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I’d hardly call myself an internet journeyman or anything, but I’ve been around “the cloud” for several years now. In that time, I’ve learned a few things about people, specifically how they act on said web. Frankly, the Internet has a way of unraveling some of the best and brightest (as well as some of the medium-est and lackluster) minds putzing around today.
This is specifically evident in the “social news” arena. Speaking specifically regarding Digg and Reddit, arguably the two most popular sites in this space. Just to be fair, I’ve spent the majority of my time on Reddit, but I’ve also been known to poke around Digg on occasion (if there’s grass-growing nearby that needs supervision). At it’s outset, the Reddit community prided itself on being more intelligent and discriminating than that of Digg - and if you ask me, this was true for awhile. But, as Reddit grew in popularity and was acquired, the site’s users quickly went from a relatively small group of smarties to an ocean of raving dumbasses.
You’ll be thrilled to know that I have identified (and, judging by my completely subjective criteria, correctly so) the solution to this problem. It’s so simple, so elegant. Ready?
Charge a membership fee.
That’s it, that’s the big one. All these sites would have to do is charge a fee (and it could be ridiculously small, like $1) to be allowed to post and comment. It would be a drop in the bucket in terms of site revenue, but it would raise the barrier-to-entry just enough to weed out most of the undesirables. You know why? The undesirables are generally very young and don’t have bank accounts or credit cards. I realize this isn’t true for all of them, but for the majority, I promise you that it is.
Which brings us to Metafilter. Quite possibly one of the most interesting sites on the web, Metafilter is not unlike Digg/Reddit in that it’s a collection of links to interesting “stuff” that people vote and comment on. The difference is, Metafilter charges a one-time $5 buy-in to be part of the fun (though it can be read for free). Again, probably not doing very much for them financially, but the site is also fairly lean on the pimply-faced trolls who like to stir the pot just for the sake of stirring.
Honestly, go take a look at Digg/Reddit, then go look at Metafilter (or MeFi to those “in the know) and see if you don’t notice a glaring difference between the quality of submissions/comments. I’ll bet you do.
Apologies for the rant
Technorati Tags: digg, reddit, metafilter, social news, web2.0
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14 Responses to “Why Digg and Reddit are Doomed (and Metafilter Isn’t)”
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Wow, wow, wow. You sir, make an excellent point! I really just found myself earlier this morning ranting to my girlfriend how much I don’t like Digg anymore because of their ridiculous immature and negative comments.
Your idea is pretty damn good.
Bravo!
[...] here for full [...]
are they dumbasses or smartasses? You know the golden rule of the web, if you don’t wanna read it, then move on…checking metafilter now, i’ll let you know
Dude, you are such an idiot.
If Metafilter is so hot, why does it get like 1/100th or 1/1000th of the traffic that Digg gets?
Digg’s traffic has been rising fast — see this article in USA Today from a week or so ago:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/2007-10-23-tech-digg_N.htm
BTW - I buried your story on Digg and shouted to 100 others to do the same. Seeing that you think Digg sucks, this shouldn’t bother you.
And your note about “irony” above the digg chicklet — maybe you should rewrite it to say: “I AM A HYPOCRITE!”
@Non-fan
So, by that rationale, Budweiser is the best beer in the US and Windows is the best operating system in the world because they’re the most popular. Obviously, that’s wrong.
I don’t care that you buried the digg story. For me, digg is a source of traffic. You’re here, so mission accomplished.
As far as digg’s traffic and the USA today article, see Budweiser/Windows analogy above. Popular != good.
And thanks for calling me an idiot, I couldn’t have asked for better proof of my point.
[Edit] Oh, and feel free to link me to the report outlining the traffic statistics on Digg and Metafilter, I’m very curious to see them.
Cheers
You make a good point, in that pay-to-enrol things do cut back on the spammers. If at the same time also cutting off a surprisingly large portion of the world, especially because credit cards (And their trust in being used online) is still, proportionately speaking, a relatively american phenominon.
I have a credit card, but only recently so. Further, I’d balk at using it anywhere other than my local computer store, mostly on instinctive principle; and I know a great many people similar. It seems to be a cultural phenonimon, perhaps it will pass in a few years, perhaps not.
As for trolls… if you need any proof that money-for-entry will stop trolls showing up, just take a look at Something Awful one day. What it really does is increase the critical mass required before the trolls will consider it worthwhile to show up. Which is good in its own right, but still far from perfect.
I rather like the idea… I still wouldn’t use a credit card to join it… I’m from New Zealand, and we just don’t do that sort of thing. Much like the europeans, from what I understand. *grin*
The other day I was reading Digg when I noticed a comment about Linux support for the iPod which linked to an article that advised people to use gtkpod. I posted a brief reply that this wouldn’t work with the recently release iPods because Apple added a checksum to the database, apparently specifically to break third party apps (shame on Apple).
Shortly thereafter my comment got dugg down by numerous people, several of whom posted replies noting that I was an idiot because the underlying library that most Linux Ipod-related apps use had been updated and surely all the related Linux apps had been updated.
Well, no, because a 15 second google search would have shown anyone that gtkpod hadn’t been updated in months, and is still incompatible with the newest gen of ipods.
And, frankly, that is very typical of my experience using Digg. Its like the old CNN show Crossfire where the loudest idiot wins. Metafilter has a much higher ratio of signal to noise than I’ve ever seen on Digg.
Brett, in response to A Non-Fan’s comment, maybe you should charge a small membership fee as well.
Also, an interesting side story. I’m here in Austria right now and Austrians hate American beers (as well as Starbucks, but that’s off the point), so I was surprised to see Budweiser sold in one of the pubs here. While drinking my beer, I was told that the founders of Budweiser stole the recipe and started Budweiser in America. It turns out I was drinking the original Budweiser.
I am a long time user of Digg. But for the past year I’ve decided to become more of a lurker, occasionally posting something I deem worthy. There are 2 reasons for this, one of which you’ve addressed here. I think it’s a great idea so have some filtering mechanism in place, but I’m afraid the membership fee won’t shake out the trolls.
How about an incentive based system, whereby users must keep their profile rating in good standing with the rest of the community or they lose the right to comment and vote. Users can redeem themselves by submitting x amount of stories that receive y amount of votes.
I am a long time user of Digg. But for the past year I’ve decided to become more of a lurker, occasionally posting something I deem worthy. There are 2 reasons for this, one of which you’ve addressed here. I think it’s a great idea so have some filtering mechanism in place, but I’m afraid the membership fee won’t shake out the trolls.
How about an incentive based system, whereby users must keep their profile rating in good standing with the rest of the community or they lose the right to comment and vote. Users can redeem themselves by submitting x amount of stories that receive y amount of votes.
I agree with you on that one. On Digg you hear one of three stories a hundred million times…
1. Google is God
a.Yahoo is evil
b. Microsoft is evil
c. Flickr is evil
i. refer to (a)
2. Firefox is God
a. refer to 1. (b)
3. Apple is God
a. refer to 1. (b)
4. Linux is God
a. refer to 1. (b)
It is the same stories recycled over and over. Thousands of followers that just repeat what someone else says. Despite the love affair with Google, Firefox, Apple, and Linux there are other things.
Paul
[...] ran across a post on Brett Kelly’s blog about why he feels that Digg.com and Reddit will fail. It is an opinion piece about the [...]
Digg, Wikipedia, Reddit, and a lot more sites, are just full of self-important 12 year olds who want praise for their ability to string together combos of Google searches and paste what they find into a text editor. Who the hell would waste their time on a site like that instead of, I don’t know, something productive?