Comments on: Digg’s 20 Questions: a Town Hall Recap

By: This Month In SEO - 2/08 | TheVanBlog

This Month In SEO - 2/08 | TheVanBlog — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 04:06:25 +0000

[...] Digg’s 20 Questions: a Town Hall Recap [...]

By: God Like SEO

God Like SEO — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:56:50 +0000

I think you might have been a bit overly critical of them talking about things that they are working to correct or implement. I think it is a good thing for them to constantly be in a state of adjustment and alteration. It allows them to evolve with the community. While I think for the end user the local front pages would be good, for people looking to make money from front page Diggs it would suck

By: Jeff F.

Jeff F. — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:14:21 +0000

Great play-by-play! I appreciate you taking the time to analyze and breakdown everything that I may have missed.

By: Ben Cook

Ben Cook — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:03:39 +0000

@ standards, I think this town hall was largely in response to the episode of Drill Down that happened shortly after they increased the threshold for popular stories. A bunch of frequent diggers were there contemplating what to do and both Jay and Kevin stopped by and gave some input. I’m not sure whether something had been in the works before then or not but that was the first mention of the Town Hall that I’d heard.

I do think they dodged several questions but I also realize they aren’t ever going to tell us anything that would help people better game their system. What bothered me and I guess made me come across as angry (according to the Digg comments) is that they act like we don’t understand that they face a spam problem and that they have been doing this for so long that they’ve got a good handle on what should be promoted. I’m sorry but it’s a social site and if users like msaleem and mr. babyman have 200 people that follow them and digg a lot of their submissions, that’s just a natural progression of the social aspect of the site!

By: StandardsDT

StandardsDT — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:57:14 +0000

I’ll give digg some credit on doing this. However they would have never done this had the guys over at The Mixxing Bowl hadn’t had Chris McGill from Mixx on the Social Blend. If anyone here thinks digg really does care about their users well then they are sadly mistaken. Jay and Kevin dodged almost everyone question and didn’t give anyone a true honest answer.

By: Ron@TheWisdomJournal

Ron@TheWisdomJournal — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:25:19 +0000

I’ve gotten a lot of hits on Digg, but I much prefer StumbleUpon.

By: Matt Barnes

Matt Barnes — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:07:45 +0000

Communication is a serious issue with digg. They failed to respond to any of the 3 emails I sent them. It is interesting that they admit to an auto-bury algorithm when last time they responded to the question with, “why would we want to do that?” Caught in another blatant lie.Their integrity is zero.

By: Mike Huang

Mike Huang — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 08:06:54 +0000

Thanks for the post and the timestamps for great info I usually don’t watch video clips, but this made me watch it

-Mike

By: Ben Cook

Ben Cook — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:26:29 +0000

@ Strip Blogging, I don’t see them falling off any time soon but they really need to figure out how to balance the issue of power users while still allowing the average users to have a chance at the front page as well.

I really don’t care for Reddit’s interface at all and I think SU is a much different site.

I’m glad they are doing the town halls as well but I wish they’d give us something besides what seems to be the same old answers on things.

By: Strip Blogging

Strip Blogging — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:25:18 +0000

Thanks for the play by play. I am glad that Digg is doing this town hall style discussion. Digg is a key player in the social media space but there are so many new sites coming out that eventually Digg will be taken down if they don’t start listening to the people that have made them what they are. New technologies that have come online are getting more attention by the day. Sites like Reddit and StumbleUpon are gaining steam and they have better interfaces than Digg. Watch out Kevin Rose.

BTW. I love your site Ben!