Posts Tagged ‘digg’
Read Digg’s top stories? Subscribe to Feeddit
February 11th, 2009 • 2 comments
Tags: digg, Feeddit, feeds, Internet, News, rss, social news, Tech
Lost In Technology has written a post on a feed I have been using for a while now called Feeddit. I like to track the top stories on Digg. However, Digg’s RSS feed is really a mess if you ask me. The biggest problem: each story’s link tag goes to the Digg page rather than that story. So, here’s the scenario. I’m surfing along through my feeds with Google Reader (check out my video tutorial). I see a Digg post I want to read. I press the ‘v’ key to open the story. This opens a new tab with the Digg page for the story. I click the title of the story, and only now do I get yet another tab to read the actual story. This may not really sound like a big deal, but when you’re staring at an unread count of 1000+ (the highest count that registers on Google Reader) knowing that a good chunk of those are Digg stories, you want to burn through them pretty quickly so that you can filter out the good stuff from the crap. Those extra clicks, page loads, and tab closings really slow the process to a crawl.
Feeddit provides a remedy to this problem and them some. The feed item’s link is now directed to the actual story. Hurray! In addition, the poster’s name is included underneath the title of the story. The Digg count is included under the summary along with the comment count. Both of these link to the Digg page for the story making it easy to participate on Digg without shoving it down your throat every single story. I always want to view the article before I comment or digg it. Feeddit gives me a feed that makes sense for that workflow.
Now, where is the reddit analog to this?
Digg founder and CEO address problem of “power users”
January 23rd, 2009 •
Tags: backlash, digg, interview, Jay Adelson, Kevin Rose, reddit, social news
Digg.com is an excellent resource for the hottest content on the web. In recent weeks, there has been something of a backlash amongst the Digg community over a major problem many users perceive: “power users” gaming the system. Digg allows users to post stories. Then other users may vote for a story (“digg” it). As a story receives diggs, it has a higher chance of making it to the homepage where it will immediately see a major traffic surge. As such, front page real estate on digg is a highly valued commodity. This is a highly simplified explanation of how the site works as there is a complex algorithm that determines a story’s front-page-worthiness, but this is the gist of what is happening.
Many users feel that a small percentage of users have a much better chance of hitting the homepage with a story even if another user broke the story first. In my estimation, this is largely true. It seems that some users are able to exploit their networks to force their stories to the top. This brings about a couple of questions. First, is this even a problem? These power users have done something to build the networks they have. Should they not be entitled to use them? Secondly, if this is a problem, how can it be fixed? Is there any way to prevent the system from being abused while also maintaining its democratic nature?
Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson talked to the LA Times and addressed these and other issues. Below is an excerpt from the interview in which they directly address the problem of “power users.”
A lot of Digg users seem to complain about the high percentage of front-page stories submitted by top users. Should the average user realistically expect to be able to get a story to the front page, or should they understand that it’s way more complex than just pressing “submit” and crossing your fingers?
Rose: You have to realize that out of the tens of thousands of stories that are on the Web, we only promote 100 to 130ish a day. So your shot at getting on the homepage is already pretty small. Then you have to look at, who are the people that are the taste makers and the ones that are living and breathing this stuff, and the first to find a story and submit it -– there’s a certain dedicated core group of users that are out there doing that kind of thing.
But every single day we promote people on the front page that have never had a story up there — people who managed to find a really unique, strange article that no one else has seen before.
Adelson: Or if they break news –- there are lots of first-time promotions from people who found or submitted a story at the moment of publication. If that happens, that person might get promoted first, just because it’s the first version of that story.
But how would anyone notice the submission if it was from an unknown user?
Adelson: They see it in the Upcoming sections. There’s another section of Diggers combing through the new submissions.
Rose: They also get the recommendation based on who that user is and who they’re tied to.
Their friend network…
Rose: Yeah, but even if they don’t have a friend network, it’s linked to their “similar user” network. That’s where the recommendation engine is. So let’s say you’re digging a story on the Audi R8 — and you don’t have any friends on Digg, but you love Audi R8 stories. We’re going to know that and spread that story to similar diggers, and they’ll see it when they go into the Upcoming section.
And that’s where we’ll be going in the future -– we’ll be providing a more customized view of our front page, and promotion at a different level to different interest groups. So if my mom comes in and she’s huge into cross stitch, she should have a place where she can submit a story and it’ll spread to all those similar users. Where we’re going will be a more personalized experience that everyone can participate in -– not just a certain niche like we have today –- we want to expand it into smaller niches.
Be sure to check out the full interview at the LA Times.
It seems to me they don’t really perceive this as a problem at the moment. Hopefully, the new measures to prevent duplicate submission will allow some of us mortal users to get stories on the page when we do in fact submit them first, but I don’t really see the power users digging articles they would rather submit themselves. I think Digg is about power for them, and, even if they see that a story they want to submit is submitted by someone else first, they will be unlikely to Digg since there is no benefit to themselves.
I have actually noticed this phenomenon myself and have moved most of my activity in the social news space to reddit. It seems much less susceptible to these problems. I have had a couple of stories hit the front page there with zero network.
Post your thoughts in the comments. What are your favorite social news sites? Do you believe power users are gaming Digg and ruining it for the rest of us?