How Digg Found a Way to Make Money | Hacker News Reader

How Digg Found a Way to Make Money

gigaom.com

50 pointshshah29 comments

FUIs (fake user interfaces) are bad business.

Even magazines have the decency to print "Special Advertising Section" at the top of their faux articles.

Amen. When I see "So now ads are made in the “vernacular” of Digg.", I translate that as "We're trying to trick our users into clicking ads"

I suspect advertisers' click-throughs will rise but their conversion rates will drop through the floor. Eventually they will get wise. I'm not sure Digg can keep this alleged gravy train rolling.

Press releases disguised as breathlessly praising blog posts also seem like bad business.

Edit: s/described/disguised/

I think you guys are underestimating the consumers. Ads are supposed to be entertaining, just like tv shows and movies. They're supposed to blur the line between real and fake. At the end of the day, it will be up to the viewer if they'll believe it or not. If you point out that it's fake from the start, it kinda defeats the purpose of ads.

If the ads are meant to be entertaining, they could be more clearly labeled as ads and still be entertaining. They're supposed to "blur the line between real and fake" by being creative and entertaining on their own, not by mimicking the real content.

I disagree. Mimicking real content is a valid expression of creativity and entertainment.

It can be. But when the primary goal is to get unsuspecting viewers to click (by mistake) on ad content, it's not.

Even magazines have the decency to print "Special Advertising Section" at the top of their faux articles.

I don't know the specific statues, but I believe these are required by law.

This really makes me sad. Webiste are moving from "click-the-monkey" ads to "camouflage" ads.

Surfing... Surfing.... Doh! (Clicked on camouflage ad).

Facebook is using this hard - it takes considerable horsepower to try to determine what's linkbait vs. what's actually going on in your social network.

I'm hoping that someone (hopefully a HN member) will come up with a "better way" and in turn make the web a better place.

// updated Dow -> Doh

I was just going to say the same thing. Disguising the ad has value in that most users of digg have no clue how digg makes money outside the overt ads. Same goes with google. I would dare say 99.99% of google users have no idea how google makes money because the text link ads look so much like regular search results

The more I think about it, you're right. We were recently explaining to one of our clients about some basic SEO topics. They did not understand that the links on the side of Google are paid links.

I wonder what the CTR is for Google Ads on typical Google search?

"... Dow!"

I believe you mean "Doh!"

the ads are actually useful and relevant. they're also clearly labeled as sponsored. you're just as likely to click on them by mistake as any other ad. odds are you'd actually click on them by mistake a lot less. if you don't like the ad? vote it down/bury it. I'm actually very bullish on this model.

They are not clearly labeled they have the same look and feel of a digg submission and are only lacking some of the touches at the bottom like comments.

The top says sponsored by but it says sponsored by in the light unreadable text that is nearly impossible to see if you're just navigating the site like a normal user.

I've never used digg but this and their digg bar debacle are such shady business tactics that I feel I should lump them in with cash for gold.

If you don't see this as clearly labeled ads than I believe something is wrong with your eyes. http://i.imgur.com/8Djg7.jpg

The "digg-style" ads also lights up on mouse over. I know this sucks and feels like being duped, but if user gets duped by this kind of ads, they probably deserve to get duped. But they paraded the idea (more than once) months before running it to make sure everyone understands what going on, both within digg in the form of digg blog posts which was on the front page and outside digg in the form of interviews to tech sites like techcrunch, which were also on the digg frontpage.

I am not a big fan of digg, I much prefer Reddit. But Reddit has almost the exact same system as digg (I think reddit's system was live first).

Its easy to sit in your chair and criticize, but someone's gotta pay the bills.

>if user gets duped by this kind of ads, they probably deserve to get duped.

This is not the correct way to think about the user experience

I'm wearing my glasses, and it honestly took me about 30 seconds of scanning to figure out which of those articles was an ad. Now think about the readwriteweb/facebook fiasco (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo...) and consider how an average person interprets that page.

As much as I don't like digg, I think it is fair to say that the avg digg/reddit users are more tech savvy than facebook/myspace users. So this is not an equal comparison.

I can criticize them all I want, they may have to pay the bills but tricking users really isn't a very nice way to do that.

And not being a digg user it is hard to notice the difference between that and a normal submission.

Reddit style is different it is always at the top has a different color and a border around it with a what is this link as well

Techmeme finds the right balance between "punch the monkey" and "camouflage." Their ads are styled like the rest of their site, so the cognitive bias against bright, flashing colors is diminished, but they're clearly denoted as being sponsored.

You mean they didn't find a way to make money when they drowned out the content with all the other ads?

I wonder how long they'll continue pulling traffic, the community aspect of the site looks a lot like it's in its death throes.

to be fair AOL,MySpace, and yahoo social stuff has looked that way for years. idiots don't know any better. and idiots is a huge demographic.

I prefer "unwashed masses" to "idiots". Definitely a huge demographic though!

so what you're saying is that hackers are a part of the "washed" masses?

nope, unwashed loners :)

I take a shower every day.

I'm getting tired of people bashing Toyota. I recognize that it's a serious problem, but I think they did the right thing and I just feel like the media is trying to drag it out like it's some huge scandal.

(FWIW, I've never even owned a Toyota, but this recall does not make me any less likely to buy one in the future.)

The most interesting (and least shady) idea here seems to be paying for internal links. This could work in the local model: restaurants could pay for Digg links to their reviews for example. Sounds really promising.

I know that in England at least Newspapers have to clearly distinguish content from adverts.

Doesn't this completely violate this principle?

On a side note, I've also always though Google's sponsored links were also pretty shady in that they barely distinguish themselves from actual search results (very slight colour difference, 'sponsored results' tag hidden in top right).

Just makes me wonder if this is actually a viable business model or will turn out to be something that legislators slap down in the next few years to level the playing field.

However, I think there's a pretty big difference between Google and Digg in terms of the service they provide. Digg is way more reliant on their user's participation in order to be relevant. If Digg alienates their user base somehow (perhaps with camouflaged spam?), they're toast.

I actually think google's advertising is significantly less annoying than any other company that provides even less value to their consumer.

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