Digg – Now Worse Than a High School Clique

Currently, I’m still a big fan of Digg.  Through Digg I’ve found sites that I check out almost every day – sites like Huffington Post, Copy Blogger, Gas 2.0, etc., so, I can’t say that I haven’t benefited from Digg’s existence.

But now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I have to admit, lately I have become less and less enchanted with Digg.  The main reason being, Digg has slowly evolved into nothing more than an online version of some terrible, exclusive high school clique.

Now, before you accuse me of being nothing but a whiner — you would be only partially correct in that accusation; I can do things other than whine — please let me explain where I’m coming from.

THE SAME USERS DOMINATE THE HOMEPAGE

What do the following user names have in common?

MrBabyMan, diggboss, MakiMaki, msaleem, uptick, SirPopper, badwithcomputer, numberneal, zaibatsu, and insaincain02

Give up?  Well, go check out Digg’s homepage and chances are, of the 15 submissions, I think it’s safe to bet that five or six of the articles have been submitted by the aforementioned users.  And the worst part is, it’s like this almost every time you go to Digg’s homepage.

For a site that has 3 million users, it’s kind of odd/frustrating that the same 25 users have a pretty strong stranglehold over the homepage.

THE SECRETS REGARDING BURIES

As you probably know, I run another site called Daily Fuel Economy Tip, which has grown over the past two years to have a pretty decent following.  The last three submissions made to Digg have all received over 300 Diggs, were listed in the “Hot in All Topics” section and were almost always at or near the top of the “most comments” section.

They also all failed to make the homepage and simply disappeared for no apparent reason.

If someone or some group of users are continuously burying submissions from my site, I would like to know about it.  I want to know not so I can go on some sort of vindictive burying campaign against said users, rather I would like to be able to contact them and ask how I can improve my site and/or content so that they find it “Digg worthy.”

However, because Digg treats this with a shroud of secrecy, I’ll simply stop getting my hopes up when my submissions cross the 300 Digg plateau.

THE WHOLE “AURA” OF DIGG

I think this might be what bothers me the most.  Digg itself, as well as its “power users” seem to have this whole sort of elitist aura surrounding them.  They’re working behind the scenes, doing their little networking, pulling strings, keeping everything a secret from you.

I understand the idea of keeping the algorithm proprietary – after all,  you wouldn’t expect Google to let you in on how they run their business, right?  That being said, it would be nice if Digg would explain themselves regarding how it came to be that the same 25 users dominate the site.

WHAT TO DO?

There’s really no point in bitching and moaning if you don’t attempt to provide some solutions to the perceived problems.  So, here’s my shot at it:

1. GIVE MORE DETAILS REGARDING BURIES.  Ok, so maybe Digg doesn’t have to go so far as to tell me who has buried my submissions, but it would be great if they would at least let me know how many times my submission has been buried.  I think most users would find this information useful, so in the future, I could avoid submitting similar stories.
2. CHANGE THE FRIEND SYSTEM.  I thought the whole point of Digg was to set up a system so that the best, most interesting stories would make it to the homepage.  The way the system is set up now, it’s really all about who your friends are and who you shout to over what you submit.  This leads me to…
3. DO NOT ALLOW BLIND DIGGING OR BURYING.  If someone does not click the link to the submitted article, they should not be allowed to Digg or bury a submission.  After all, is it really possible to tell if you like or dislike an entire submission based on Digg’s headline and brief description section?  Pretty doubtful.

So, that’s my beef with Digg as well as my solutions to fix the system.

On that note, I’m going to go ahead and submit this now, and subsequently spend the next 12 hours hoping it doesn’t get buried (which it probably will).