I've been "digging" a lot lately. Its great watching the newest dugged links. From viral videos, reports of police brutality, biased political blogs and another blog piece defending PC or praising Mac.
Ok I'm being sarcastic. Not that great, but I can't seem to stop myself from checking Digg.com every time I open my web browser. Heck Digg.com is one of my home tabs and so are a couple other link ranking sites. However, the ranking systems on all of these link-ranking sites are really bothering me.
I keep asking myself every time I go onto Digg, "Why aren’t there undigg buttons for the links?" There's an undigg button for comments, but not one for links. There are so many rankings on the web that no one knows whose number 1! Doc Searls of Linux Journal and The Cluetrain Manifesto made a good point about how its "odd not to see BoingBoing, long #1 on Technorati’s list, not present at all on Techmeme’s. Same with the new #1, Huffington Post. Not technical enough, perhaps? One can only guess."
What's really getting to me in addition to the ranking is how link-ranking sites are now getting bought. Reddit.com last year was bought out by the owner of Wired.com, Conde Nast. Just today, Newsvine to my surprise was acquired by MSNBC.com.
My independent news source has just been acquired by a major news corporation. While I'm glad that Mike D and the rest of his staff will get the help to expand the site, how independent will it remain? How will ranking of news be affected in the future? Will the restraints come up against biased articles?
Monday, October 8, 2007
To Digg or Not to Digg
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3 comments:
I agree with you about not having an undigg button. What's that all about? Reminds me of surveys that basically say, "How great were we? A. Great B. Greater C.Greatest" There's no option to tell them how much they sucked! What is with THAT!? With digg, just because a story seems cool one day, has little bearing on whether or not it will be just as cool the next. Odds are, it will be much less popular as time goes on. When do the ratings ever go down, and not just up?
The big companies are worried about all those rankings... It is always better to have a higher rank. I bet that their rank would be affected a little bit because a acquiring company is the mother company and a little digg company is a son company. That's why sometimes I don't believe big companies acquiring strategies.
Anyway, Peter you seems like you are so up-to-date on technology related stuff. It is just personal curiosity. Where do you get those information?
I think there aren't "UnDigg" buttons because if you like a story, and you dugg it originally, what draws you to think the story isn't cool. There is no reason on that respect.
Second, and probably more pertinent to what you are talking about, if a story isn't cool it will just die. Stories make it to the front page by how fast and how many people digg a story. If nobody diggs it, it is just as effective as a bury digg or and undigg.
peace.
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