socialmedian: What is Digg Planning?

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What is Digg Planning?

Submitted by Robdiana from blog

Oct 12, 2008

Summary

Image via CrunchBase

Digg has done a lot of interesting things over the years, but recently they did something that confuses me. First, they banned Zaibatsu, possibly the third most active user of Digg. A few days later they announced new funding for what they call international expansion. About one week after that announcement, they banned many of their most active users with minimal information on why. According to the user named Cosmicdebris, this is part of the explanation:

your Digg.com account has been permanently banned due to egregious violations of the Digg.com TOU related to script usage.

I find this flurry of activity a little too coincidental. If these users were using scripts to enable them to Digg better, then they have been using them for a long time. David Chen has a very good overview of what Digg has been doing. More importantly, he highlights what the problem might be:

At one point, Digg’s top 100 users were responsible for over 50% of Digg’s front page stories. This was Digg’s fundamental problem, although it didn’t have to be: It was an att

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Comments (16)

Jasongoldberg,

Oct 13, 2008

@robdiana you say that you think we'll find out what they're up to this week. written like you know something is pending...

Robdiana,

Oct 13, 2008

@jasongoldberg No, I do not know anything, but the timing all fits. Why clean house now? The clincher for my speculation was the recent funding. All of this together just points to something happening soon.

Chris Shouse,

Oct 13, 2008

I agree there will be some big changes soon.

Imjustcreative,

Oct 13, 2008

I agree because everyone else is agreeing...

Michaelfidler,

Oct 13, 2008

@jasongoldberg I think there cleaning house to make themselves attractive for acquisition or a merger, read this http://www.socialmedian.com/story/1284412/reasons-why-stumbleupon-merged-with-digg-makes-sense

Jasongoldberg,

Oct 13, 2008

@michaelfidler Digg + Stumbleupon is not going to happen

Michaelfidler,

Oct 13, 2008

@jasongoldberg I just liked that as a possibility to back up my statement. They have been shopping themselves around for two years, if thy aren't too greedy , someone will nab them at the right price. A couple of weeks a go a story came out that a user who had many stories on their Homepage, also had a network of users that would get any story there for a price. Obviously they have to put a stop to this, or who would buy them!

Jasongoldberg,

Oct 13, 2008

@michaelfidler The problem is price. Digg wants $200M+ and there isn't a buyer at that price.

Robdiana,

Oct 13, 2008

@jasongoldberg nobody wants to pay 200M for something controlled by a few people. By ridding themselves of the "top" diggers, using enforcement of the TOU, and maybe getting rid of some spam, they become much more attractive.

Jasongoldberg,

Oct 13, 2008

@robdiana The Digg problem is still a monetization problem foremost. They get a ton of traffic to their homepage which is very hard to monetize with contextual ads and they know little about their users to do behavioral/personalized ads. Last week for instance the featured ad on the Digg homepage was for Wachovia most the week.

Michaelfidler,

Oct 13, 2008

@jasongoldberg i said someone will grab them "for the right price" if they stop being greedy. For some reason i think they want to cash out of all of their positions. Maybe they have something bigger planed!

Robdiana,

Oct 13, 2008

@jasongoldberg Monetization is something I avoided for a reason. Besides contextual advertising, which only goes so far, they have nothing. I am not sure how to monetize it either. Thankfully, that is not my problem.