I’ve just received two trackbacks from a Techtities post entitled ‘Why The Digg Mafia Will Cost Kevin Rose Millions‘, (Update: it’s now been submitted to Digg – lets see what happens if it hits the homepage…) on Digg which suggests that not only are the actions of the ‘Digg mafia’ driving away potential digg users, but they could also be driving away potential acquirers.
I hadn’t considered this before, but after being reminded of two recent examples I actually think that this is the case – the hacking of the SuperGu website because it was accused of being a digg clone, and the defacement of a new Yahoo site just because it included some voting buttons, which of course were invented by Digg, just like fire….
I work for a large ISP/Telco in the UK and I can just picture the scene in the boardroom if I asked for permission to buy Digg. Once the CEO saw the comments left by Digg users on both Digg and on other sites that are ‘fortunate’ enough to hit the homepage, he would definitely veto the deal as it wouldn’t sit well with our family-focussed brand.
Techtities (one of Ajay’s sites btw) also pointed out that Digg’s traffic has actually been falling in the last 3 months. This stunned me, ahtough I had noticed that fewer articles were making it to the homepage and the number of diggs per article looked like it was falling, but I had been attributing this to the Digg mafia burying greater numbers of articles.
Where do you stand on the Great Digg Debate – Is Digg a Hit or a Miss?
More: Techtities
