• April 3rd, 2007 • 6 comments
Digg is a Tabloid
I read Mat’s post saying how difficult it is now for citizens to get heard among media empires. He wants original and quality content to rise above the noise and talks about digg.com, which made in theory anonymous bloggers on the same level as huge media websites. But I have stopped going to digg since last year. Digg has changed into an online tabloid for geeks, where readers want catchy, provocative and inaccurate titles. They want in-your-face pictures and instant gratification. They want web pages that can be checked out in under one minute. They want lists that can be perused so that they can pretend they know about all the cool things on the Internet.
I have never seen a page on digg that made me think - and learn. I have never seen an essay land on digg. I have never seen elaborate reports and research papers.
Instead, I see quick lists, like today’s The Top 10 Movie Monkeys or The Top 20 weird gadgets. I read blog posts that err on unverified and speculative data. I get to websites that re-write news to make them entertaining. Of course we get the occassional authentic article, but those are never ‘hype’ enough to become the most popular news.
Because that’s what digg boils down to. Hype and Entertainement for geek.
And I dare you to find an elaborate and worthwile page land on digg.
April 3rd, 2007 at 1:14 pm
As you know from my piece Heri, I agree whole-heartedly with your views. It’s high time better content discovery tools were created for the blogosphere. Let’s hope that a new Google rises up to meet the challenge.
April 3rd, 2007 at 2:18 pm
WHY YUO THROW HATES?
April 3rd, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Try reddit.
Doesn’t have these problems.
April 3rd, 2007 at 3:34 pm
No way, reddit’s too interested in pointing out diggs flaws to take of its own shortcomings.
April 3rd, 2007 at 4:09 pm
I personally check out both Digg and Reddit regularly.
Although not perfect for everyone, both Digg and Reddit have come to show what is possible with aggregation for a multitude of interesting topics in the future. We’ve always appreciated both sites and decided to create a site dedicated to helpful information - http://www.tellfriends.com. We’re definitely not prefect either, but the entire belief of tellfriends.com is based upon something I call infokarma. In other words, tell friends helpful information and you will get helpful information in return. It’s something that we truly believe in and have experience in our off-line lives and now feel that it’s time for the web to magnify the power of trusted, helpful information from friends.
In fact, everyone in the world has helpful information to share with friends and we hope to be a source for it.
Let us know what you think. We’re always looking to improve to better spread infokarma.
April 3rd, 2007 at 8:13 pm
what did you expect? high-class thought-provoking introspective articles, followed by scholarly debate in the comments? sorry buddy, but i go to digg for a quick fix of entertainment, not a life lesson. lowest common denominator. pictures of crazy shit and crushed cars and stupid lists
it’s the new ebaum’s world
i think you’re expecting a little bit too much