The Downfall of Digg

I was a frequent user of Digg, a user-based news website where users can submit articles and vote for the best articles. The best articles float to the top and front-page, while the others are buried into darkness and most users will never see them. I would check Digg nearly every 10-20 minutes, and always found a new article to read up on. Some were serious, some funny, and some incredibly interesting. The content ranged from silly animal pictures to breakthough scientific discoveries.

Recently, Digg was updated to v4. The layout changed, the process changed, EVERYTHING changed. Now, in order to see any user-submitted articles, you have to "Follow" them, much like you follow a friend on Twitter, where previously all submitted (provided they were voted up, or "Dugg" up) articles would be seen on the front page. This, plus the layout change, the removal of the "Upcoming" section (a section where users would be able to see articles that have just been submitted), and the removal of the ability to "Bury" articles completely changed the heart of the website.

If you check the front page now, you'll find a couple of things. In the middle is the "Top News", and on the right, a list that displays the top news, ordering them from the most diggs on top, to the least on the bottom. Since the "Upgrade" to v4, the front page consisted of articles auto-submitted by the websites themselves. For the first few days, the front page was covered in articles auto-submitted by Mashables, Techcrunch, Engadget, and a few others. But lately, the users of digg, in retaliation to this complete change that contradicts the original nature of the website, have started to fight back by submitting and digging news articles from a rival site, Reddit.

Reddit is similar to Digg, save for the eyesore of a layout. Users can submit articles or comments and have the community comment on it. The community, much like Digg's, often provides thoughtful discussions about the original poster's message, article, or picture.

If you look on the right side, you'll notice that the top-dugg articles have around 3700-4700 diggs. If you look a bit closer... All of these articles are actually from Reddit. But note that the link on Digg does not link to the actual article/image that was posted on Reddit first, it actually links to the Reddit page where that article/image was submitted!

If you look through any of the comments on the Digg article pages, you'll notice how seemingly every user has a few choice words for Kevin Rose, the CEO of Digg.

As Digg crumbles (though perhaps there's a chance it can redeem itself if it changes back at all), many users have been migrating to Reddit. The Reddit front page has seen many posts welcoming the ex-Digg users, some friendly, some... Well, not so friendly.

Anyways, the internet is serious business. It always has been, and will continue to be so. At this point, I'm only checking up on Digg every now and then to see how it's doing. But from now on, I'll get my news and my lulz from Reddit.