A few days back I wrote an article on how I thought Digg was actually doing better in 2011. After getting a great response from both Diggers and the Digg staff I decided to write another article on this. It turns out that there are lots of people out there who have moved to Reddit only because they don’t get to see what they want on Digg i.e more stories. From what I have observed I’ve seen that the front page gets jammed for at least 8-10 hours a day which leaves no reason for these guys to visit Digg often. This happened yesterday (Tuesday, at peak hours)
And just right now I have this on “My News” page
As you can see there are only 5 stories in 3 hours on both images.. Let’s not talk about good or bad stories right now, the thing is there aren’t any stories at all. Before Digg does anything else for us I guess they need to fix the front page. And after being stuck for so long this is what is made popular
Again, I’m not saying they don’t deserve to be on the front page but there are lots of other worthy stories that had been waiting in the queue for so long. This could be another reason why people don’t enjoy Digg as much as they use to?
Also, I have personally talked to several known(power) diggers and most of them told me that they still prefer Digg over Reddit but for some very obvious reasons they think it’s just not worth coming back on Digg again and again. Here are a few comments I got on my earlier submission.
After getting in touch with the Digg staff (thanks Will for answering all the questions) and the Diggers I have got answers to some of the many questions we had for Digg. Check it out
Just when people noticed some good changes on Digg it’s front page is getting stuck more often and sometimes for so long even I hardly come back to check out stories. I really hope before Digg makes any other changes they fix this first.
It has always been the users that ran Digg and I strongly believe that for now only if they fix the front page issue they will see a huge increase in terms of both users and traffic.
Feel free to use the comment box below and let us know what you think.
If you still have Diggs staff’s ear:
When will users be able to remove followers / block users?
I’d been reading Digg and Reddit casually for years and have been watching this Digg V4 fiasco with fascination. I can’t remember seeing a web company handle an upgrade like this so poorly. It seems like they barely tested V4 and just forced it on their users with the maturity of an alpha release.
But I figured they would quickly work through the problems. Now it’s months later and I see Digg loyalists are still complaining about the same fundamental issues. I’m a programmer…it doesn’t take that long to fix these types of things if there’s a commitment to make the users happy.
Now it’s just getting sad…give up on Digg already. Their management is clearly incompetent and they don’t care about their users.
Speaking as a social news veteran with experience on both sites…
For God’s sake, don’t compare Reddit and ask where you’re failing! True, the Reddit front page changes every minute – what you’re not taking into account is that 99% of the submissions are the worst, most circle-jerking spam on the web! It’s all self-posts, “pity me”, “hurr, water’s wet! duh!”, ranting crackpots, and repeats of repeats of repeats. You don’t need 25 links submitted every ten minutes to all point you to one story.
As a redditor that comes accross to digg occasionally, i’d concur that the front page seems jammed with old stories and it moves much more slowly.
in fact the only reason i come to digg is that i’ve blocked myself from reddit at home as it’s too addictive, too easy to keep chasing the new stuff, even if it’s all dross.
Another worrying trend is the number of US sports stories that make it to the front page and get stuck there for ages, i don’t know or care which manager of some football/bascketball/baseball team has been talked about in the press… and i cant beleive most new/casual users do either. unless digg is super-US centric.
I’d be disspointed if it were so local… but maybe it is.
anyway, i kind of like it sucking, it keeps me from spending so long staring at the glowing screen and i go and get on with life.
i was a huge digg fan, but have gone to reddit. i wouldn’t say that reddits posts are not viewworthy, they are just different. with reddit you get a sense of community, whereas digg was mostly just interesting links. i still miss it though… every time i come back to digg it’s mostly links that have ”sponsored by” written under them. and that sux
Digg made one huge mistake that will continue to alienate users like me until they fix it. The whole idea of Digg was to share news in a social way. You could have friends just like Facebook, and you would be able to RSS your friend’s submissions. Yes, this creates power users, but users who spend more time on Digg and digg more stories should not be punished or restricted.
I think everyone can agree, the interface is a lot better and more responsive. However, they took away features that everyone loved while upgrading the interface.
I still have no idea if some of my old friends follow me or if I follow them. All stories dugg by all my friends are funneled into one long, gigantic list. I wish I could just view their submissions. If I want to look at other people’s digging activities, I will do that myself. I don’t need Digg to tell me how my news feed looks.
In short, Digg took away choice. The people want it back, but Digg believes they know what’s best for us. What was so great about the old Digg was that anyone could have a shot at making the front page. Whether it was an article from a mainstream news site or an unknown blog entry, everyone had a chance to make the front page. And users who digg more and participate more should be rewarded.
I am confident Digg will improve on the things where it lags behind. Also, this will make it more responsible.