Digg’s Biggest Problem Is Its Users And Their Constant Opinions On Things
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
However, Arrington is wrong about Apple and Facebook. They have stepped over a line somewhere and alienated themselves. Both of these companies have gotten mainstream media attention for their recent dictatorship activities. They are going to be paying the price for it. Don't forget how Microsoft got dragged into court in 1997. Arrogance.
It is true that I do not represent the mainstream, but Facebook's recent privacy actions has caught the attention of the US Congress. Congress people make a living by throwing grass in the air to see which way the political wind is blowing. When Facebook draws the attention of Charles Schumer we're no longer talking about just the news.yc crowd.
When Microsoft found themselves in the same situation in 1997 they went to Washington DC, told congress that consumers didn't really know what was good for them. When summoned by the US DOJ Bill Gates went back to Washington personally to tell the DOJ that they didn't know anything about computer software and were in no position to prosecute them.
This level of arrogance takes a company out of the tech industry echo chamber and right into the nightly news.
And those minority are also less likely to post about it, too. I was pretty active on these discussions at first, but by now, I don't even read the comments section of a post with "Facebook" in the title. It's just turned into one big giant circlejerk, and it's boring.
It's easy to think that a site has a 'hivemind,' but there isn't really a consensus of opinion.
I don't think that's the point of the article. It's the early eighties, you're running Apple, and you've just flopped with Apple III for business and the graphical Apple Lisa is going nowhere.
If you ask users who represent anybody at all you're going to wind up making PCs running MS-DOS. The OP's point is that Digg shouldn't listen to any users at all. They need a dictator. In other words, they need to listen to just one person.
Do what wufoo did for forms.
Should have sold when you had the chance :P
Maybe there's not a market for their platform.
Arrington, though, shoots from the hip, and has a "here's my opinion and that's that" approach. He's sometimes wrong, but there's usually a good mix of wisdom and irreverence in how he sees things.
But, as I said, it depends what you read TC for. Pieces driven heavily by gut feelings rather than actual news are, of course, not for everyone :-) If Mike sold/left TC though, I'd just go read wherever he blogged next because I care more for his writing than "TechCrunch's."
Interesting for me, as that was the point where I left digg for greener pastures. My account on reddit iterated up to being 3 years old a couple of weeks ago -- wiki says the HD DVD thing happened May 1, 2007. Makes sense.
Web 2.0 sites are held hostage by their user communities at two points in their growth: (i) when the site is just starting and (ii) when the site has grown to its "maximal" size.
The vast majority of Web 2.0 sites fail at the starting gate. The "lucky" ones then face a phase of explosive growth, in which a huge amount of capital is needed just to keep the lights running. Around the time that they're looking for an exit, growth has leveled off, and there's neither any need for big investors nor any reason for them to get in... No exit.
I don't understand why the need for Digg to grow. I mean, what's the point ? They obviously have a already on-going user base, and don't tell me that 250k are all bitching users, I enjoy Digg a lot, it's a awesome site to start the day while drinking coffee in the morning.
Also, why are people talking about kicking Kevin Rose ? It's his project !! He invested money on it, he should be the last one to leave it if you ask me. I think the biggest mistake Digg made was bringing VC, I bet that deep inside KR feels the same. VC are poison to a company.
I think, long run, that you only ever have those 250K users permanently. The rest are just passing through.
It'd be great to think that rock-solid vision and saying no to users is great, just like it'd be great to think that listening carefully and delivering what an audience wants is great. Fact is, both are necessary and both have limitations.
Nothing stays the same. Audience participation is always changing. If applications were movies, some might be James Bond movies -- multiple creative attempts along the same pattern as visioned by founders continue to churn out winners. But most are Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure -- wonderful little passtimes that lots of people enjoy for a bit and move on.
Everybody wants to think that their Bill and Ted is actually a James Bond. But very, very, very few apps are. And then when their app isn't, people either crowd around and say there's not enough vision or not enough listening to the crowd. This is the difference between making something and bullshitting about making something.
Don't misunderstand me, but that was the point where I stopped reading.