Digg’s “Drastic Changes” = Playing With Fire

By  |  Friday, January 22, 2010 at 1:05 pm

Kevin Rose has gone on record saying the next version of Digg, due within months, will feature some drastic changes that in his own words will leave some of their users “shocked.”  It isn’t altogether clear exactly what Mr. Rose has planned, including navigation bar and Digg button changes, and a greater focus on “real-time” content.

Another big change is that there would be a greater focus on what those more closely associated with a user are digging rather than the user base at large. Previously, the concept of digging meant all users had a say in what content made it to the front pages of the site.

The switch appears to be a response to a overall paradigm shift when it comes to social networking. Sites like Twitter and Facebook have made consumers more apt to follow what their friends are doing rather than some random Internet user they may no nothing about.

Call me crazy, but I feel drastic changes like what seems to be proposed here are often perilous. Users are accustomed to one way of doing things. If you change too much of what has made you popular, you risk alienating and frustrating your loyal users. Will Digg’s changes do just that? It’s hard to say.

I’m just hoping here that they’re not planning to change too much of the user experience, or that could definitely spell trouble.

(Hat tip: Telegraph UK)

 
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6 Comments For This Post

  1. Carter Cole Says:
    January 22nd, 2010 at 1:34 pm

    i like the group think mentality of digg as it is now… i know what my friends think already

  2. Stilgar Says:
    January 22nd, 2010 at 6:44 pm

    The changes won’t shock me because I stopped reading Digg two years ago. It was very cool at first but then it turned into this site where a handful of users seemed to control the top stories. Then I also came to realize that most of the top stories contained some combination of the following words: sex, global warming, religion, stupid, smart, best, worst.

  3. Tech Says:
    January 22nd, 2010 at 8:52 pm

    I agree. Digg may destroy themselves if they try to shake things up too much.

  4. Zatz Says:
    January 23rd, 2010 at 7:39 am

    Sitting still is also perilous. I haven’t used Digg in two years – prefer things like Techmeme (and Twitter) for current content aggregation. The large percent of assinine Digg commenters/comments combined with submission/pumping abuse got to be too much.

  5. John Says:
    January 23rd, 2010 at 2:21 pm

    Agree with Stilgar. It must be over 12 months since I looked at Digg. Went back to Slashdot and used Google Reader more.

    Who wants a new site that makes it difficult to find stories – Digg moves too fast to be useful, too many “Look at me, Look at me!” link pages.

  6. jvon Says:
    January 25th, 2010 at 9:43 pm

    the url to digg has a typo in this story 🙂

1 Trackbacks For This Post

  1. And That’s What You Missed on Technologizer Says:
    December 31st, 2010 at 12:44 pm

    […] Ed worried–sensibly–that Digg’s plans for drastic changes sounded like a bad idea. […]