May 21

marco: I saw this widget on a blog tonight. Nine of the ten stories are list posts — useless “10 best”, “10 worst”, “10 scariest”, “10 biggest” posts made for Digg-bait and quick skimming. List posts are the McDonald’s of online writing: they require no thought, provide no intellectual value, and guarantee lots of cheap traffic and comments. I can hardly even listen to Diggnation anymore, previously one of my favorite podcasts, because the “stories” are so inane and useless. This is every Diggnation episode now: (long intro, description of this episode’s alcohol) “Hey, here’s a funny video about cats!” “Guy gets hit in the crotch with lightsaber by 5-year-old” (commercials) (stupid emails) Digg’s current state of affairs is just sad. They’ve hit a wall of mediocrity and community isolation. I can’t imagine that their traffic is growing significantly. All attempts to broaden Digg’s appeal have failed — the fundamental idea simply doesn’t scale beyond a single narrow userbase. They can’t go anywhere else with this. No wonder they’re trying to sell it. They know it’s time to move on.  テレビを見る時間でdiggをするようになったのならばdiggがテレビと同様に何も考える必要がなくて意味がなくてチープなのは当然なのかもしれない。

marco:

I saw this widget on a blog tonight.

Nine of the ten stories are list posts — useless “10 best”, “10 worst”, “10 scariest”, “10 biggest” posts made for Digg-bait and quick skimming. List posts are the McDonald’s of online writing: they require no thought, provide no intellectual value, and guarantee lots of cheap traffic and comments.

I can hardly even listen to Diggnation anymore, previously one of my favorite podcasts, because the “stories” are so inane and useless. This is every Diggnation episode now:

  • (long intro, description of this episode’s alcohol)
  • “Hey, here’s a funny video about cats!”
  • “Guy gets hit in the crotch with lightsaber by 5-year-old”
  • (commercials)
  • (stupid emails)

Digg’s current state of affairs is just sad. They’ve hit a wall of mediocrity and community isolation. I can’t imagine that their traffic is growing significantly. All attempts to broaden Digg’s appeal have failed — the fundamental idea simply doesn’t scale beyond a single narrow userbase. They can’t go anywhere else with this.

No wonder they’re trying to sell it. They know it’s time to move on.

 テレビを見る時間でdiggをするようになったのならばdiggがテレビと同様に何も考える必要がなくて意味がなくてチープなのは当然なのかもしれない。

  1. gkojaz reblogged this from marco
  2. kl7 reblogged this from marco and added:
    This is pretty much why I’m...AOL but it’s much more independent when running content. The...
  3. kbjaski reblogged this from ku
  4. mudwerks reblogged this from ku and added:
    I saw this widget on a blog tonight....Nine of the ten stories are list posts — useless...
  5. ku reblogged this from marco and added:
    テレビを見る時間でdiggをするようになったのならばdiggがテレビと同様に何も考える必要がなくて意味がなくてチープなのは当然なのかもしれない。
  6. rosano reblogged this from marco
  7. teradome reblogged this from marco
  8. whimsy reblogged this from tsupo and added:
    I saw this widget on a blog tonight. Nine of the ten stories are list posts — useless “10 best”, “10 worst”, “10...
  9. tsupo reblogged this from cxx
  10. radix33 reblogged this from marco and added:
    Digg had gone downhill...fast, it splattered all over...feel...
  11. cubicleparty reblogged this from marco and added:
    typically don’t reblog other people’s text-based Tumblr posts (especially those that don’t follow me, nothing personal,...
  12. marco posted this