Unpopular Opinion: Digg Revolt Is a Bad Precedent

Unless you've been away from the computer for the last 24 hours, you are likely familiar with yesterday's amazing mob-like takeover of the Digg site by its users, angry about the site's removal of a submitted story which offered up a code removing copy protection from HD-DVDs on Linux. While the crack itself was esoteric, and probably didn't mean a hill of beans to the vast majority of the site's users, the ensuing take-down was the effect of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, spawning hundreds and hundreds of follow-on submissions that swamped the front page, even leading to the eventual, short-term shutdown of the site late yesterday.

Amid the din, Digg tried to explain its stance, saying they had to comply with copyright owners. But that just fanned the flames, and eventually, Digg founder Kevin Rose capitulated, saying "Today was an insane day" and added "We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code..."

The inmates had taken over the asylum.

Response to the melee is a lot like rubbernecking on the freeway. Everybody, jaws agape, had something to say on the subject, from TechCrunch and Mashable!, to parislemon to Digg competitor Slashdot. Many are cheering on the user base. Others are wondering if the takedown notice was even valid in the first place. But to me, as fun as it is to watch the mob, I absolutely see where Digg was coming from, and the response, to give the users what they want, is in dangerous territory.

Yesterday's explosion was around a code most of us would never use. But what is to stop the next round of Digg mobbery from promoting software piracy as Microsoft Windows Vista registration codes are passed around, or the latest TV shows and films are posted to BitTorrent? As Digg had first said yesterday, "We’ve been notified by the owners of this intellectual property that they believe the posting of the encryption key infringes their intellectual property rights." But the sheer volume of users took over, and changed the rules. If enough of the mob decides tomorrow that leaking a DIVX copy of the new Simpsons movie online is the topic du jour of the day, they could again revolt against Digg and make sure that Digg's hands are tied. Now, there's precedent that Digg will walk away from a tough fight, when it threatens to cripple the popular site.

There is a population on the Web all too happy to find new ways to get something for free - whether they be film and TV downloads or MP3 files, software or pornography. Now that Digg has shown it can be used for nefarious methods, another barrier has been taken down between the Internet's dark side and those who have always followed the rules.

How Much RSS is Too Much RSS?

Engadget's Ryan Block asks the question today. "Is Engadget’s daily wall-to-wall coverage too much of a good thing?" Are subscribers to the Engadget feed, who can anticipate upwards of 30 new stories a day, inundated by having too much to read, some of which might not find their fancy?

The issue is a very real one for us on the bleeding edge of information consumption. For those of us RSS wonks who have upwards of 100 or so individual feeds, finding the time to read hundreds of posts on all topics can be a demanding task. I consistently scroll through 500 or so articles on Google Reader every weekday, and about half that number on the weekend. Engadget is one of the most prolific blogs, usurping even ESPN.com's main feed.

According to my Google Reader Trends, Engadget posted 28.3 items per day over the last 30 days. Of those 848 items, I read 100% of them. Only an aggregate newsfeed I developed for work was more busy, tagging me with new items 42.7 times a day. The other mega-feeds? ESPN.com with 26.8 items, TechMeme with 22.8, Slashdot with 20.4, Eschaton with 18.5, Talking Points Memo with 15.2, Daily Kos with 14.6, and Mashable with 14.4 posts daily.

Combined, those alone tally more than 200 posts a day, good for 40% of my reading. But in terms of quality over quantity, Engadget is among the very best. I've considered unsubscribing from Slashdot, which seems to lag Digg or Engadget these days. I actually did unsubscribe from Boing Boing a few weeks ago because the signal to noise ratio was too high. I've also considered reducing my political feeds like Eschaton and Talking Points Memo, which tend to be duplicates or feature too many "New Open Thread" type posts that don't add value to the RSS reader.

As Ryan asks what the solution is, I would argue that in Engadget's case, it's not to write less through reducing the amount of posts that are accepted. Instead, it's to better let readers know that reduced sets of feeds are available on specific topics. Engadget, like ESPN.com and other busy sites, offers the ability to subscribe to channels dedicated to Gaming, HDTV, Storage or Wireless, for example. Rather than get all 30 stories a day, the focused reader would get 2 to 10. It's not about reducing options, it's about being a smarter consumer.

I see the onus to be on the reader to better maintain their consumption of news than it is on the newsmaker to reduce their output. In the world of massive information, we as consumers should get ever more adept about how we get our news, and how we share it. So Ryan, don't worry about us being forced to read too much. Let us make the hard decisions, and you keep focused on bringing the news.

Blogosphere Kicks Off April Fools Early

The very best April Fools jokes have just enough truth in them for somebody to secretly want them to be true, and to be delivered in such a way that the person being pranked isn't 100 percent sure the joke's on them.

On the Web, Google has made this a black art of sorts, between their "launch" of Google Romance and Google Mars, interspersed with their very real launch of GMail in 2004 that had everybody confused as to whether anybody in their right mind would offer a full gigabyte of e-mail for free. We all know how that turned out. It was real. Those of us (including me) who were sure it was a prank were fooled.

This year, it looks like the blogosphere couldn't keep quiet long enough for the calendars to officially flip to April 1 in the United States. TechCrunch kicked off the festivities by "announcing" they had acquired Phil Kaplan's F***edCompany.com, effectively bringing their coverage of the startup space full circle - from their launch to their eventual death. Many people, including Dave Winer of Scripting.com, were fooled. This was no doubt due in part to ValleyWag's earlier coverage that the famed dotcom deadpool site was up for sale.

That one was good. Very good. Mathew Ingram thought so as well.

Now, Robert Scoble is back from his self-imposed blog exile, saying that Apple is set to release yet another i-Device, called iReader, in collaboration with Cingular, Amazon and Google. I guess if you make up a rumor, you might as well go whole-hog and drop a bunch of company names in there. I'm surprised Nintendo didn't make the cut. He went the tried and true Apple rumor route, citing an unnamed Apple executive dumb enough to use it in public. It might have been too soon for Robert to return to the blogosphere, but hopefully his scoop won't rank among the best by the conclusion of tomorrow.

Last year's April 1 pranks were pretty good. My favorites were Slashdot.org's changing their look and feel from industrial green to My Little Pony pink and China offering to buy Google. (See last year's summary here)

We look forward to more silliness in this most silly of holidays.

Digg Hits 1 Million Users - World Domination Next

There's rapid growth, and then there's exponential growth. If you're a growing Web-based business like Digg, where the massive number of users and page views can be monetized to accelerate revenue, the latter is clearly much more preferred, and today, Digg founder Kevin Rose was excited to announce the site had passed the 1 million user mark, in just over two years after the site's start. Crossing the milestone signals continued expansion for the site, which has eclipsed Slashdot in tech news relevance, if not yet in total users, and has become a go-to site to see the day's popular news and oddities.

While the achievement is fantastic, and as Rose mentioned, "a point I never dreamed of", Digg isn't the only Web 2.0 company to reach such an illustrious mark.

* StumbleUpon achieved 1 million users in July of 2006, four years after its inception, and, like Digg, enables users to submit stories and rate them. (Source: Mashable)

* Del.icio.us reported 1 million users in September 2006, just under three years since its start, and saw its growth accelerate following acquisition by Yahoo! earlier that year. In fact, at the time, reporters lauded the service for being much larger than Digg. (Source: TechCrunch)

* In January, Second Life said they were set to exceed 3 million users, and that 1 million of those accounts had logged in during the previous two months. (Source: Second Life Insider)

* LinkedIn says they have more than 9 million subscribers, with 1,070,300 or so being 3 degrees away or less in my network alone.

Meanwhile, Slashdot, the original Digg-like story submission engine, has well more than 1,000,000 users, even if they don't have all the buzz. I clocked in as user 104,197 some time back in 1999, though I haven't been all that active, constantly reading, occasionally submitting stories, but mostly just watching.

What does this mean? Simply that the Web has a lot of active users interested in sharing news and information, and that the most popular brands will quickly gather millions of users if they offer differentiated services. That Digg has gotten there as fast as it has is quite laudable, if not a surprise. Good luck on your race to 10 million, Digg.

Digg Running Circles Around Slashdot for Tech News

Slashdot used to be the ultimate site for all news geek-related. If you got your news article or blog post on the front page of Slashdot, it was hallowed ground, promising tremendous traffic. One of the Internet's new media pioneers, the site relies on users to submit articles, and for these articles to be selected by one of a handful of editors for addition to Slashdot's front page. Yet, for the latest tech news, Digg not only has a wider range of articles, but front-page news hits that community much more quickly. By the time the news hits Slashdot, it's almost guaranteed I've already read it.

Today, it was announced that Viacom asked YouTube to remove more than 100,000 videos, ostensibly for copyright infringement. By early morning, Digg user "tommytrc" posted a Reuters story announcing the demand.

Less than an hour after his submission, the story had received enough Diggs to be considered popular, making the front page. As of 9:30 pacific time, it had received 897 diggs, and 134 comments.



Yet, it wasn't until 7:30 p.m. pacific time that it reached the front page of Slashdot, more than 10 hours later.



The second most recent important story on Slashdot at the same time, covers a growing lawsuit against Nvidia by Vista users who feel misled by the graphics card manufacturer. It reached the site shortly after 5 p.m. Pacific tonight.



Yet, on Digg, the same frustrations toward Nvidia had erupted nearly two days ago, in a piece submitted by "sadonomic" called "Nvidia - Peeing on the Vista Community?", which garnered 570 diggs, and more than 200 comments.



If Slashdot is to regain its lead in tech news against newcomers like Digg, which rely more on community participation and voting than editor moderation, it will have to make massive changes. Unlike traditional journalism, Slashdot's editors don't author original stories, or add much of an editorial bias, so their role as gatekeepers is highly limited. If the site's editors aren't there to add value, but instead, just to add time, users, like me, are going to move to Digg and leave Slashdot behind.