“Digg Effect” is No More : Confirmed
Remember those days when publishers would do anything to make it to the Digg front page ?
A Digg front page meant server crashes and loads of traffic, it was a whole adrenaline rush. Well, not any more.
After the V4 Redesign, its been all downhill for Kevin Rose and his team. Probably Kevin did a good job in transforming Digg to a better scalable product, and got rid of tech issues as he claims which was the biggest problem. But the team probably did a wrong calculation in calculating what was important/top priority when going for V4.
More than product scalability and tech issues, it was the Digg community itself and the whole idea of how Digg was unique and valued among publishers. V4 Digg basically diluted the whole mix and took away the “Digg effect”.
Reports recently show that there is no longer any benefit for being on the Digg front page for publishers. Users on the other hand also have confirmed that they’ve lost interest in the new Digg and it no longer excites them, forget the tech issues.
TechRadar, an A-lister publisher with Digg in its “old days” have confirmed that its Digg referral traffic has taken a beating recently after the V4 update.
So, Kevin, what’s the whole purpose of this thing now ? R.I.P Digg
Hi,
The new mantra for getting traffic from digg is more followers. This will help small publishers and blogger to get more traffic from digg than ever. I did find some bugs on digg but I couldn’t able to report it as their contact form was not loading lol.
Hey Mani, we have been using Digg for well over a year, personally I hated it because we never got much traffic from it. However, since the new Digg release, we have gotten more referrals and more followers. I don’t really care about being on the front page, I care about followers and clicks, (which have both ironicly increased since the new Digg).
The main reason we bookmark there is for the readable backlinks from a site that has a PageRank of 8. It also appear in our SERP quite often for pretty common searches.
So, as of now, I still recommend it to our customers. For what it is, it is a great bookmarking site for SEO purposes. Be curious to hear your thoughts on that.
i better still monitor where my incoming traffics came from, i still believe in Digg though.. i like its UI but the reality is, the Digg we know is quite different to the Digg that we now have… lets see what will happen in the next few days…
I am also suffered a lot of Digg’s new design as a Digg lover. The New Digg was little confused and also new peoples are struggling to be a part of Digg. I Hope Kevin Rose is also knew this after sudden decrease in traffic. In future, if any Social media Giant have plan on Redesign their entire structure, then they have to think seriously before the implementation. Cheers
Yes. I have noted. Google refuses to love my story on Digg V4. It is became Social network than the Social News community. So I can confirm Google loves Social News Community than Social Networks.
Am I correct Mani?
I must say the old digg version made me happy, i got traffic very much from that. its my second top referral site – the first one is SU. now its like i got a punched in my one eye. anyhow i get traffic if my article is good
Kevin Rose and Leo Laporte never realized that Digg wasn’t the code that made the site function, it was the users that made the site valuable. They took granted that they could do anything and the users would put up with it.
In Version 4, Digg smashed its user community into a million pieces, destroying any real abilities for the users to interact and feel a sense of community. Once everybody moves out of town, nobody wants to be the last one living in a ghost town. So it was with Digg users, once it became apparent that Version 4 was the future, and very desired by Kevin and company, the users knew that the Digg they knew and loved was dead never to be resurrected, so why hang around?
This will be a classic business failure taught in business schools now and in the future. Without users, there is no web site, just a page full of code and an idle server farm burning kilowatts for naught.
I have noticed that the spikes in traffic from Digg has declined over the years. Kevin is moving on to bigger and beter ventures, but I will always think of what Digg could have been.