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PR & SEO Blog from Silicon Alley

Diggers digging their own hole?

Monday, January 28, 2008

With social news networks like Digg around for some time now, the interesting realities of human behavior on these types of sites are being revealed.

Last week, Founder Kevin Rose announced that a new algorithm would take control over Digg, changing the way stories make their way to becoming popular on the network.

Leaving complexities aside, the basic idea is that from now on, the diversity of people digging stories will be taken into consideration in deeming which articles are catapulted to the top of Digg and which are buried in its depths.

For prominent Diggers, this change might mean a sudden fall from grace. Apparently, there is a group of them that has invested such an avid participation in the site, that they, in principal, control it.

This means that the “popular” stories we read are really not popular by true definition. Rather, the Diggers in this specific and relatively small group are the ones who deem articles to be “popular.”

Obviously, news of the changed algorithm caused an uproar among these Diggers. After all, no one likes to be stripped of their power, no matter how mediocre it might be.

Fortunately, Digg founders did not ignore their devoted fans despite their dictatorship-style tactics. Rather than admonishing them for turning Digg into their own personal platform, Kevin Rose and his fellow Digg leaders talked things out with some of these high profile Diggers, who were charging them with abandonment.

This scenario is an interesting two-sided coin. On the one side, these dedicated Diggers are the pulse of Digg. On the flipside, though, those who visit on a less frequent basis might feel - and some apparently do (see comments) - that Digg is a pointless endeavor. This sentiment discourages recurrent use of the program, stripping it of hits, which equal value.

It seems that morale has won this round. However, in time, I predict that we will see more of these types of situations. The basic elements of human behavior are inherent no matter if we are interacting in the real or in a virtual world. In a social group, there will always be those who take charge, while the majority remains largely apathetic.

Labels: digg, Internet, social media, Web 2.0