The idea that Google Reader could become the ultimate Digg-killer first came up about two weeks ago. Since then, Google Reader has taken another step towards this by providing statistics for a person’s feeds. But when these statistics are collated together from all users, Google Reader could become very similar to Digg.
When Google Reader becomes social and democratic (i.e. Digg), I wouldn’t be surprised at all. I think that every content producer will eventually have some sort of voting system (rather than the old-fashioned rating system). This is bound to happen and Digg might be affected most by such a change. If you analyse Digg more closely, you will see that the concept there is not fundamentally very unique (it is only the user’s perception that it is different). Answer this question. How is Digg different from del.icio.us? Only in that Digg positions itself as an aggregator of interesting news stories while del.icio.us is an aggregator of interesting bookmarks. Another difference is that in del.icio.us, popularity is determined by saves rather than by the number of diggs. But on the surface, it seems that digg and del.icio.us are two very different websites. The difference between Stumble Upon and Digg is not very large, too.
Digg is essentially an aggregator and it is only useful if a large number of people use it. Aggregators only work in niches/areas where there is no single dominant content-providers. The blogosphere definitely isn’t dominated by a small group of bloggers and that’s why Digg is quite successful. Considering the high adoption rate of Google Reader (still in beta), it is possible that if nearly everyone uses the same reader, then there would be no need for a “middleman” like Digg. The online video market is vastly different. Youtube is super-dominant in this area (by which I mean that there are few videos that are solely available on some other video site excluding copyrighted content obviously). I am surprised that Youtube’s featured videos are not voted by users. I have been waiting for them to implement digg-like features on their site for a long time but nothing so far. The lack of such a feature is being exploited by StumbleUpon Video and Digg Video. In general, I have been greatly disappointed with Youtube, you only need to look at Videos section (it is filled with fakes, poorly done, movies because it sorted by views not by diggs). Navigation and discovery of new videos is a big problem with Youtube. They could add many new neccessary features like better, advanced searching but unfornutaly, they aren’t doing much and consequently, they are worse than some new video startups. Then again, Youtube has a wealth of videos which would take forever for these smaller sites to accumalate and so, there is some kind of lock-in.
As Digg is not a content-producer nor is it a personalised aggregator, it will be in a vulnerable position soon. Its popularity has soared throughout 2006 because since its beginnings, people have doubted the idea that user-voted and editor-less systems will work. The debate still continues and Digg is constantly surrounded with controversies. But Digg hasn’t given up and ultmately, democracy will always win (just like in Wikipedia). But once all sites come to realise that “democracy might be shaky but in the end works”, then they will implement Digg-like features in their site,too. We are already seeing this on ZDNet and other sites. How will Digg maintain its audience then?
As Greylock’s Sze pointed out (one of the investors in Digg) after Digg’s second round of funding,
Digg is unlikely to be sold anytime soon, and is more likely to focus on partnering with other sites that have expressed interest in integrating Digg’s format into their own sites.
That is one way in which Digg , the pioneer of this concept, can survive in the future. Another way is that they could be the ones who facilitate interaction between readers of the same story (they do this with comments now but they could come up with more innovative ways; sometimes, comments are more interesting than the story itself). But Google is better positioned to this, as well because they could integrate GChat and their groups with stories on Google Reader. Anyway, Digg has created a strong culture which will prevent many users from switching out (although, everyday, more people are becoming disatisfied).
In conclusion, what I intended to convey through this post was that users voting to find the best content on a site will take the place of an editor or critic. As I have been told so many times when designing a website, “It doesn’t matter what you think is cool, it only matters what millions of your users think is cool”. And the only fool-proof way to find out what users like is by votes or diggs not by ratings (five-star system) or page views. So, digg will soon become a verb (there is no better to call “voting up”; Techcrunch tried to be neutral and use “up a story” instead but it just doesn’t sound right). Hence, the future is going to be filled with diggs, duggs and burieds. Every site will become Digg.
1 Comment
January 7, 2007 at 8:08 pm
dude, check out encyclopedia dramatica’s page on digg. it’s funny and sickeningly true.