Digg.com Sold To Betaworks For $500,000

Look on the bright side by jmorris42 · 2012-07-12 11:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

This is still 500,000 times what Newsweek sold for. So I guess it means failure in digital is still worth more than a failed dead tree product.

All social media sites can expect to share this fate soon enough with the exceptions of facebook, twitter and a couple more than will survive for a bit. The whole model depends on scaling up to 'too big to fail' before the initial money runs out. And of course 'too big to fail' also fails eventually, see myspace and any number of other dead and forgotten sites that had their fifteen minutes.

The only way to make money in this game is to piss off the users as you slap them in the face with the reality that they aren't customers.... they are the product. Yet the sole reason a social media site exists is because users want to be there, the defining feature is there is little created/curated content on a social media site, it is all user created. And since users aren't really tied to a site they are free to be fickle and jump to the next shiny thing they can share links to cat videos on. Which all means it is fairly easy to get a crapload of users, just give em free services; making a living giving away stuff to zillions of users is still a hard and mostly unsolved problem. Google is making money giving stuff away, anyone else?

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Democrat delenda est

Re:Look on the bright side by thetoadwarrior · 2012-07-12 11:24 · Score: 2

Newsweek will also be around longer than Digg.
Re:Look on the bright side by jmorris42 · 2012-07-12 11:52 · Score: 5, Insightful

Please note the important difference between free software and free services. If you release a piece of free software it costs almost nothing more if a million people download it vs a thousand. On the other hand if lots of people download and use it you are almost certain to get contributions in the form of feature enhancements, patches and bug reports; and history shows that you are likely to eventually generate enough general activity around the project to produce revenue. If not enough revenue to cover all development costs, certainly enough to cover the hosting bills since those scale fairly closely with general interest. The beauty of the cost of reproduction being as close to zero as to not make a difference is at the heart of the Free Software success story.
Now compare to free services like facebook. Every incremental user costs money. The only way, so far, to generate offsetting revenue is by ruthlessly marketing the users to advertisers. But users don't like that and venture capitalists are eager to throw money into the 'next big thing' so you are competing against free.

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Democrat delenda est
Re:Look on the bright side by ChatHuant · 2012-07-12 11:59 · Score: 5, Insightful

Many companies make money by making free stuff. Here are a few: Red Hat, Canonical, Facebook
But the product of Facebook is not the website, and neither are the Linux distros the final products of Red Hat or Canonical. It's like saying a fishing company gives the bait away free. The bait or the code are just production costs, expenses required in order to create their product. For Red Hat the product is support, sold to companies, and for Facebook the product is you, sold to advertisers.
Re:Look on the bright side by evilviper · 2012-07-12 12:08 · Score: 5, Informative

The only way to make money in this game is to piss off the users as you slap them in the face with the reality that they aren't customers.... they are the product. Yet the sole reason a social media site exists is because users want to be there,
Every criticism you offer about online / social web sites could be equally well applied to something like broadcast television... And yet, they've been operating and profitable for a half-century now, with no end in sight, and the future looks fairly bright for them after the switch to HDTV, with only minimal potential for 'disruptive technology' on the horizon that could upset the good-old business model.

Google is making money giving stuff away, anyone else?
Yes: TV & Radio.

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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Re:Look on the bright side by jmorris42 · 2012-07-12 12:29 · Score: 1

Actually, broadcast TV is threatened like never before. Cable is a split model where the cable companies and the cable only channels make money from both subscriptions and advertising. And streaming video is threatening to rip them both a new one. Cable at $50-$100+/mo vs Netflix for $10 or Amazon for the cost of Prime.
Radio would be dead except it costs almost nothing to keep a station on the air with the current model of total automation and the statutory licensing model of paying royalties for the music here in the US.

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Democrat delenda est
Re:Look on the bright side by Kjella · 2012-07-12 12:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yet the sole reason a social media site exists is because users want to be there (...) And since users aren't really tied to a site they are free to be fickle and jump to the next shiny thing they can share links to cat videos on.
Perhaps, perhaps not. There's a huge amount of peer pressure of the "Why can't you use YouTube like everybody else? Stop being such a special snowflake." variety, maybe not for cat videos but for many other things. For example recently I needed to talk to some friends and their tool of choice is now Facebook Chat. Before that there was MSN, before that ICQ or IRC. I didn't choose to abandon any of those, but you can't be social without people to be social with. You can more than sustain a profit on those network effects as long as you don't become so obnoxious people leave in greater numbers than they join.

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Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Re:Look on the bright side by DogDude · 2012-07-12 13:28 · Score: 1

"Many" is a relative term.

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I don't respond to AC's.
Re:Look on the bright side by lexman098 · 2012-07-12 14:05 · Score: 1

I see your perspective, but I'm afraid you're off-base.
Social media does not share the same fate (from a guy without a facebook account). Digg's model was never to scale up quickly and sell before the floor drops out. They had a revenue stream before, but they got greedy. They sold out and basically deleted the old site to start fresh. The users had no reason to stick around, but I believe they would have otherwise. Look at reddit.
No, revenue from user-generated is still alive and well.
Re:Look on the bright side by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-12 14:07 · Score: 1

No, he didn't contradict himself. He revised his statement to more clearly state that he wanted examples of lucrative free web services.
Re:Look on the bright side by evilviper · 2012-07-12 14:31 · Score: 1

Cable TV stations have dual sources of income, yes, but their quality has been falling dramatically, even while they have exploded in numbers. Dish Network has been playing hardball for years against them, and winning. You can get Dish Network for just $15/month with their welcome package, which has local channels plus a few of the most popular cable channels, but completely cutting the flood of cable channels off from ANY revenue.
But the real threat is HDTV. Now that broadcast TV is digital and highdef, the picture you get from an antenna is superior to any paid service, you can pick-up far more transmitters than before, and a proliferation of digital subchannels (THIS, AntennaTV, MeTV, etc) provides the kind of selection with OTA broadcast that most people signed-up for cable to get.
Most cable channels have always just been repeat airings of network TV shows. With more OTA channels, that syndication is happening on free TV instead of cable, and the proliferation of cheap DVRs has basically eliminated the need for cable, as you can record the original airing yourself, and rewatch it when it's most convenient for you.
The very few original shows on cable are more inexpensively and conveniently provided by a Netflix subscription, or hulu (free).
Services like hulu may, eventually become a threat to OTA, but the cost of getting OTA (an antenna) is so low that there's not much room for Hulu to improve upon broadcast, and the bandwidth requirements for full-quality streaming HDTV are a long way off for the bulk of the general public.
There's lots of reason to believe cable is going to experience a major crash in a short while, but OTA broadcast has no real competition at this point, and I expect it'll be able to compete extremely well when that ppotentially disruptive competitor does come along.

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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Re:Look on the bright side by glwtta · 2012-07-12 15:26 · Score: 1

Something that's been around for 80 years, and at its height was selling 4 million copies weekly is a 'failed product' now?

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sic transit gloria mundi
Re:Look on the bright side by zaphod777 · 2012-07-12 19:29 · Score: 1

Red Hat as a commercial product is far from free (unless you mean free as in freedom) but it is openSource and CentOS is very free (free as in beer).

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"Don't Panic!"
Re:Look on the bright side by CadentOrange · 2012-07-12 20:49 · Score: 2

I can't comment on the others, but Canonical is most certainly NOT making money. They're burning far more money than what's coming in and given Shuttleworth's attitude (i.e. So what?) it doesn't look like they'll be profitable any time soon.
While profits might be anathema to some in the open source world, a business needs to break even if it's going to have long term survivability.
Re:Look on the bright side by minkie · 2012-07-12 23:22 · Score: 1

For Red Hat the product is support, sold to companies, and for Facebook the product is you, sold to advertisers.
In some cases, the product is the company, sold to the stockholders. That's the only sale that matters.
Re:Look on the bright side by smpoole7 · 2012-07-12 23:55 · Score: 1

> Radio would be dead except it costs almost nothing to keep a station on the air ...
Sorry, I couldn't resist that one. *Broadcast* radio and television cost considerably more to operate than most people think, even if a given station can achieve a state of complete automation.
First, there are simply the costs of putting a station on the air. To give you an idea, our company purchased a Class A (3-6KW) station several years ago for about 1.5 million. To replace the old equipment and antenna system cost several hundred thousand dollars. It ain't cheap. That can be amortized and "spread" over many years, but it still adds up to significant money out of the bottom line.
Second, the "licensing" that you mention (and then toss aside) is a significant expense. It depends on market size, but typically runs several thousand dollars PER MONTH.
Finally, yes, there are many stations that are "automated," but there are degrees of automation. We run many of our stations live. Even those which are automated are live for at least portions of the day. Why? Because that's what the listeners prefer, and in a competitive market, you'd better satisfy them, or you're out of business in short order. Everyone focuses on Clear Channel, but believe me, they keep looking over THEIR shoulders at Cumulus, which tends to prefer live and local programming and which often kicks CC's butt whenever they go head to head. (For that matter, our own company kicked CC's butt in a major market a few years ago. *Cough* and "ahem.") :)
Maintenance is not insignificant. Just to have tower lights replaced can cost several thousand dollars. A single lightning strike (especially if idiotic copper thieves have removed your ground wires) can do tens of thousands in damage.
Bottom line: on-line streaming, and networks of completely automated 100-200 watt translator services might not be hideously expensive, but believe me, broadcasting is NOT cheap.
If I had a dollar for everyone I've known to buy or build a station with high hopes, then go bankrupt and end up selling a few years later, I could buy us all a nice dinner. Trust me.

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Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Re:Look on the bright side by iamhassi · 2012-07-13 02:45 · Score: 1

OTA doesn't work ever since it went digital. I live 10 miles driving distance from downtown 5 million people. Before digital I got about a dozen channels. After digital all of them pause and pixelate every dozen seconds making OTA unwatchable. Digital OTA was a lie sold to Americans so the govt could license out the bandwidth for hundreds of millions.

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my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Re:Look on the bright side by TapeCutter · 2012-07-13 05:34 · Score: 1

The only way to make money in this game is to piss off the users as you slap them in the face with the reality that they aren't customers.... they are the product...[snip]....Google is making money giving stuff away, anyone else?
That's kind of a narrow way of looking at how to extract money from social media. For example I saw a TV ad less than an hour ago for a social media site for car lovers and rev heads. The site itself is owned and operated by Shannons a specialist insurer for collectable cars and bikes but the content is generated by users uploading pictures, etc, to their virtual garage.

In other words the insurance company is using it's existing repuation as a well known specialist to cut out the middle men. They are trying to entice their target market to come and play in a walled garden that they own, rather than just renting space inside someone else generic garden that does not go out of it's way to attract motoring geeks. Getting your brand in the mind of your target market is basically what all that data mining is about, if someone turns up at the Shannons site then Shannons already know they are interested in collectible cars/bikes and a large portion of them will be owners who will need to buy insurance from somebody in the next 12months. In a way it's very much like old school targeted marketing where a company like Shannons would sponser (say) a vintage car rally in an attempt to herd it's potential customers into one place.

Note that slashdot itself is owned by Geeknet, Inc, presumably their target market is 'people who self-identify as geeks'. I'm registered geek #624760 and have been here for over a decade, so they must be doing something right. I can't put my finger on what that might be, but it's certainly not the editing ;).

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And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Re:Look on the bright side by mattack2 · 2012-07-13 07:23 · Score: 1

Cable at $50-$100+/mo vs Netflix for $10 or Amazon for the cost of Prime.
That would be true, IF they were equivalent. Heck, even if you add a year delay, you can't get most of the shows you can record now if you get cable. (Since you mentioned Amazon, I presume you're only talking about streaming. If you talk about DVDs too, then you can get a pretty decent percentage of the popular OTA & cable original series... but still nowhere near all of them, esp things like reality shows.)
Re:Look on the bright side by mattack2 · 2012-07-13 10:53 · Score: 1

Most cable channels have always just been repeat airings of network TV shows.
If you count total hours of airtime, then yes.. (But that argument would also go for the OTA channels themselves.)
But for at least the last decade or two, a lot of the expanded basic channels have had new shows for at least part of the year -- basically, they have new shows that air in prime time too. I'm not saying they're any good (IMHO, quantity-wise, they're worse than OTA shows, though obviously a few are as good or better), but they exist.
Re:Look on the bright side by evilviper · 2012-07-13 12:37 · Score: 1

Before digital I got about a dozen channels. After digital all of them pause and pixelate every dozen seconds making OTA unwatchable.
If you're that close to full-power stations, it sounds like multipath problems. You may need a new (indoor) antenna that is more directional than your old one. OTOH, you might just have a defective reciever.
I've lived all over southern california, and there isn't a city here where the reception hasn't gotten BETTER on digital. The broadcast radius has improved significantly, where out on the fringes analog was unwatchable, digital looks PERFECT.
I know there's a few people out there with similar stories to yours, but I can guarantee that for every one, there's 10 others that will say what a huge improvement digital HDTV conversion is.

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Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant

This would have been first post, but... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-12 11:07 · Score: 3, Funny

This would have been first post, but it was a missed opportunity.

Re:This would have been first post, but... by Sigg3.net · 2012-07-13 05:40 · Score: 1

I'll buy it!

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Defining Statistics and Social Research

When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by hovelander · 2012-07-12 11:16 · Score: 5, Interesting

If I remember correctly, wasn't Digg supposed to be the new Slashdot without the hardcore Geek Cred? Didn't Kevin Rose speak directly to CmdrTaco about the failings of Slashdot? Kevin doesn't seem that bad a guy, actually, but he had two major failings that I can see:

- Not selling at the top of the market, which is usually hard to gauge anyway, (and didn't he leave some time ago?)

and the most important failing:

- Dumping Sarah Lane so that she could later travel the world on Honeymoon and get a brain eating parasite.

Better Days to them both.

Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by Darundal · 2012-07-12 11:23 · Score: 4, Informative

IIRC, he left around the time of the Digg 4 update (the one that killed Digg and caused it's users to flood tons of other sites).
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by mysidia · 2012-07-12 11:43 · Score: 3, Interesting

Perhaps Diggs' new owners will use "cvs update -r DIGG_UPDATE_3" or whatever and undo the heinous redesign ?
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-12 12:18 · Score: 3, Informative

Digg was much bigger than /. when it was going at full steam, had better and more timely articles, and much bigger discussions due to its larger community. But the board chose a ridiculous redesign for V4 and refused to listen to the voice of the users. They thought the dip in numbers would be a temporary thing, people would soon come back. Well, they didn't. They left in droves.
When the writing was on the wall, Rose bailed out giving control to others to try to resurrect the product his braindead decisions killed. They didn't, they just followed the same path into the grave yard. Not that Rose is too bothered, he made a personal fortune to allow him to be financially independent for the rest of his life.
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by Ucklak · 2012-07-12 12:56 · Score: 1

What are you talking about? He already sold out. It hasn't been Kevin Rose's baby since he sold it for the $45 milllion. He made out like a bandit.

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if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by VortexCortex · 2012-07-12 13:18 · Score: 1

IIRC, he left around the time of the Digg 4 update (the one that killed Digg and caused it's users to flood tons of other sites).
I blame Leo Laporte of TWiT (this week in tech) - Dig 4 Was My Idea!
Sure Dig 4 was a flop, but consider this: What If his "idea" was to keep Dig from being a threat to his growing media empire?
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by Cinder6 · 2012-07-12 13:24 · Score: 2

Digg was actually a pretty good site when it was tech-oriented. Then there was an update (Digg 4?) that tried to draw in more crowds by adding all sorts of submission types. Pretty soon all the tech people left and the site was reduced to people posting "funny" pictures, random computer tips everyone knew about years ago, and top 10 lists. It used to be that an article required hundreds of votes to make the front page. Go look now: as of this posting, the first story has only 29 votes.

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If you can't convince them, convict them.
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by Dahamma · 2012-07-12 13:41 · Score: 1

Do you have any citation for this? I was wondering if Rose made anything on Digg.
The only reference I could find that he did was some Gawker story whose author had no clue how VC financing works, and was making idiotic guesses...
"Allowing the VCs to put in enough money to make the investment worth their time, at a high valuation, would require substantial dilution, which would disadvantage employees and early investors. Much simpler to transfer shares directly from one large shareholder — Rose — to another."
Umm, no, if Rose sold *his* shares to a VC *he* gets the money, and that doesn't raise anything for the company. Venture CAPITAL of course involves dilution because the company is selling its *own* shares (usually created via dilution) to raise money for its own operations...
Anyway, if you found a real source that credibly shows he made $45M (and not just raised $45M in funding for his company) that would be interesting to see...
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by rgbrenner · 2012-07-12 13:58 · Score: 4, Interesting

digg is still bigger than slashdot.. about 5x bigger
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/digg.com
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by Joe+Tie. · 2012-07-12 15:00 · Score: 1

> It used to be that an article required hundreds of votes to make the front page I mostly agree. But one has to consider the whole power user thing as well. There were a number of people who used a variety of means to artificially inflate votes on stories they submitted. The main reason it would take so many people to get something to the front page was that people gaming the system were forcing those numbers. Just getting rid of the power users probably reduced the numbers instantly into a state more reflective of the actual user base.

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Everything will be taken away from you.
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by rsborg · 2012-07-12 17:19 · Score: 2

digg is still bigger than slashdot.. about 5x bigger
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/digg.com
But it's dead as a source of important news. It's an aggregator along with the rest - nothing special about it. Furthermore, as a forum it is basically as useful as HuffPo except without the scoops.
Meanwhile, people still link to slashdot, and the comments here are still +1 Informative that I don't see elsewhere. If you want digg, you might as well go reddit and get the AMA and other features that make that site digg but better.

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Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by TheoMurpse · 2012-07-12 19:33 · Score: 3, Insightful

Take your rose-colored glasses off re Digg. It is factually true that Digg had much bigger discussions, but they were awful. You can find any number of PhDs commenting regularly about niche topics on Slashdot, but that never happened on Digg. It was always college kids allcapsing their uninformed opinions.
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by rgbrenner · 2012-07-12 21:01 · Score: 1

never read digg regularly.. so I'll take everything you said at its word. But according to alexa, there are 90k links to slashdot, and over 1million to digg. So people are definitely still linking to them.
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by isorox · 2012-07-12 22:25 · Score: 2

digg is still bigger than slashdot.. about 5x bigger
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/slashdot.org
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/digg.com
OR on the whole digg users have alexa spyware installed, but slashdot users don't?
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by Stuarticus · 2012-07-12 22:50 · Score: 1

Come on, Reddit's not far off going the same way. It's getting continually worse. Not sure what's going to make it unusable first, reposts, political junk or boring pictures of "OP and web celebrity"...

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If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by jellomizer · 2012-07-13 00:28 · Score: 1

The problem was it got way too political. Popular links were all about these crazy "Tea Party Proportion" anti President Bush Links. This attracted the general dumb masses who will follow or reject the idea based squarely on the political party the presents it.
My father is like this. I love him dearly however we have different approached to politics...
I remember in the Mid-1990's my father was saying to me... The Problem with health care is that we need to incorporate a systems like we have to cars in New York State. Everyone needs to mandated to have Health Insurance, This way we can reduce the cost as everyone will be insured. The people who say they don't want to join in, well they have to or pay a fine. (For this was the Republican Plan of the time, the Democrats opposed this as policy based on lobbying from the big health insurance companies) Now almost 20 years later. The democrats propose and pass that plan. But because it was the democrats who did it, his views are dead against it. Using every argument that he rejected 20 years ago.
Now Dig attracted the same type of people only it was for the liberals. And Liberals are actually just as bad, When the next Republican president wins, we will see Leftist radical behavior worse then the Tea Party. When they get a democratic president after that they the Right wing will become even more nuts... Unless we find a way to fix this...

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by jellomizer · 2012-07-13 00:31 · Score: 3, Interesting

But unfortunately Slashdot has one of the better and smarter public discussion boards. (Which doesn't really bode well for the others including digg)
Dig focuses mostly on the links. Slashdot focuses on the discussion. Digg gets more hits but Slashdot people stay on it longer.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by jellomizer · 2012-07-13 00:37 · Score: 1

"You can find any number of PhDs commenting regularly"
0 is a number right?
Kidding aside, I actually like it if I post something, and someone disagrees with me, or proves what I though was a fact wrong, and gives me references to check out. There has been a few times I needed to consed my opinion, just because my facts were proven to be wrong.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Re:When Kevin Rose Wanted to Eat a Taco by kaatochacha · 2012-07-13 03:38 · Score: 1

I agree with you on this. It's actually a pleasant surprise to find yourself wrong, if it's factually proven.

Forget Digg... by billybob_jcv · 2012-07-12 11:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

What does that mean for the valuation of /.?

Re:Forget Digg... by cheesybagel · 2012-07-12 17:02 · Score: 1

Sounds bonkers but I have no idea how much cash they get from paid hosting of projects. It could actually be profitable.
Re:Forget Digg... by cheesybagel · 2012-07-12 17:04 · Score: 1

Google already has Google Code but it wouldn't be the first time they bought some other company that does the same service.
Re:Forget Digg... by jellomizer · 2012-07-13 00:41 · Score: 1

Slashdot has been relativity steady. About a new story an hour with an average of roughly 200 comments in each one.
It has been like that for years.

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If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.

Re:Don't care by icebike · 2012-07-12 11:24 · Score: 2

Its not pointless when it points out the principal reason Digg is done.

Virtually Nobody saw any good reason to use that site, virtually nobody goes there for a recommendation on what they should read about. It failed precisely because the vast majority shared Reboot246's opinion.

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Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.

Re:Slashdot won't go for even that by icebike · 2012-07-12 11:25 · Score: 5, Informative

Slashdot is very old when measured in Digg lives.

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Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.

Ephemeral values of interwebs properties by ackthpt · 2012-07-12 11:27 · Score: 3, Interesting

This is why I won't buy stock in fazebook.

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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar

Re:Ephemeral values of interwebs properties by Lotana · 2012-07-12 15:37 · Score: 1

Just because the product/company is very finicky and short-lived does not necessarily mean that it is to be avoided in terms of investment.
Social media companies are in essence bubbles. If you are careful, you buy the shares before or in its early stages of popularity and then sell them before everyone gets sick of it. Just like Pump-and-Dump only without the false positive misinformation (Owners do all that for you for free).
It is quite a risky endevour though: You have to be extremely careful of the timing, it is very hard to measure the current state of popularity and when it will turn bad. It is also not an ethical thing to do, since you are contributing to the inflation of the value of stock in order for other investors to bite and be screwed over later.
Re:Ephemeral values of interwebs properties by assertation · 2012-07-13 01:15 · Score: 1

I hate to say anything non-negative about facebook, but plenty of other traditional investments can be as ephemeral. Hence the term "bubble". On Monday stock in X can be worth something and on Tuesday it can be only worth the paper they print it on.

Good riddance... by tocsy · 2012-07-12 11:34 · Score: 2

and I'm sure I speak for more than just myself when I say that. The first year or two of Digg's existence were actually alright, when interesting articles were actually posted on the front page. It degraded rather quickly, however, into a reeeeeally shitty aggregator. When I finally stopped going, it was almost completely top-ten lists and links to "funny" pictures.

precisely by Anna+Merikin · 2012-07-12 11:37 · Score: 1

Although /. page layout doesn't place highly-rated stories first. The calendar does that.

Slashdot's moderation seems to be slowing the decline into group-think but I still feel like I'm falling when I read /.comments -- which is getting less often.

Get Off My Lawn! (Grumble, grumble)

Re:precisely by Anna+Merikin · 2012-07-12 15:04 · Score: 1, Offtopic

Show your IQ and say my handle out loud to yourself
Still wanna see my tits?
And get off my lawn!
Re:precisely by Jesus_666 · 2012-07-14 00:45 · Score: 1

Well, English words don't have a built-in gender so you could be an obese male or an obese female.

Now if you'll excuse me, being from Germany and Germany being in Europe I now have to fetch my lederhosen and hipster glasses, sit in a beer garden and complain about American politics and/or Greece.

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USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)

I used Digg.com a lot now I use Reddit.com by GoodNewsJimDotCom · 2012-07-12 11:47 · Score: 5, Informative

Digg was good for social media. People would submit stories, and then the cool ones would come to the top. Apparently a minor problem arose with power users who could spam their friends with messages,"Digg this cuz ur my friend", and a lot of them would. These power users eventually started getting corporate sponsor to astroturf, and their friends were oblivious so they still got Diggs. The actual user base didn't have much of a problem with this as you could read user names and just ignore them. I think the proper solution was to allow people to permanently ignore user posts, then power user spam would have been fixed.

Where Digg went wrong was,"We gotta beat these power users to their own game!" So they made it so users could no longer submit stories. And then your entire feed was all corporate sponsored advertising. This is equivalent of turning prime time television into one giant informercial. I know nothing of value is lost there, but in social media, this is a group of people moderating news and it was pretty valuable until they killed it thinking we're all bunch of sheep who will just sit there and read advertisements all day.

I'm glad Digg.com is dead. I just hope Reddit.com doesn't pull something stupid too.

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God spoke to me

Re:I used Digg.com a lot now I use Reddit.com by GoodNewsJimDotCom · 2012-07-12 11:51 · Score: 2

My sentence structure was ambiguous. When I said nothing of value is lost there, I meant if they turned television into one giant infomercial. Digg was actually a real loss because it was a very good community they trashed because they wanted to feed mass mindless advertising while making it look like users submit it. For a while Digg.com was fun to go to watch the train wreck and everyone trashing it in the comments, but then their advertisements started becoming links to virus sites, so I stopped even visiting so I could mock them.

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God spoke to me
Re:I used Digg.com a lot now I use Reddit.com by tunapez · 2012-07-12 12:29 · Score: 1

I'm glad Digg.com is dead. I just hope Reddit.com doesn't pull something stupid too.
Like employing/encouraging/allowing douchebags to game 9/10 of all submissions with a snowball's chance in hell of gaining any significant rank? Too late. According to recent revelations, the fix was in before even Conde Naste bought them up.
Oh yeah...Fuck Babyman! And now, fuck DavidReiss666 (et al)

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Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...

"News.me"???? by rueger · 2012-07-12 11:49 · Score: 1

Wow. With a domain name like that how can they lose?

At the end of the day I seem to keep returning to Facebook (family) Twitter (news and stuff that matters), and to a lesser extent Slashdot and a handful of RSS feeds.

LinkedIn? Digg? Pictionary.. uh, I mean Pinterest? Flattr? Etc Etc Etc?

Or maybe I'm just waiting for the Next Big Thing. Which will likely require 3D glasses.

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Three Squirrels

Re:"News.me"???? by icebraining · 2012-07-12 18:47 · Score: 1

One of those things is not like the others. Flattr is not social site, it's effectively a way to pay a cup of coffee to people who do nice things online. And it pools money on both ends, so you don't pay 60% of the donation on processing fees.

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Dilbert RSS feed
Re:"News.me"???? by rueger · 2012-07-13 09:16 · Score: 1

Ah. Serves me right for ignoring just because it's missing a vowel.

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Three Squirrels

I wonder if the 500,000 is for patent war by mysidia · 2012-07-12 11:49 · Score: 2

Will we see Digg's new owners taking up arms against Reddits, and all the other hundreds of sites that 'copied' their idea of user-rated submissions based on a thumbs up / thumbs down or "Like" / "Hate" system?

Perhaps Facebook could be a target. Digg's "Digg" button did predate Facebook's "Like" button, and FB's "Like" functionality can be construed as a shameless copy of Digg's Digg function; granted FB didn't copy the counter, and Digg didn't provide a list of users that liked the article, or publish lists of articles liked by a user.

Digg has dug by ravenswood1000 · 2012-07-12 11:54 · Score: 1

Digg has dug themselves a grave with the new advertising format. Maybe now they will go away.

Too Funny by RapidEye · 2012-07-12 11:57 · Score: 5, Funny

I seem to recall that Rose made Digg because he felt there was too much elitism on Slashdot.
I guess elitism works!
Vivo El Taco!!!

--
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."

Re:What happened to Digg? by geekd · 2012-07-12 12:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

I used to visit Digg several times a day. Then they did a site redesign that was horrible. I stopped going there, and after a few days, realized I didn't miss it.

Note to slashdot: I've been coming here at least once a day since 1998. Note you have had redesigns but nothing too horrible, and I'm still here. Don't pull a Digg.

Similar fate by SlashDev · 2012-07-12 12:11 · Score: 1

A similar fate awaits other social network websites, sooner than later. Social networking websites are like malls that after a few years start having a stinky smell, you know those malls you've seen them and been there.

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TOP DSLR Cameras Reviews of the top DSLRs

Re:All the Diggers went to Reddit by ganjadude · 2012-07-12 12:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

I liked the digg interface and usability, pre v4. redit has one of the worst designs on the web today, maybe only outdone by 4chan. The content is usually great but navigation is a disaster, thats something I like about digg and slashdot, while there ar elots of great things in idle, both digg and /. have a logical flow and easy to use nav. I suspect you are right though, alot of the digg regulars have migrated to reddit

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have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same

Re:Yes shit happens by symbolset · 2012-07-12 12:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

The griefers won. There's a lesson there for slashdot.

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Help stamp out iliturcy.

Reddit is already dead by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-12 12:32 · Score: 2, Interesting

Reddit is already dead from a usability standpoint. The largest subreddits are unrefutably crap, and the overall site is overrun by the hordes of idiots who infect the few decent, smaller subreddits. Unfortunately, the site has degenerated into a massive karmawhoring party and it is no longer easy to find quality links in the sea of regurgitated memes, 37-panel ragecomics about dropping a piece of toast, and Facebook screenshots. I never really cared for Digg, but did frequent Reddit from 2008 to 2010 before I could no longer tolerate the painfully obvious downward trend in quality. A part of me hopes Conde Nast will just kill it.

Now, I just trawl Slashdot and wait for a good catch. (The Slashdot moderation system is imperfect, but superior to the ones used by Digg and Reddit.) The NetworkWorld-esqe spam posts are annoying, but the accompanying angry comments that eviscerate the stupid headlines are amusing. Overall, the signal-to-noise ratio is higher here -- I particularly enjoyed the recent lighthearted threads about C: 1, 2.

Re:Reddit is already dead by mr100percent · 2012-07-12 14:09 · Score: 3, Informative

Once you disable certain obnoxious subreddits in your profile, the site actually becomes wonderful. Just turn off /r/atheism, /r/adviceanimals, and maybe /r/politics, and add the many TV/movie related and other cultural subreddits and you have a nice party.

Re:The Writing is on the Wall, Slashdot by fustakrakich · 2012-07-12 12:33 · Score: 1

Jumped the shark... June 29,1999

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“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”

Listen to your users by benjfowler · 2012-07-12 12:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

I think there's a BIG take-home to be had from the demise of Digg. Listen to your users.

They REALLY screwed up with Digg 4, and completely dismissed the feedback from their users out of hand.

Had they actually used their brains and done proper testing beforehand, instead of rushing half-baked shit into production, they might've done far better by now.

Did I mention that it's a really good idea to listen to your users, and not walk around with your head up your arse.

"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall" -- Proverbs 16:18.

Re:Listen to your users by Rytr23 · 2012-07-12 14:49 · Score: 3, Insightful

This. The second I saw that redesign, and the immediate response by Rose et.al, I knew it was over. I really enjoyed Digg, but man they screwed the pooch on that redesign. I recall Rose's "contemporaries" (Rojas/Topolsky) defending it at first, then everyone kind of just quietly tip toed away as they saw the disaster that the Digg team had put together.
BTW..The only reason I use reddit is because I can use an app to peruse the content without the HORRID site interface. And by horrid I mean fucking terrible.

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So many injustices..so little time..

$500K number has been debunked by TimHunter · 2012-07-12 12:40 · Score: 2

Talking to AllThingsD, Digg CEO Matt Williams confirmed that 'the overall consideration is significantly larger' and includes a combination of cash and equity. Another source close to the negotiations tells us that the price was indeed not $500k.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/12/betaworks-acquires-digg/

Okay, I got this link from Fark. Shoot me.

Digg by benjfowler · 2012-07-12 12:44 · Score: 2, Informative

They suffered from a really shit moderation system too, which encouraged groupthink to a far greater extent than Slashdot. Slashdot, imho, is a scalable, robust moderation system done right.

Digg was a sad joke in comparison, where simply having the "wrong" (e.g. liberal) opinion would have you Buried into a smoking crater.

Another problem was sad, basement-dwelling "power Diggers" posting lowest-common-denominator crap all the time. The Dig/Bury model favours quick, cheap laughs at the expense of thoughtful debate.

Although it has to be said that I got into some REALLY fun and entertaining fights with some utterly loopy American and Chinese rightwing extremists. Digg, given it's tendency to lower the IQ of everything it touches, attracted those kinds of people like flies to shit. But after the while, the aggro and stupidity got to me, and I quit my Digg habit.

Can't say I'm sad to see it getting cut up for scrap.

Re:Digg by datavirtue · 2012-07-12 14:58 · Score: 1, Insightful

New reddit user here.
Your quote is spot on:

The Dig/Bury model favours quick, cheap laughs at the expense of thoughtful debate.
I find that if something on reddit takes me longer than ten seconds to digest I just click away. This is not my normal mode of operation btw, but the nature of the site leads me to this behavior.

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I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Re:Digg by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-12 18:53 · Score: 1

You must have been using a different Digg site than I was. The entire site seemed full of left-leaning Bush-haters, with an inability to respond to a logical discussion on current events and U.S. history beyond that of the bury button, when I left.

Too Many Political Stories by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-12 12:59 · Score: 1

I stopped going to digg when it started running too many political stories. I don't recall when but it was before the v4 fiasco.

Re:Too Many Political Stories by nickmdf · 2012-07-12 14:46 · Score: 1

Yeah it got old for me when every other story was about Bush = Hitler.

Ok, so not Yahoo! by John+Bokma · 2012-07-12 13:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

I've mentioned several times the past years that Digg, which turned in a total crapfest back then, probably would be sold to Yahoo! soonish so they could properly kill it. I was wrong with the customer, but probably not wrong about the death of Digg. The past months it has been flooded by spammers and reporting them is pointless (nothing is done). Good luck, Betaworks, with cleaning up the mess.

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Perl Programmer for hire

Re: I was a Digg user six years by Lucas123 · 2012-07-12 13:28 · Score: 5, Informative

Kevin Rose did everything he could to drive away long-time, loyal users, first by killing off any social networking aspect and then by revamping the entire site so that it didn't resemble the original or have any of the functionality that made it popular. It was idiocy gone wild. Personally, I think Betaworks just got ripped off big time. Digg's been going down the drain for two years now, and nothing's going to revive it at his point. Why do you think Rose took a job with Google?

Re:What happened to Digg? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-12 13:39 · Score: 1

Who are you and why do you matter?

Refusing to listen to users by MrEricSir · 2012-07-12 13:50 · Score: 1

But the board chose a ridiculous redesign for V4 and refused to listen to the voice of the users.

Sounds a bit like a certain once-dominant Linux desktop...

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There's no -1 for "I don't get it."

Re:Refusing to listen to users by lightknight · 2012-07-12 20:44 · Score: 1

Red Hat, Suse, Gentoo, or Ubuntu?

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I am John Hurt.

Re:The Writing is on the Wall, Slashdot by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-07-12 13:54 · Score: 1

Most social comment-driven sites that employ a user-activated reward and punishment system eventually degenerate into boring, politically correct bully pulpits

As opposed to sites without a user-activated reward system, which start as "politically correct bully pulpits" aligned with their owners' views.

Digg girl by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-12 13:56 · Score: 1

Did the half mil include the Digg Girl?

Re:What happened to Digg? by geekd · 2012-07-12 14:03 · Score: 1

You're the one who's anonymous.

Re:Don't care by mr100percent · 2012-07-12 14:04 · Score: 1

And yet Reddit is extremely popular

Re:What happened to Digg? by mr100percent · 2012-07-12 14:06 · Score: 1

They did a site redesign that made functionality a lot worse for many people. At the same time, the algorithm was aggravating the users since it heavily-favored the high-karma users' posts and nobody else made it to the front page. Add a right-wing bloc of users called the Digg Patriots who tried dominating the discussions and downvoting what they didn't like, and many left; plenty to Reddit.

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2012-07-12 14:20 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

problem? by jsh1972 · 2012-07-12 14:27 · Score: 1

I can digg it!

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2012-07-12 14:28 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Don't care by datavirtue · 2012-07-12 14:34 · Score: 2, Interesting

I used it for the first time two days ago and thought, "this is worse than reddit," of which I'm a new user as well. I checked them out because /. is dying. Also breezed through 4chan for once, what a shit hole. Since then I've been looking for a decent community that aggregates real news. No luck. Thinking of building my own. Nonetheless, we are certainly at an impasse.

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I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock

Re:All the Diggers went to Reddit by datavirtue · 2012-07-12 14:46 · Score: 1

Please point to the great content because I think I'm doing it wrong.

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I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock

Re: I was a Digg user six years by Joe+Tie. · 2012-07-12 14:55 · Score: 2

I was a digg user from a little bit after that time as well. It makes it very clear just how little most of the people commenting on this story know about it. Digg's been a vastly changing culture and platform over the years. It went from "meh" to ok to good and then a slow slide to kinda shitty before Rose totally stabbed the remaining users in the back. Looking at digg now is like going to detroit now and thinking you can judge its past by the current rubble and ruin.

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Everything will be taken away from you.

Isn't "Digg it" the same as "jumping the shark?" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-12 14:56 · Score: 1

I mean it's already been dugg to death.

[Spiffy] It's not news its SLASHDOT.org by captjc · 2012-07-12 14:58 · Score: 1

HA! HA! You're posting Fark links on Slashdot. Your dog wants steak. The Sun is there.

\ Aisle seat please.
\\ Its a street light!
\\\ Summon Bevots!
\\\\ Slashdot slashies.

I can't think of any more classic Fark memes. This comment is useless without pics.

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Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment

Re:The Writing is on the Wall, Slashdot by zippthorne · 2012-07-12 15:01 · Score: 4, Informative

The phrase, "bully pulpit" does not mean what you're using it to mean. In that phrase, (credit to Teddy Roosevelt?), "bully" is a synonym for, "awesome" or "grand."

When you speak from a regular pulpit, everyone in the room listens, typically of the order of 200 people, because a larger room would be too large for the "amplification" technique of "sticking a hollow box over the speaker's head." The presidency is a bully pulpit because when you speak as President, potentially 300 million are listening.

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Can you be Even More Awesome?!

Re:All the Diggers went to Reddit by Joe+Tie. · 2012-07-12 15:04 · Score: 1

Depends on what your particular interest is. Most of the default reddits are crap. Most of the default subreddits also have similar subreddits made that aren't defaults in order to avoid the front page floods. /r/truegaming instead of /r/gaming for example.

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Everything will be taken away from you.

Not sure about that by SuperKendall · 2012-07-12 15:18 · Score: 1, Troll

Newsweek will also be around longer than Digg.

I am really doubtful of that, Newsweek will cease to exist after the election as at this point it is solely a propaganda rag that will lack use after the election is finished (no matter who wins).

Meanwhile Digg will continue to sit there, possibly mismanaged but carrying on as it has been. They could probably simply leave it running as-is indefinitely and make money for quite some time off referrals and ad revenue.

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"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Re:Not sure about that by mattack2 · 2012-07-13 07:19 · Score: 1

I am really doubtful of that, Newsweek will cease to exist after the election as at this point it is solely a propaganda rag that will lack use after the election is finished (no matter who wins).
I don't read Newsweek, but doesn't it do actual journalism, and digg just lets people vote up stories on other web sites?!? One is actually producing something, one isn't? (Which is the problem with most blogs, which just rehash other stories, often originally coming from actual journalists, usually happening to work in dead tree medium.)
BTW, I don't work in the newspaper industry, and actually would love an electronic version of the *complete* newspaper. The reviews of Kindle versions of the paper were bad back when I read a bunch of reviews... I already do end up often reading online versions of the same articles I read in the paper (mostly I read the paper on weekends & holidays).. Those are usually filler type articles and not the main meaty news though.
Re:Not sure about that by thetoadwarrior · 2012-07-14 01:21 · Score: 1

Look, I'm not saying Newsweek is what it used to be by any means but it's brand certainly holds more value across more demographics than Digg. So I'm pretty certain Newsweek will exist in some form longer than Digg which, at best, will probably end up like Alta Vista and effectively just be another url for another site.

Keep up with the times by SuperKendall · 2012-07-12 15:22 · Score: 1

The creators of reedit admitted this a month or so ago, it was on Slashdot and elsewhere.

No I will not google it for you, lazy bastard.

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"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

results of bad censorship by Deputy+Doodah · 2012-07-12 15:24 · Score: 1, Interesting

Digg had a bad habit of deleting the accounts of people who disagreed (politely even) with leftist politics in general and the homosexual lifestyle in particular by labeling all such disagreement "hate speech". They censored themselves out of relevance.
I deleted my own account with them several years ago due to my disgust with this behavior.

Re:results of bad censorship by Stuarticus · 2012-07-12 23:06 · Score: 2

Can you recommend any good sites for a right wing homophobe to visit these days?

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If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Re:results of bad censorship by shinzawai · 2012-07-13 21:32 · Score: 1

Aren't you already on it?

Re:$500,000 is probably what it's really worth by captjc · 2012-07-12 15:27 · Score: 1

The problem is that is isn't a lame idea. The general problems came from mismanagement and that the idea didn't scale well, essentially becoming too popular for its own good. The idea of having a (relatively) small community posting links to news and random awesome stuff they find on the internet and having the community vote up what they like is a great idea. Once the community reaches a certain size, however things start to gravitate toward lowest common denominator crap (lolrandom bullshit and the latest ow-my-balls videos) and sponsored content / astroturfing. Back in the day where Digg was only hundreds of users instead of hundreds of thousands and Kevin and Alex highlighted the best stuff on Diggnation, it was an awesome service. I grew tired of it after a while and haven't been on in years.

Personally, I feel the same way about Facebook. When it was only for college students, it was a great way to talk to your friends. Then after it went public (open to everyone, not IPO) it just become overrun with herp-derp and became nothing but a web-based popularity contest. Between the horribly low signal-to-noise ratio and the flagrant privacy issues, I couldn't leave fast enough.

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Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment

Slashdot has resisted this quite well by SuperKendall · 2012-07-12 15:28 · Score: 2

Most social comment-driven sites that employ a user-activated reward and punishment system eventually degenerate into boring, politically correct bully pulpits where the choir preaches only to the choir while everybody with a brain bails out.

But this has not happened to Slashdot.

The reason why is the moderation system, which some people dislike but I think works about as well as any moderation system can.

The proof is in really hotly debated topics - you can see arguments from BOTH sides of a hot issue being moderated to +5, even if a lot of down-moderation is also applied. That's the key that tells you the system is working to keep people on all sides of an issue engaged, and makes the reading much more interesting as you have more of a real debate and much less a "pulpit" as you said.

That is why Slashdot endures even as other things like Digg float away...

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"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

MrBabyman by p51d007 · 2012-07-12 15:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

He's one of the people responsible for killing digg, but scamming the system that "dug up" the stories. Between that, Kevin Rose's ego, the V4 design, the trolling, political bias of stories "dug up", it drove a lot of people away. When I saw they were sold for only 500k, you have to know those that stood to make a huge amount of money when they were suppose to be worth 200 million have to be just slapping their heads doing the Homer Simpson DOOHHAHH sound.

Re:MrBabyman by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-13 00:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

Not sure why you're being downmodded. This is exactly why I left digg.
I remember the digg patriots, the right wing bury brigade that tried to hide any liberal posts. That stupidity came out at the same time as the v4 changes. Not to mention the constant problem of power uses having their little club and only voting up their cronies. I think all of that combined probably did it for most people. I know it did it for me.
It was stupid and pathetic and I'm glad that shitty site has been chopped up and parceled out. Whoever approved v4 should be contemplating giving a pistol a blowjob.
Because he/she/they pretty much caused over a hundred million dollars of loss. I hope a case study gets written about digg so future companies know what NOT to do.

Re:Don't care by CohibaVancouver · 2012-07-12 15:40 · Score: 1

Since then I've been looking for a decent community that aggregates real news.

Twitter.

I follow the Economist, (the Onion), numerous good tech sites and writers, as well as friends I respect. Lots of good news aggregation if your twitter feed is more than "I put on a redshirt. Oh no Captain Kirk!"

The Problem with Social Media... by fullback · 2012-07-12 16:12 · Score: 1

is people. Digg is crap because most people who post are idiots.

There needs to be a grown-up table, and the kids need to sit in the kitchen and be seen and not heard (from), just like the old days. :)

Re:Don't care by cheesybagel · 2012-07-12 16:31 · Score: 1

I remember when Digg was supposed to be the hip new thing and /. was for dinosaurs. Then I went to Digg to see what the fuss was about and found it to be full of Lolcats. I actually tried submitting a couple of stories of actual events to check what happened and found them to be buried in seconds while the Lolcats kept being on the front pages. So I stopped using the site. I hardly find it surprising it eventually failed.

Re:Don't care by cheesybagel · 2012-07-12 16:36 · Score: 1

Selecting news sources? That is way too much work. I hate Twatter. But yeah the Economist and the Onion are good sites. The Onion is prophetic even (the Gillette parody being one case that comes to mind).

Re:$500,000 is probably what it's really worth by perryizgr8 · 2012-07-12 16:39 · Score: 1

i don't understand your complaint regarding facebook. you can choose not to friend people, and you can even choose to not see updates from friends who keep posting stupid crap. facebook is as bad and as good as you can make it.

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Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.

Re:What happened to Digg? by Cl1mh4224rd · 2012-07-12 17:27 · Score: 4, Informative

I used to visit Digg several times a day. Then they did a site redesign that was horrible.

It's important to point out that Digg v4 was quite a bit more than a "redesign". The closest thing I can compare it to is a ground-up rewrite of a major piece of software, where the new version not only looks different, but is missing some fundamental or well-liked features that were present in the previous versions.

Digg v4: How To Successfully Kill A Community

It's hard to understate just how badly Digg screwed itself over with v4. The backlash was like nothing I had ever seen in, or read about, any similar circumstance. I had Digg Support close my account toward the end of the user revolt. (I refused to migrate to Reddit, though, because that site's design was (and still is) just terrible. It might have good content, but even the Mona Lisa can't spruce up a rusted-out utility shed.)

Earlier this week I got the urge to visit Digg for the first time in a long time... and it is such a sad, pathetic thing to behold. Where the most popular stories on the front page used to break 1000 "diggs", they now have two- maybe three-hundred diggs. Where submissions usually had a minimum of several dozen comments, now only the most popular stories seem to break a dozen. Most have only one or two...

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People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.

Re:Don't care by icebraining · 2012-07-12 18:15 · Score: 2

You could try Hacker News. Its unofficial tagline is "this isn't Reddit".

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Dilbert RSS feed

Re:All the Diggers went to Reddit by icebraining · 2012-07-12 18:25 · Score: 1

http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience
http://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/

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Dilbert RSS feed

That depends on the topic, though by F69631 · 2012-07-12 18:32 · Score: 1

The proof is in really hotly debated topics - you can see arguments from BOTH sides of a hot issue being moderated to +5, even if a lot of down-moderation is also applied. That's the key that tells you the system is working to keep people on all sides of an issue engaged, and makes the reading much more interesting as you have more of a real debate and much less a "pulpit" as you said.

It is true that you often see arguments from both sides modded up but I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from that. There are many topics that aren't debated essentially at all because the consensus / group think has already been reached. That isn't bad thing in itself (Not every topic should be debated. We should have consensus not to support genocides, for example...) but the point is that for any hot topic we debate there is a consensus about a dozen more that we don't debate and thus us having some debated issues doesn't prove much about variation.

Honestly though, I think that the biggest problem with /. moderation system is that mods use "-1 Redundant" and "-1 Offtopic" mods far too little. The most heated topics, like the one about constitutionality of Obamacare, have something like 2.5k messages. There is absolutely no way that most of those messages added to the discussion but most were just repeating the same arguments that others had already made... but weren't modded redundant. Part of the problem is that the same exact things were debated in many places, which is due to mods not being willing to use the offtopic mod when one thread of posts strays away from the topic of that thread. You can look at nearly any /. story and in the first thread there are many people who "reply" to the first poster or two just to get their comment higher even though they in no way relate to what the parent had said. This all forces people to spend a lot more time reading the same arguments over and over again and potentially missing some good ones due to the whole discussion about the subtopic not being in the same place.

Drawing conclusions by SuperKendall · 2012-07-12 19:35 · Score: 1

It is true that you often see arguments from both sides modded up but I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from that.

But in every other moderation system I have seen, that never happens. On Digg for example, you had extreme swings hard against one side or the other, with anything the predominant mods disagreeing with for that story being buried hard. That is why I think you can in fact draw conclusions from Slashdot examples, because it works every time where other systems repeatedly fail.

Honestly though, I think that the biggest problem with /. moderation system is that mods use "-1 Redundant" and "-1 Offtopic" mods far too little.

I disagree, I think the reason why /. moderation works is exactly because of this point - by convention, you are supposed to use negative moderation sparingly. I use it only for the worst trolls, and never for people I simply disagree with. Elevating the good as predominant moderation is the best strategy, even if there's a lot of trek generally good stuff floats up.

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"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Good riddance by Altesse · 2012-07-12 20:38 · Score: 2

I say 'Good riddance'. I was a digg user for a few years, but the constant french-bashing, europe-bashing (even on unrelated topics) drove me away. Nothing as informative as /., or say, Engadget on tech news, and political discussions were more like a Quake IV arena than articulated, educated exchanges of opinions.

Re:All the Diggers went to Reddit by lightknight · 2012-07-12 20:48 · Score: 1

Nonsense. Reddit has been enjoyable, although after Digg crashed, the signal to noise ratio has gotten worse; and the number of reposts lately has been killing me.

Still, the forums work, and they have an edit feature that works.

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I am John Hurt.

Re:All the Diggers went to Reddit by hsmith · 2012-07-13 01:40 · Score: 2

I think whoever designed reddit saw 4chan and said

I can do worse

Re:Don't care by crazyjj · 2012-07-13 02:04 · Score: 2

Not only that, but the comments were consistently of TERRIBLE quality, even on tech and gaming stories (and even worse when they branched out). I couldn't believe it back in the day when people were actually calling Digg a "Slashdot killer." But people are saying the same shit about Reedit today, and that's just as laughable.

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What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?

Lesson for Google+ by k(wi)r(kipedia) · 2012-07-13 02:42 · Score: 1

I guess elitism works!

Maybe not elitism in itself, but focus. Other examples: science journals making a profit from paywalls, where general newspapers fail; Vi(m) continuing to flourish despite an interface more unfriendly that a word processor from the DOS era; the Soyuz outlasting the more technologically advanced Space Shuttle.

If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that if you can't be the biggest brontosaurus in the jungle (a big web site), become a bird or a small but agile furry little creature (a focused web site).

Re:What happened to Digg? by artemis67 · 2012-07-13 03:03 · Score: 1

The Digg Patriots were a small group; hardly enough to make a significant impact. There was a lot more dust kicked up over that story than there was substance.

The real problem was that you had a lot of folks who figured out early on how to game the system (MrBabyMan, et al), and while Digg admitted that v4 made Digg harder to game the system, Rose specifically said that they liked the tone and direction of Digg content and did not want to wipe out the "karma" of their top users. So, the gamers remained in control of Digg throughout.

slashdot style human editing necessary by peter303 · 2012-07-13 03:09 · Score: 1

Digg pretty much just floated the most popular stories like Google News. I want to read the quirky nerd stuff. Slashdot and Wired with human editors are much better for that.

Re:All the Diggers went to Reddit by ganjadude · 2012-07-13 05:02 · Score: 1

I never cared about the (this was on XXX hours/days ago) argument. I dont care if another site shows something first, I go to sites like these for the user generated content. Sure I could have read about this sooner at other locations, but there are not any good commentators at other sites (well there might be, I just havent found them)

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have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same

Re:What happened to Digg? by SolitaryMan · 2012-07-13 07:30 · Score: 1

I think /. strikes the right balance: stories are posted by the editors, but the comments are moderated by users. Of course, great community is the main advantage, but I believe this is the consequence.

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May Peace Prevail On Earth

Used To by SuperKendall · 2012-07-13 12:29 · Score: 1

I don't read Newsweek, but doesn't it do actual journalism

It used to. Now it does not, it simply re-iterates talking points from Democrats and AP stories. It is a shadow of what it used to be.

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"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Re:Don't care by cheesybagel · 2012-07-13 16:59 · Score: 1

How is that being proactive about where I am getting my news? I am just selecting different keywords or whatever in the same service! Plus it takes me about as much effort to memorize a keyword as to memorize an URL (which can also be bookmarked).

Rigged by NewYork · 2012-07-13 19:02 · Score: 1

I stopped reading digg when I learned that their staff were rigging the votes.

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Casteism

Slashdot Mirror

Digg.com Sold To Betaworks For $500,000

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