Why Digg Cannot Be Saved
Each day Digg’s front page is loaded with rampant fanboyism, trivial top 10 lists, completely unfounded rumors and conspiracy theories, duplicate posts of old news, dozens of novice tutorials, headlines that give absolutely no information about what they link to, duplicate posts of old news, and duplicate posts of old new. Don’t like it? Time to move on.
To date there are a cumulative 305,549 diggs for headlines that contain the word “breaking”, a staggering 964,681 for the word “amazing”, and an embarrassing 5,668,946 diggs for headlines with “PICS”. Once a valuable resource, now just another spewing fountain of sensationalist jibberish. The site the early adopters embraced is now gone. What caused such a dramatic change?
A standard normal distribution, or bell curve, is a model that has been found to have great meaning in how it relates to many things found in nature, and the universe in general. The intelligence of the general population also follows this model, and this is how it relates to Digg. If this concept is foreign to you, this is where you should be.
In the early days of Digg, the focus was primarily science and technology. These are intellectually oriented topics. There are complete morons interested in every subject, but those subjects that are more intellectually challenging will appeal more to those who are capable of better understand them. Who would you guess has a higher IQ, someone who reads Discover Magazine every day, or someone who reads Weekly World News every day? In this gamble, my money is on the first guy.
Digg is user submitted, which means it naturally changes focus depending on what the average user is. Because the user base has grown so wide, it must encompass a larger segment of the population, and span a much greater range of IQs. We’ve seen a dramatic change in the subjects that reach the front page. The number of intellectual topics has declined heavily, while the number sensationalist topics is now the majority.
The Digg algorithm is slowly getting more mature, and the reality is becoming ever closer the ideal: A completely democratic system. This is the very reason Digg is beyond hope. The yellow region is the only region large enough to encompass the growing audience.
The yellow is the majority. These are the people that think Ubuntu is a gift from God. These are the people that are hopelessly amused by stupid cat pictures with dumb captions. These are the people that think they are good drivers while on the phone. These are the people that THINK they are in the green region. They are the majority, they don’t know any better, and they are in control. RIP Digg.
Last revised: 2008/03/18
March 16th, 2008 at 8:00 am
You finally started to write and I think that’s a damn cool thing. Seems like you’re supposed to do this. I’ll definitely check your site from time to time and read your gold.
March 17th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
I wonder where the now common idiom “all of us are smarter than each of us” fits into your IQ bell curve. If only I believed that people who specialized in technology (myself included) have more important opinions than the general population, then I would faithfully follow your Digg hypothesis.
However, I propose Digg is likely following a general path which only brings less technically oriented content forward than in the good old days. This trend unfortunately is leading to a lose of interest by die hard originals such as you or I.
March 18th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Kris Meister said:
“If only I believed that people who specialized in technology (myself included) have more important opinions than the general population”
Definitely not more important, but I believe the average IQ of someone in the tech industry is slightly higher. My reason for this is the very nature of the work. Tech is often more intellectually demanding. Between a computer programmer and a garbage man, who do you guess has a higher IQ? My money would be on the programmer.
“This trend [less tech] unfortunately is leading to a lose of interest by die hard originals such as you or I.”
I enjoy a variety of news. It doesn’t have to be tech. What I dislike is the constant barrage of sensationalist garbage. I look at the front page right now and there is a headline entitled “What The Hell?!?!”. This title is completely non-descript and based 100% on sensationalism. If we click on the link, it’s a screenshot of an iPhone that’s supposed to be funny, but isn’t. More fanboy garbage.