Digg
| Digg logo | |
| Digg main page Digg main page as of December 18th, 2006 | |
Type of site | News aggregation site |
|---|---|
| Owner | Digg |
| Created by | Kevin Rose |
| Employees | 18 |
| URL | http://www.digg.com/ |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Free |
Digg is a community-based popularity website with an emphasis on technology and science articles. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system. This differs from the hierarchical editorial system that many other news sites employ.
Functionality
Readers can view all of the stories that have been submitted by fellow users in the "digg/All/Upcoming" section of the site. Once a story has received enough "diggs", it appears on Digg's front page. Should the story not receive enough diggs, or if enough users report a problem with the submission, the story will remain in the "digg all" area, where it may eventually be removed.
Articles are short summaries of stories on other websites with links to the stories, and provisions for readers to comment on the story. All content and access to the site is free, but registration is compulsory for certain elements, such as promoting ("digging") stories, submitting stories and commenting on stories. Digg also allows for stories to be posted to a user's blog automatically when he or she diggs a story.
Originally, stories could be submitted in sixteen different categories which include: deals, gaming, links, mods, music, robots, security, technology, Apple, design, hardware, Linux/Unix, movies, programming, science and software. With the release of Digg 3.0 on June 26, 2006, the categories became divided into 6 containers: Technology, Science, World & Business, Video, Entertainment, Gaming, with sub-categories. For instance, the "Technology" container includes the following categories: Apple, Design, Gadgets, Hardware, Tech Industry News, Linux/Unix, Mods, Programming, Security, Software and Tech Deals. On July 21, 2006, a Sports container was added.
Problem reporting
To help remove duplicate, spam or offensive story submissions, Digg.com allows users to report such posts. When a story has been reported enough times, depending on the section the story is in, it is automatically removed from the queue and/or buried by the Digg software.
Story reporting options include duplicate story, spam, wrong topic, inaccurate, and "OK, this is lame."
Comment rating
On March 4, 2006, Digg switched to a new comment system. The new system allows users to reply to another user's comment, although replying to a reply of another comment is not possible.
Digg users are able to rate other users' comments, which is designed so that spam and/or offensive comments stay hidden. User comments are under a 'digg' system much like the stories on the rest of the site. User comments can be 'dugg', making them more visible, or 'buried' making a comment hidden until the user clicks a "show comment" link. While the default view is "-4 diggs or higher", users can change the comments filter to sort by "most diggs" "show all" "-10 diggs or higher" "+0 diggs or higher" "+5 diggs or higher" or "+10 diggs or higher".
Friends Activity
The friends activity box in the left sidebar displays statistics of all Digg friends in the last 48 hours. This includes the number of Dugg stories, the number of Agreed On stories (2 or more friends have "dugg it"), the number of Dugg Upcoming stories, the number of Commented On stories and finally the number of Submitted articles.
Media previews
As of 20 December 2006, the site provides thumbnail previews of any submissions from YouTube, Metacafe or Google Video. These are placed to the right of the article's link. In addition, the site has thumbnail previews for flickr albums.
History
Digg started out as an experiment in November 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson (who serves as CEO), all of whom currently play an active role in the management of the site.
"We started working on developing the site back in October 2004," Kevin Rose told Richard MacManus of ZDNet[1] "We started toying around with the idea a couple of months prior to that, but it was early October when we actually started creating what would become the beta version of digg. The site launched to the world on December 5th 2004."
Kevin Rose's friend David Prager (The Screen Savers, This Week in Tech) originally wanted to call the site “Diggnation”, but Kevin wanted a simpler name. He chose the name "Digg", because users are able to "dig" stories, out of those submitted, up to the front page. The site was called “Digg” instead of “Dig” because the domain name “dig.com” was previously registered. “Diggnation” would eventually be used as the title of Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht's weekly podcast.
The original design was free of advertisements, and was designed by Dan Ries. As Digg became more popular, Google AdSense was added to the website. In July 2005, the site was updated to "Version 2.0". The new "version" featured a friends list, the ability to "digg" a story without being redirected to a "success" page, and a new interface designed. The site developers have stated that in future versions a more minimalist design will likely be employed. On Monday June 26, 2006 version 3 of Digg was released with specific categories for Technology, Science, World & Business, Videos, Entertainment and Gaming as well as a View All section where all categories are merged.
Digg has grown large enough that submissions sometimes create a sudden increase of traffic to the "dugg" website. This is referred to by some Digg users as the "Digg effect" and by some others as the site being "dugg to death". However, in many cases stories are linked simultaneously on several popular bookmarking sites. In such cases, the impact of the "digg effect" is difficult to isolate and assess.
Online vigilantism
Digg is often used to spur other Internet users into vigilantism, which has resulted in action both on and offline. In several cases members have, presumably in acts of vigilante justice, flooded Internet websites and businesses with DDoS attacks in response to stories posted by single users.
Criticism
Digg has come under criticism in the media and in the blogosphere, for varying reasons. Most complaints are centered around the site's form of user-moderation: some feel the users have too much control over content, allowing sensationalism and misinformation to thrive;[2] others, mostly former and current users, have expressed outrage that the site's operators may exercise too much control over which articles appear on the front page.[3]
See also
References
- ^ MacManus, Richard (2006-02-01). "Interview with Digg founder Kevin Rose, Part 1". ZDNet. Retrieved 2006-07-15.
- ^ http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/01/digging_the_madness_of_crowds.html
- ^ http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1761697,00.html
External links
- Digg.com
- Interview with Kevin Rose - the founder of Digg
- Speech of Kevin Rose - Kevin Rose talks about Digg.com at a Carson Workshop (41 min)
- How Digg Works, HowStuffWorks