Why Digg Failed

[mandy]

The only thing one can infer from watching a website make money is that it's capable of supplying what users demand. To take it a step further, all one can infer from a website making lots of money is that it's capable of supplying lots of what lots of users demand. As in meatspace, raking in the market's cash merely indicates that one is winning a popularity contest, and no more. Fittingly, Digg is a microcosmic embodiment of this powerful capitalist principle...

E-popularity is that nebulous e-resource which inevitably spreads itself in any e-community. Just as in society, some inequality is a good thing, as it filters the worthwhile users from the shitty. But of course, Digg must take the idea and run with it further and further, past its breaking point. On Digg, popularity is everything because of positive feedback loops that cause it to mount like compound interest.

User profiles (example) put emphasis on a user's standing in the community. A detailed count is kept of a user's submissions and how many of them became popular. Users can also follow their e-friendships in mind-numbing detail, so you can hunt down and forcibly befriend those who digg you or leave a winking eye comment on one of your stories. Now consider what happens when a guy with over 1700 Digg friends, many of whom are tracking his every action, chooses to digg or bury a story. Can you say "stampede"? ...

full article: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/2/14/131127/709