The Mark Dykeman Web Niche

The Digg monster has defeated me; it’s too damned big.

I no longer consider myself a social news and networking n00b.  I’ve experimented with a number of social news sites:  Digg, Reddit, Shoutwire, Plime, Slashdot and Mixx.  Each site has its own quirks, its own audience, and its own rules.  Each has its own audience and favorite subject matter.  Social news sites aren’t all the same!

Digg is one of the biggest, if not the biggest of these sites.  I’ve heard that a story that gets promoted to Digg’s front page can receives tens of thousands of Diggs, or votes of approval from Digg’s users.  (I know of one story that got over 50,000 Diggs, although it was posted by Digg’s founder and it was an unusual situation.)  For many newshounds, bloggers, and other writers, getting to Digg’s front page is like striking gold.  I’ve hit the front page three times since I started and I tell you, getting there can take a lot of work.

Digg has changed a lot since its inception.  I imagine that in December 2004 Digg started quite small and grew tremendously over time.  We’ve all heard stories about the “Digg effect”, where a sudden burst of traffic coming from a front page Digg story will bring the down the server that hosts the content being Dugg (certain stories on Slashdot have also caused this to happen).  No doubt about it, Digg is big.

And that’s too much for me to dig.

I recently pruned my Digg friends list down from almost 200 friends to less than 40.  I’m at 41 as of the writing of this article.  Meanwhile, 288 other people have listed me as their friend.  I know nothing about 260 of those people and very little about the rest.  Heck, I don’t even really know the vast majority of my Digg friends, it’s just kind of like we all hang out at the same bar and nod at each other in passing.

Don’t get me wrong.  I didn’t join Digg to make life-long friends.  If I were to strike up an acquaintance with some Diggers, that’s fine.  I’m not looking for Digg as a way to extend my social life.  I have a hard enough time keeping up with my own social circle and it is miniscule compared to others.

Nope, I joined Digg to try to promote some of my own content (so sue me).  Along the way, I became attracted to the challenge of hitting the Digg front page.  Some of my Digg acquaintances are in the top 100 – one’s even in the top 5.  I know he works like a bugger to get stories to the front page regularly and he’s quite successful.  I admire that acheivement that he and other top Diggers have attained.

The thing is, it’s not for me.  I think just about any person could get to Digg’s front page with decent content if they are willing to work hard.  That means they are devoting a significant amount of time and energy to participating in the community, striking up friendships (or alliances in some cases), and fine tuning their content submissions.  If that works for them, more power to them!

I mentioned that I had 288 people who friended me, although I didn’t return the favor.  You know why they added me as a friend?

Simple:  many of them want me to help them hit Digg’s front page by Digging their content.  I know – I used to do that.  That’s why I used to have close to 200 friends myself.  I hoped that if I dugg their content on a regular basis, they would dig mine.  The problem is that over time I found it hard to keep up with their content.  So naturally, these folks will look elsewhere for support.  I understand that and it doesn’t bother me.

What I’m finding now, though, is that a couple of the other social news sites appeal a lot more to me.  It’s true that Digg’s interface has changed, making it harder to quickly Digg stories (and, in fairness, that was probably a good thing to do.)   Shouting has added a whole new dimension (e.g. spam) that a number of people do not like.  There are “bury brigades” out there.  These groups of people will singly or collectively “bury” stories so they won’t hit the Digg front page.  Some people worry that Digg’s owners/leaders are losing focus on the day-to-day operations of Digg and that quality is suffering.  I’ll leave it to other people to make that judgement.

Oddly enough, the aspect of these other sites that is attracting me is the one that I least expected:  community.  The sites that I focus on now seem to have a smaller core group of participants.  It’s easier to recognize these folks, understand their tastes, and even have some good exchanges with them.  I even recognize some of the same faces on these different sites and it’s kind of cool.

Ultimately, Digg is what it is and it will have a loyal following for a long time to come.  Inherently, Digg’s pretty cool and it’s the benchmark that any other social news site will be measured against.  That is an amazing accomplishment.  Just look at how many blogs and news outlets have added plug-ins and apps to support social news sites.  It’s an amazing revolution and Digg undoubtedly made that happen.  Kudos for a paradigm shift in newsreading!

On a personal level, while I respect the big D, it’s not working for me.  I will maintain some kind of presence there, but I’m going to concentrate my time and energy elsewhere.  That’s what I’ll enjoy the most rather than to work my butt off in the hopes of making Digg’s front page.  As good as it is, Digg is just too big of a gig for me to dig.