Digg did not listen to warnings of a popular resource user.

A popular user of the Digg project, distinguished by his calm behavior, said that he had warned the management of a popular resource many months ago about the negative reaction that the resource faced now.
“Keep in mind, I first expressed my concern about the Digg team in March when I was invited to watch Digg Alpha (the new version of the portal), so they were aware of what was going on,” said Andy Sorchin, also known as MrBabyMan (in the photo above, he and co-founder and CEO of the Digg project, Kevin Rose).

Critics, constructive and not so much that the site has received from its users, have been very much lately, since Kevin Rose launched a new, fourth version of the site. Users accused Rose and his team of imitating the yellow press on the Top News page.

The fact is that after the launch of the new Digg, many popular functions that fell in love with the resource users disappeared, the mechanism of displaying articles in the top changed - and popular news began to show frank advertising and “yellow” headlines with which ordinary news media sin to increase traffic. Rose said his team is actively working to correct the “source of contention.”

“I think the Digg team certainly expected a reaction, but hardly so strong,” Sorchin said. "I think that they sincerely want the site to be equally suited to the needs of both companies and individual users, but when it comes to the preferred direction of development for the site, they take the money to enable the site to continue to exist."
')
Sorcini lives in Los Angeles and works as an editor on TV. Digg has always been a site where he could spend some of his free time. For all the time he brought in the top almost 4,500 articles, and they were published on the main page. There are only a few people who knew the third version of the site better. Given the large number of errors in the next version, the conclusion is that the reorganization was done in a hurry.

“I honestly do not know what could motivate developers to launch a site of this magnitude with so many errors,” Sorchini complained.

Many visitors believe that due to the increased negative reaction of users, the popularity of the portal will decrease and sooner or later this will lead to the closure of the project, if not to make changes. But MrBabyMan doesn't think so. “Due to the participation of large companies in the project, Digg is now too“ big ”to just die. But, unfortunately, they do not listen to the words of their key users, who ensured the popularity of the site. It looks like Digg is ready to lose them, in order to ensure the operation of its new business model. Has the number of visitors dropped? Perhaps this is due to the instability of the site at the moment. But I think that I have to go at least a month before talking about the fate of Digg, ”Sorcini said.


Andy believes that the changes in Digg are similar to what happened to Napster many years ago, and should serve as an example for its owners. “This is equivalent to what happened after Napster became legal,” he said. “The name remains the same, but the service has become completely different. Napster version 1.0 was a place where users could merge and share content. Unfortunately for Napster, the huge popularity and one-sided coverage, with an emphasis on the illegality of content in the media, led him to the final. What made Napster re-discovered with the progenitor is just the same name. It has become a legal resource with paid content. But now we can say that the new Napster turned out to be profitable in the end, and sites that want to go the same way will lose their soul. (which is what happened with Napster) "

Last week, he wrote to Rose, and asked not to forget about ordinary users, with the help of which the site develops. And drew attention to competitors who gain popularity, while earning and keeping a balance between ordinary users and the desire to please companies that pay money for publications.

So far, Digg's response to dissatisfaction was the return of several of the most popular features of the old version, such as RSS feeds and the section in which articles fall into place before appearing in the top. Sorchini believes that this is good news, but Digg advises to return all the best that was in the third version of the site, while maintaining the overall concept of the fourth version.

It is difficult to say exactly what will happen with Digg and its users further. The discontent has grown into something more and looks quite serious. Rose spent a lot of time to assure users that changes will be made. Perhaps they will soon reassure angry users. Time will tell.

material venturebeat