I can’t dig DIGG.
Posted by Aaron R Stewart on December 30th, 2006
Digg… I don’t get it. After attending PubCon, and hearing many refer to Digg this, and Digg that, I figured I better do some digging myself to figure out what the buzz was all about. And yet, a couple months later, I know what Digg is, I understand the traffic it can generate, I have spent time looking over the front pages on occasion, and I am simply not impressed. There is rarely anything on the front page intriguing enough to click, let alone read. So could someone please explain the draw, or is there nothing to it? Could Digg simply be built on a Madonnaesque marketing blitz, with more buzz than substance, more hype than value?
Digg appears to be nothing more than an online popularity contest, where inmates are actually allowed to run the asylum. And the longer these inmates have been in the asylum, the more influence they are given to decide on what the other inmates get to see and read. Additionally, the popularity of a dugg article is seemingly based on a disturbingly narrow (dare I say juvenile) focus, with just a few decent articles thrown up occasionly to keep Digg barely credible and hardly reliable.
These “Diggers” seem to have drastically different view on what I deem to be important, or relevant from the perspective of a business owner, who is over the age of 35. Who are these Diggers anyway? Why do their opinions count? What is their expertise, if they have any at all? Which then begs the question, why should anyone care or trust their opinions? There is no established credibilty. It’s like asking a random stranger on the street for tax advice, I mean they might know more about taxes than I do, but how can I be sure unless I know more about them, their background and their credentials? Despite this obvious lack of credibility, here we have a site where anonymous and potentially uninformed folks attempt to “recommend” to the public what we should spend our time reading. And get a load of what is on the reccommended reading list…
At the time of writing this post the home page of Digg had 2 articles on Mike Tyson’s DUI charge, one on the Nintendo Wii, something about the French space agency’s plans to publish an UFO archive online, an article about 2007 being the year of the Xbox 360, one on music about some “buggy game,” and something on Storm Troopers (Star Wars) being in the Rose Parade. You have got to be kidding. Who in their right mind cares about any of this, and who values their time so little as to waste it by reading any of this stuff?
So, based on what I saw today, to be “Dugg,” I would need create an article to impress an audience of UFO interested, Mike Tyson following, Star Wars loving, gamers… Ummmm… yeah, I think I’ll pass. My potential clients don’t hang out there. I think I’ll put my efforts towards attracting clients who have aspirations of growing their online business, instead of spending time writing an article I hope will drive random traffic to our site in order to see a profitless spike in our Alexa ranking. I prefer and reccommend a more focused, pragmatic approach. Not to mention I also prefer to attract individuals who do not need to rummage through their mom’s purse, or sister’s piggy bank in order to have a little spending money.
I will say this for Digg… If Digg can continue to get Diggers to read (for fun let’s just assume they are actually reading this dribble) instead of gaming all day, then it is certainly an important public service, and Digg should be commended for getting the kids to read something, anything.
For my time, I am going to stick to reading from WSJ.com, FT.com, Economist.com and the blogs of those individuals I respect, with credentials I can view.
I personally expect Digg’s popularity to suffer in 2007, with more folks coming to these same glaring conclusions. Many will realize Digg is to online media, as the The Enquirer is to print media. Popular perhaps, but the readers aren’t the ones you want managing your 401K. Either Digg is going to overhaul itself, and begin to earn trust by displaying the actual credentials of their Diggers, or someone else will eventually come up with a similar service, which relies on a panel of proven experts to rate articles in their areas of expertise, which would then be truly worth the read. Now a service like that would be something we all could really Dig.
Visited 1455 times December 30th, 2006 Aaron R Stewart
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10 Comments Add your own
1. Li Evans | December 30th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
Great assessment Aaron. The mainstream users of the internet likely do not even know what Digg is. For example - if your parents are “technology adept” ask them what Digg is - likely they’ll say “that video game you kids played in the 80’s” or “what you do with a shovel”. That’s why it’s not important to a lot of our “mainstream” clients. However, if your target market is that “tweenage zit popping, game playing, can’t find a girlfriend because I think zelda’s real” market (yeah sarcastic I know) then Digg is important.
Personally - I agree with you, totally! But just because I don’t “get it” - that I can’t relate with 95% of that Digg population, and the fact that Kevin Rose continues to let this tweenagers decide what’s spam and what isn’t - doesn’t mean it should be ignored. Especially if the rumors are true and they want to take it from being the “tweenage geek” hangout to the mainstream.
Better to know all you can about it, now … than to be scratching our heads when/if it does take off in the mainstream.
Hope you have a great new year!
2. Michael D Jensen | December 30th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
Aaron - Although honestly I have found some interesting articles from Digg, I cannot bring myself to spend any amount of time on it. Several others, like Neil Patel, have said that you can get into Digg and get to be a top user, but it sucks your whole life away. The majority of us with “lives” cannot afford that, nor do we even want to. A question I ask myself often is what I would do with 2 hours of free time, and that’s what I really love to do. Digg would probably be about the 1290023923th item on that list.
3. MarkH | January 1st, 2007 at 11:46 am
I have never been able to understand what the attraction to digg was. Seldom was there anything of interest to me there. I use the Google reader to follow a dozen RSS feed and that’s all the time I can afford. MarkH
4. Aaron R. Stewart | January 2nd, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Thanks for your comments. I think DIGG did something great, but I am guessing they didn’t see it going the way it has gone either. I know we have started companies that have grown in ways we could not predict, but it has been amazing to watch. Hopefully Kevin Rose and the DIGG folks can pull this thing back under control, and legitmize the service, but for now, it is tough to find much worth-while.
5. Christoph C. Cemper | January 8th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Hey,
thanks a lot for this post… with that article, especially the
“from the perspective of a business owner, who is over the age of 35.”
and ” My potential clients don’t hang out there.”
you put into words what my gut felt when I barked “Digg simply sucks, why do you care about it” to a couple of other marketers and SEOs last November in Las Vegas at the WMW Lunch table
hehe…
Cheers - christoph
“
6. SoloSEO Blog » How &hellip | January 11th, 2007 at 8:05 am
[…] Do I walk the talk? Michael Jensen and Aaron Stewart, SoloSEO (Page, SERPS) Description Meta Tag? Yes! To be fair I thought I’d put the spotlight on myself and this blog. Luckily when we built the tool I’ll mention below, it brought to my attention the lack of a description meta tag in the default installation of WordPress. So after just a few minutes I was able to get in a description for each post in an automated way. […]
7. SoloSEO Blog » Fool&hellip | January 13th, 2007 at 4:19 am
[…] In short, the hocus pocus needs to be out of your SEO strategy; there isn’t an easy way to do it fast and big. Good SEO is something we need to think about, we work at, we improve, then when the higher ranking comes, it is legit. When the SEO industry finally quits attempting to buck the system, the cries of SEOs everywhere to be taken seriously by the mainstream tech world might be heard. Until then SEO will continue to be the target of Diggish disdain. […]
8. Ding Dong Digg is Dead | &hellip | May 2nd, 2007 at 9:48 am
[…] There have been many discussions over the recent problems at Digg, Andy of Marketing Pilgrim, Muhammad of Pronet, and Michael of Wolf-Holf have all commented. I have made my less than glowing opinion of Digg known in a previous post. In gerneral, I don’t find the articles typically found on the front page of Digg to be of any particular use to anyone over the age of 20, or with interests outside video games and the latest hack. There are some which claim the traffic Diggers can drive to your site is worth pandering to the Digg clique, but I have never agreed. The traffice is short-lived, and Diggers don’t buy. […]
9. Making Money Online &raqu&hellip | May 16th, 2007 at 1:56 am
[…] There have been many discussions over the recent problems at Digg, Andy of Marketing Pilgrim, Muhammad of Pronet, and Michael of Wolf-Holf have all commented. I have made my less than glowing opinion of Digg known in a previous post. In general, I don’t find the articles typically found on the front page of Digg to be of any particular use to anyone over the age of 20, or with interests outside video games and the latest hack. There are some which claim the traffic Diggers can drive to your site is worth pandering to the Digg clique, but I have never agreed. The traffice is short-lived, and Diggers don’t buy. […]
10. 25% of Google Searches ar&hellip | May 23rd, 2007 at 1:06 am
[…] Now to Google’s Hot Trends functionality, I believe this will be less important to most business focused sites concerned with SEO, but still will be a socially popular feature. I personally don’t understand the Digg mentality of what’s hot/what’s not in the social media scene, it doesn’t resonate. Unfortunately Digg has proven time and time again to not deliver really good quality content frequently enough to warrant any consideration from knowledge seeking individuals. Along this vein, I don’t think tracking the Hot Trends in Google search will be overly helpful in most online marketing campaigns either (unless you are looking to attract the non-purchasing Diggers). It will be more of a interesting online distraction for those with a little more time to waste than most small business owners typically enjoy. It might generate a business idea or two for some, but for the most part I see little benefit to eventual betterment of anyone’s SEO efforts. […]
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