Digg

Digg’s Success

Kevin Rose on Businessweek cover.

(via observer.com)

In 2006, Kevin Rose, one of Digg’s co-founders, was featured on the cover of BusinessWeek with the headline: “How this kid made $60 million in 18 months”. At that time, the website was attracting close to 200 million unique visitors per year and was raising large amounts of capital from investors.

Digital Challenges That Digg Couldn’t Handle

Users were abusing Digg’s digital platform

Even though the Digg concept was initially very democratic (everybody could submit links and everybody could vote), it quickly became an oligarchy.

The reason was the so-called “power users”: a select group of users who had a disproportionate influence on votes because they were “popular”.

Every time a power user would submit a link to Digg, all its followers would up-vote the link. As a result, more than 50% of the front page was filled with power-user submitted links. Not very democratic!

Solution:

As always with digital platforms, people try to enhance the system every time you give them a chance. One solution could be to mimic 4chan.org's anonymous posting policy to reduce the influence of individual users.

When posting anonymously, users are discouraged from abusing the system for self-promotion or fame.

Digg yielded to investor pressure

“… this new version of Digg reeks of VC meddling. It’s cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of Digg, which was to ‘give the power back to the people.’’ – Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit (a competitor of Digg).

One of the reasons behind Digg’s v4 fiasco was the VC investors who put pressure on Digg to generate profits. As a consequence, Digg tried to copy other more popular (and profitable) websites instead of sticking to its existing features. In addition, Digg changed its ranking algorithm in v4 and pushed “corporate-sponsored” articles to its front page.

Solution:

Generating profit as a digital platform is hard. Taking shortcuts to get there is a losing strategy!

Digg should have focused on its users rather than on its P&L. Reddit did it and is now #1 (and worth millions even though they’re still losing money).

Reddit copied Digg and got away with it

Reddit was founded in 2005 and offered almost the exact same features as Digg. Contrary to Digg, however, they never changed their UI and were comfortable in losing money because they were acquired by Condé Nast Publications, which provided ample financial safety.

When Digg v4 was released, Reddit welcomed Digg users (and even put a Digg logo on their website to taunt them!)

Solution:

Digital platforms are very competitive by nature: any new entrant can replicate your website overnight.

What it can’t replicate are the user base and the community, and this is what Digg should have protected above all (instead of changing the UI to make it mainstream).

Controversies

Jay Adelson. (via techinasia.com)

On May 1, 2007, an article appeared on Digg's homepage that contained the encryption key for the AACS digital rights management protection of HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc.

Then Digg, "acting on the advice of its lawyers," removed posting submissions about the secret number from its database and banned several users from submitting it. The removals were seen by many Digg users as a capitulation to corporate interests and an assault on free speech.

A statement by Jay Adelson attributed the article's take-down to an attempt to comply with cease and desist letters from the Advanced Access Content System consortium and cited Digg's Terms of Use as justification for taking down the article.

Although some users defended Digg's actions, as a whole the community staged a widespread revolt with numerous articles and comments made using the encryption key.

The scope of the user response was so great that one of the Digg users referred to it as a "digital Boston Tea Party".

The response was also directly responsible for Digg reversing the policy and stating: "But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be."