Archeology Digg

About the present

Being an active user of Digg.com in the past, I, like many others, are upset by the oblivion of the once-super-popular news delivery service. But, apparently, the time has come: Kevin Rose is leaving his brainchild, and the largest online publications like TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb write notes in the style of an obituary.



Even despite the 20 million unique visitors per month, the rise in time spent by the average user on the main page, and the activity in the comments, everyone is inclined to the main idea - Digg will never be what it was two or three, and more years ago.



The current CEO Matt Williams ( Matt Williams ), however, is still optimistic about the future. But it does not have that riskiness that was in Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose. And despite the forecast for profitability this year, the growing profitability of advertising and the still active, albeit small, audience, 35 employees are unlikely to repeat the success of two guys with a good idea.

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Despite all this, Williams plans to breathe life into a dying project: “In a year from now, Digg will be completely different. We will deliver fantastic news products, and besides this there will be many other things for the new reader. ” And let this phrase be so vague that almost nothing can be learned from it, some details of the upcoming changes nevertheless became known to the curious blogger.

About future

Firstly, it is safe to talk about the (next) upcoming redesign of the main page of Digg.com . Let me remind you that the current version is already the fourth since the opening of the service, and the next one, respectively, will be the fifth. Despite the changes, the essence of Digg will remain the same, if it still interests someone.



Williams argues that: “People still read 4 to 6 news sites every day. This is an opportunity for digg. Of course, everyone today receives a bunch of news from friends on Facebook and Twitter, but this is not a complete picture. ”



In a conversation with the current CEO of Digg, who was left to look after the cemetery, you can also hear about the use of social networks (between users) and the graph of interests in order to provide the reader with relevant news.



The problem here is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to do. After all, almost every startup dreams of a web page that is individually customized for a specific reader / visitor. Partly for the reason that the “news content” is perceived by all equally, regardless of where you discuss it: in the kitchen of the office near the kettle, or in the fashionable restaurant in the center. Another view of this problem reveals another plane - no one, in fact, knows what people want to consume, and when they want it.



And if Digg, in its current guise, will be able to catch the necessary wave, it is quite possible that the second dawn of this once-unique service will come. If not - then, most likely, there is no sense to flounder further in shallow water, and never will.



However, Matt Williams is ready for such a development. And the important role in its readiness is also played by the fact that Digg will not need the investors' money soon. Former CEO Jay Adelson said that the company focused on achieving profitability about two years ago, when the number of users began to fall due to the rapid growth of Twitter - after all, most active diggers went there, who never returned.



Adelson noted that this decision was not ideal, but optimal for his time: too much fat had to be cut off, and muscles were quickly pumped in to raise advertiser money. Williams, on the contrary, says that the lack of finances usually pushes to make the right decisions. As soon as Digg, in its current form, finds the leading product in its model, they will be able to pump it up with money to accelerate growth. If you wish, of course.

About the editors

Before starting the longest part of today's narrative (actually archaeological), let me make a small digression and write a couple of lines about the editorial board, which historically wasn’t on Digg until November last year, when the editors of rubrics were first announced, quick distribution of the most interesting content.



At this point, I cannot fail to quote Anton Nosik , who in my opinion is one of the most experienced people in the network media environment in Russia.



“The history of the rise and fall of the social bookmarking industry is quite instructive. This is, in essence, a story about collective intelligence. Which is able to keep Wikipedia and bash.org afloat, but, alas, did not cope with the comprehension of the news flow, nor with the cataloging of the web.

In this connection, it remains only to repeat what I have repeatedly written here before. To bring information into a stable, interesting format, the reader needs an editorial, a selection and editorial policy is needed. ”



To those who decide to pass by this passage due to a dislike for dolboeb, I still advise you not to make such a mistake. For, as we shall see, Mr. Nosik knows his business quite well, but does not say the most important thing - that in any media community based on the principles of UGC (user content), sooner or later so-called appear. “Opinion leaders”, in effect replacing the paid (and therefore acting in the interests of the project) editorial board. Sometimes effective (as it happens on Habrahabr, for example), and sometimes - not very. That “not really” just happened to Digg.

About the past

As I have already noted, the Digg.com audience is still quite impressive (20 million unique per month), but it is decreasing with each month, if not during the day. If it seemed to you that Digg came down recently - you have never used this service for its intended purpose, which means you are not aware of the backstage intrigues that actually became the apple of discord among users inside the site. The Digg model crisis came at least three years ago, and was much more complicated than many people remember.





^{Rose for the first time shows Digg to the whole world after weeks from the start on the popular TV show Screen Savers. Without saying a word that this is his own project}



This story is worth starting with the fact that Digg, although it was one of the brightest exhibits of the Web 2.0 era, characterized as “no one will give you money until you have millions of users,” was more like a powerful shot from a shotgun edge than an exact flight tracer projectile.



It’s not even the case that Jay Adelson, who is at the helm of three Silicon Valley companies at the same time, joined Digg in the role of CEO 2 months after the start of the service. And not in the fact that after 11 months from the start, the two founders of the company announced an investment of $ 3 million from a group of super star angels, including people like: Ron Conway (his nickname is “Valley Godfather” - he was one from Google’s first investors), Marc Andreessen (co-founder of Netscape and a very successful capitalist today), Reid Hoffmann (founder of LinkedIn and a friend of almost all the idols of the Valley), Pierre Omidar (co-founder of eBay) and others.



Do you see at least one unknown person here? They were not there. This suggests that Digg, on the one hand, was almost a fatal shot in the direction of traditional media, and on the other, a large and very risky game of elite Silicon Valley insiders. They lost for one reason or another. Nevertheless, former users of Digg agree that the culture inside the service itself was not very clean, even if it worked well for the benefit of media traffic. And that's why.

MrBabyMan

Andrew Sorsini (Andrew Sorcini) lived in Los Angeles, worked as an animator at Disney and was once the most influential user on Digg.com , without exaggeration. Known on Digg and generally in the network, under the nickname MrBabyMan, Sorsini for all the time of his participation in the project sent more than 2,500 news items, and each of his topic was raised to the main page.



His news, in total, generated about 50 million views of various pages to which they were leading. Most, of course, to various sites of IT-orientation, which list does not make sense.



For months, a small group of millions of other users of the service complained that one could see 3-4 news on the main page from MrBabyMan every day. However, his successes have faded against the background of a single image exposing Sorsini to stealing news from other Digg users.







Her story is quite remarkable: in May 2008, Sorsini posted a picture on the left of Digg, criticizing the stimulation plan of the US government, and realizing that he was far from the only one who came up with a similar analogy (the caricature is quite well-known). On the same day, after midnight, the picture on the right appeared on the main Digg page, put there by a user named Kimberly Vogt, a programmer from Law Enforcement National Security Agency Lawrence, the girlfriend of one of Digg's employees, who had Friends were almost the entire top of a startup.



In the first approximation, it all looks quite harmless: the caricature was in the category "Humor", and Vogt herself said that "she did not try to hurt or offend anyone."



Intentionally or not, she provoked the first ever Digg holivar, which can be called the “beginning of the end”. Her publication made it possible for all haters of Mr. Babyman to go to the comments and pour everything they thought there. This provoked such a wave of negativity addressed to Andrew that at 7:30 am he tweeted: “If this is what the majority of the Digg community feels - I will leave and will not be part of a group that I don’t need,” with reference to an amended caricature .



At 8 o'clock in the evening, the same day, the ladies' post went to the main page of Digg - two hours before the post of Sorsini himself flew there. At midnight, a link to a Twitter message. Andrew also appeared on the main page under the heading: " Will MrBabyMan Leave Digg? "



The voting stopped that night and the results were as follows: more than 2000 people voted for the comic Miss Vogt, and both posts shared about 750 comments among themselves (almost Digg's absolute record). Hot discussion in the comments, between people with different levels of development and intelligence, boiled down to one question: "Should MrBabyMan leave?"



Actually, the reasons why Sorsini provoked a storm of unpreparedness for Digg users were several, and first of all - what the Vogt caricature hints at is that MrBabyMan duplicated interesting stories sent by other Digg users, and quickly raised them to the main page using their “super forces "Without leaving a chance for" original "content to rise.



The next complaint was that MrBabyMan used a fabulously wide network of friends and spam-like "shouts" (shout) in order to promote their own content.



And finally, among themselves, many users whispered that MrBabyMan and other top Digg users receive money for posting certain news. True or not, it is not known, but what people are willing to pay for this money really was - an established fact.



Such a wave of criticism definitely upset Sorsini. He and a group of his friends, who often arranged many hours of Skype chatting, decided to describe the problem in their own words and find someone who would tell the rest of them. Such a person was Marshall Kirkpatrick, who published a note on serious passions inside the community in ReadWriteWeb 2008.



In short, the essence of the discussion was that MrBabyMan and his friends never intentionally duplicated other people's posts, except for those cases where the original post was poorly / crookedly decorated and did not rise to the top, but was “buried” down by other users. Sorsini also stated that he had never sent shauts to promote his own stories and never received money for what he did on Digg.com. However, the relationship between posts, promotion and money is much more complicated than just “money for digs”.



The conclusion that can be drawn from all this is quite simple: Andrew Sorsini sat on the top of a small network of loyal friends, consisting mainly of SEO's, PR'schik and others, who passionately want to be experts in the field of new social media. This circle, later, was surrounded by a much more extensive network of millions of users who tried to enjoy posting their own stories while trying to gain recognition and success. Many of them would very much like to live only on those funds that could be earned simply for being in the top.



In the center of this mess was the very MrBabyMan: upright, open and much more naive than many other people who want to "cut the profit." We all know that only the Emperor wears ordinary things.

Editorial genius

Andrew said: “All I ever wanted was that the news lived and died its own death. If everyone played by the established rules on the same level with me - I would like it, because I still have the skills to search for different stories. I don’t complain about the algorithms, but I don’t want to be accused of working well with their parameters. ”



And let the genius of Sorsini put him in a dominant position on the site, which symbolized the first success of many social marketers - he remained almost the only person whose income was in no way dependent on his activity on Digg. Let me remind you - Andrew is still working as an animator at Disney.



However, other Digg users, the so-called “middle-working class”, were much more eager to join the “spin up?” Game. pay ”and built a career as“ experts on new media ”. The most fun here, in my opinion, is the fact that many of them built their careers not on Digg as such, but on the experience gained on Digg as a result of their success in the promotion of news.



And this is in the order of things, but claiming that top resource users spend their time, energy and sometimes money just because “they love this site” and “love to share good news with people” sounds like a cynical joke.



But the joke with Sorsini is different: he was one of the few people who openly stated that they did not take money for advice on Digg issues, and did not promote news for money. You can say this is his legend. But the story of UGC-projects raised by people out of love for the community may well be the legend that MrBabyMan really adhered to.



Sorsini even ran his own The Drill Down podcast and did not try to capitalize on it. For those who do not know - in this podcast, those top Digg users discussed everything in a row, and Sorsini led the line of conversation. Do not be confused by the ads on the page - its cost is negligible, compared to the 50 million page views that it generated with its news on Digg. I think it is obvious.



The end of this story was that MrBabyMan still left Digg.com , being his most valuable piece. And he would not do this if he received money for this activity. The guy, trite, offended. He simply loved the service, and invested in it, for free, as much as all these “experts on new media” never dreamed of. Ordinary human feelings.



“The only promotion that I do is promotion of news on the Digg page, and news of my friends, as well as maintaining this chain in working condition. This is what everyone does, and this is what Digg was created for, ”says Andrew.



Kirkpatrick, in his article notes that Sorsini, perhaps, was the only top Digg, whose motivation was exclusively charitable. There is nothing surprising in living as an expert on social media without even having defined the definition of this term. But when you do not get what you want (money) and feel for yourself the support of millions (other users in the ass, not top) - it is logical to choose a guy from the top and throw it over from head to toe. There are plenty of moral freaks in this story (and among them, oddly enough, Miss Vogt, who occasionally was a girl of one of the Digg employees), but MrBabyMan, oddly enough, was hardly relevant to them.



In preparing the material used publications sites:

TechCrunch , ReadWriteWeb , Wired , Slashdot , etc.