") and submitting stories, as well as commenting on submitted articles. Digg also allows for stories to be posted to a user's blog automatically when he or she diggs a story. As of October 2005, registered Digg users number in excess of 45,000.
Stories can be submitted in sixteen different categories which include; deals, gaming, links, mods, music, robots, security, technology, Apple, design, hardware, Linux/Unix, movies, programming, science and software.
A separate category titled Digg News is reserved for special announcements relating to the site, and can only be used by Digg administrators.
History
Digg was created in November 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson, who serves as CEO, all of whom play an active role in the management of the site. Although the domain name of Digg is registered under Jerimiah Udy, he is not one of the original founders of Digg. Jeremiah is a friend of Kevin Rose. The domain name is registered under Jerimiah Udy's name because Kevin Rose did not want others to know that he was associated with Digg, since his name was commonly related to discussions regarding the old TechTV TV station and the TV show that Kevin Rose had co-hosted on that network, The Screen Savers.
The original design featured no ads and was designed by Dan Rice, but as its popularity grew Google AdSense were added to generate revenue. The site was updated in July of 2005, to "version 2.0" which added new features such as a friends list, and a new interface design created by Daniel Burka, of the web design company silverorange, who is also known for redesigning the Mozilla Foundation website.[1] After the redesign, some users complained about the lack of the simplistic, minimalist layout used in the original version of Digg. The site developers have stated that in the next version a minimalist design is likely.
Digg has grown large enough to create a sudden influx of traffic to a website similar to the Slashdot effect, although not quite as severe. This is commonly referred to by Digg users as The Digg Effect.
Digg was recently given 2.8 Million Dollars from a Venture Capital
Criticisms
In a peer-edited journal, the combined reader/editors are very good at determining what is and is not interesting. They are not, however, as good at determining what is new or news, and can often fail to recognize old news and rehashed stories. The result is that very hot but old stories, such as the P-P-P-Powerbook scam baiting, are regularly re-promoted to front page status as a new wave of users discover it for the first time.
The report feature on every article allows users to report duplicate stories, bad links, spam, old news, and "lame" stories. Enough reports on an article can remove it from the main page. Perhaps to prevent abuse, this feature does not appear powerful enough to always work properly. As an example, a video of an Athlon CPU heat sink failure from 2001 "CPU Cooler Removed" received over 400 diggs. Its discussion was filled with comments that the material was dated and gave the wrong impression of current AMD CPUs. Still, it persisted on the front page.
Link copying
A growing number of Digg users have begun to take the direct links to articles submitted to Digg, and post those links on their personal blogs/websites, without citing Digg as the source. This type of action gives the appearance on these personal sites that users found those stories themselves. Placing links taken from Digg is a feature of the site; users can utilize the 'blog this' feature to create posts on their personal sites. This however creates a reference to Digg. The issue would be compounded in cases which users run advertisements on the sites which they take Digg content without citation.
Link resubmission
There are many Digg users that will search Digg for interesting articles that never made it to the front page, or have not been on the frontpage recently. Users will then take these links and resubmit them under a slightly modified title in hopes that they will make it to the front page. This can cause items to make the front page in their second or third iteration, by someone who did not submit the original link. In other cases, users will resubmit their own articles, but never made it to the front page, in order to gain in the overall ranking.
Self importantance
The users are themselves strong proponents of the site. Any link with a description applauding Digg is quickly promoted. Many users use this to get links promoted even if the relationship to Digg is tenuous at best. There is often a rush to submit links to new content on sister sites as a means of karma whoring.
Diggnation
Diggnation is a podcast hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht that serves as a week-in-review of the most popular stories on Digg. The podcast is available in two formats; as a videocast or as a normal audio-only podcast. Within a day of its release, Diggnation took the #1 spot on podcasting site, Podcast Alley, and has appeared several times in the 'Top 10' section of the iTunes Podcast Directory.
For a brief time, Diggnation was taken off iTunes. Originally, it was thought that this was because of a simple exploit that propelled Diggnation to the top of the charts by clicking the subscribe button rigorously. However, it has since been announced that it was because someone pretended to be Kevin Rose and asked Apple to remove it. The show has since been re-added.
Episode #14 of Diggnation marked a new milestone for podcasting. The Diggnation team collaborated with Dolby Laboratories to introduce a full 5.1 surround sound technology for podcasting.