Digg is in trouble, although they might not even know it, which I think they do but that’s beside the point. They’re in trouble because the people who are making their service interesting, the content providers, are starting to get pissed off. There’s a lot of talk of censorship around Digg these days; here’s the most recent Techmeme thread, which originates from a post by Neil Patel over at Pronet Advertising.
What happens to a social content service when it appears too frequently around this kind of accusations? A smaller one would falter, perhaps even crash totally, but Digg is not a newcomer nor a baby in the business. They’re the giant in their area, Netscape, Reddit, StumpleUpon and whatnot are just up and coming projects but not real competitors. Or are they? Could Digg actually alienate their core crowd with this proposed behavior? True or not, just the fact that there’s a discussion about wether Digg is censoring or not, and how they’re doing it (Digg users burying “anti-Digg stuff” is old news) is hurting the site.
Core Digg users will probably stay, but others will leave, in search of other places to share their stories with the world wide web. Like Netscape, Reddit, StumbleUpon and whatnot…
Originally posted on May 15, 2007 @ 5:51 am