Digg had gone downhill so fast, it splattered all over the cement. I feel sorry for those who still use it, or anything else Kevin Rose put together.
I saw this widget on a blog tonight.
Nine of the ten stories are list posts — useless “10 best”, “10 worst”, “10 scariest”, “10 biggest” posts made for Digg-bait and quick skimming. List posts are the McDonald’s of online writing: they require no thought, provide no intellectual value, and guarantee lots of cheap traffic and comments.
I can hardly even listen to Diggnation anymore, previously one of my favorite podcasts, because the “stories” are so inane and useless. This is every Diggnation episode now:
- (long intro, description of this episode’s alcohol)
- “Hey, here’s a funny video about cats!”
- “Guy gets hit in the crotch with lightsaber by 5-year-old”
- (commercials)
- (stupid emails)
Digg’s current state of affairs is just sad. They’ve hit a wall of mediocrity and community isolation. I can’t imagine that their traffic is growing significantly. All attempts to broaden Digg’s appeal have failed — the fundamental idea simply doesn’t scale beyond a single narrow userbase. They can’t go anywhere else with this.
No wonder they’re trying to sell it. They know it’s time to move on.
