Digg Backs Down On DiggBar

Barence writes "Social news website Digg.com has made key changes to its recently introduced DiggBar. The browser add-on had been much criticised for its use of frames to 'host' third-party websites within the digg.com domain using an obfuscating short URL, thereby boosting its own traffic figures to the detriment of those third parties. After many major sites ran negative articles on the DiggBar, and even changed their code to block it, Digg has relented and announced two changes to ease concerns."

Comments

Facebook

[slashkitty]

They do the same thing, I'm wondering why there isn't similar backlash. I hate them both, framing is such a 90's thing.

What I want to know is

[jalefkowit]

... why is nobody screaming at Facebook about this, since they do the exact same thing that Digg was doing?

Seriously -- use the "Share" feature in Facebook to share a URL with your friends. Then click the link to read the shared story. The link will be framed with an obnoxious Facebook bar under a Facebook URL, just like stories shared via Digg were defaced, and with all the negative consequences that were associated with the DiggBar.

And yet while bloggers and SEO experts were up in arms over the DiggBar, I have yet to see a single story calling Facebook to account for this.

So if it's not OK for Digg to do this stuff, why is it ok for Facebook? Why the double standard?

Re:What I want to know is

[coryking]

Why the double standard?

I'll take a stab at this. There is a whole cottage industry built around gaming Digg. It was a sweetheart deal, the "news sites" provided top-10 lists, tin-foil-hat opinion articles and short summaries of real news articles on real news sites mixed with a heap of ads. In exchange, Digg would give these sites enough traffic to make a living. Digg just violated the rules of this little deal and tried to take more than its fair share. Of course these guys are pissed--they had a deal, blackheart!

Nobody counts on Facebook traffic, so nobody gives a shit what Facebook does. But lots of these joints *do care* what Digg does cause if Digg shuts off their traffic, the party is over and the site folds.

The People's Voice

[iamhigh]

This, the Facebook TOS, and I am sure there are several other examples of how new technology, (ironically) such as Twitter and Facebook, have allowed people and companies to voice their concerns with a product and produce results. I am willing to bet that 10 years ago if some company wanted to screw you over (even if they sent a letter to all customers) there would not have been a way to get that info out to the world in a quick and efficient manner as to get said company to change it's policy.

There were no marches, no organized rallies; just a bunch of people complaining in a way that is heard by millions, including those they are complaining about and other users/customers of that company. This is the power of information.

Not the first, wont be the last

[coryking]

Didn't about.com or somebody like them try this stunt back in the .com days? Remember having to add that "break out of some assholes frame" javascript on every page? I guess nobody does that anymore, but back then it used to be standard issue. Course, back in those days people used frames, so it was probably easy to break out. Looks like digg is using an iframe to host the content. This begs a couple questions:

1) What does something like AdSense think about pages served in iframes? Will it throw off their targeting?
2) What does this mean in terms of SEO? Will google get pissy about you being in some jerk's iframe?
3) How the hell do you break out of an iframe in a cross-browser way?

I gotta say one thing though--how they have the comments "fold down" from the "Diggbar" is pretty neat. Course, the posters on Digg are all 12 year olds who find poo-poo, pee-pee jokes funny thus negating everything.

Digg is a weird place, it is like some kind of flash-crowd groupthink that is enabled by the unlimited ability to vote anything down. Slashdot's moderation system may have its faults, but it is the best damn system I've seen for a website with lots of traffic. Here, you can make a post that goes against the general "view" of the site and still get "+5 insightful" provided you are eloquent. On Digg, you could write the most insightful damn thing in the world but if it goes even a tiny bit against the bias of the article you will be buried into the floor with zero chance of getting read.

Re:Slashdot Bar in the Works?

[eln]

Okay, I'll start:

Requirement #1: Don't even think about releasing yet another stupid toolbar.

Re:I never thought I'd say this with a straight fa

[jDeepbeep]

It has given me a new appreciation for slashdot moderation!

I acquired a new appreciation of /. moderation a couple days back when I replied to a very very helpful post and stated 'Mod parent informative'. I figured that having karma of excellent would make theirs (a 1 default) more visible and useful. People did so and that post was boosted to a 5 Later in the day, someone saw my reply, and it got modded -2 redundant.