Nearly two years ago I posted about Digg's v4 redesign that would eventually lead it to its fate. And today it was announced that Digg is finally dead.
A lot can be said about how difficult it is to not only monetize a free online service, but also to keep its users. Without having a critical mass of users that would tie their online account with life-impacting connections, what are essentially anonymous users are free to come and go, having no strong need to have permanent social connections on a web site.
In a way, Digg failed because it wanted to be Facebook while it should have competed with Reddit. It is not "real life" social, but instead a public forum of strangers. Nothing wrong with that, but with those wrong aspirations it ostracized all but the most powerful users and commercial sites that gamed the sense of meritocracy expected from an anonymous forum. It shouldn't be about the reputation of a source or user, but solely about the power of an idea or "meme".
After all that happened, I wonder why people would listen to the ramblings of Kevin Rose. In life, we should give a chance to everyone to learn from their mistake, and value that wisdom. But in business, burning away a hundred million dollars of investor's money is enough to deserve a permanent mark of shame on your résumé. Oh well, there are suckers and fanboys everywhere, even at Google.
Published on July 12, 2012 at 21:27 EDT
Older post: 64 Bits, The Last Frontier
Newer post: Headless VirtualBox