It wasn't that long ago that Digg was a thriving online community. Publishers longed to be on Digg's coveted front page because it translated into many page views, but over the last couple of months something went terribly wrong with Digg.
Through various missteps, a leadership change, and a radical site redesign, Digg has lost a substantial amount of traffic, showing just how quickly the landscape can shift on a popular social networking site based around the concept of community.
Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) might want to pay attention.
Now, I'll grant that even at its peak, Digg was less than one-tenth the size of Facebook's gargantuan and growing online community, but 40 million unique visitors a month is nothing to sneeze at either. But ReadWriteWeb reported last month that, since Digg's site redesign in August, the site has seen its traffic drop off by an astonishing 26 percent. For those of you who are math-challenged like me, that translates into more than 10 million visitors.
If Facebook were to lose a corresponding share, if you believe the current membership numbers of around 600 million members, that would be a loss of over 150 milllion users in around a month.
If that doesn't make you panic, I don't know what will. And panic Digg has. The new CEO, Matt Williams, wrote an apology letter to the Digg community last week. He all but grovelled, promising to bring back beloved features that the community had been complaining bitterly about losing for weeks.
Will it be enough to restore confidence of users who are already fed up, such as Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, who in a blog post described the new Digg as "awful?" After two weeks of waiting for Digg to get its act together, he lost his patience -- and Digg lost him. I'm sure he's not alone.
I'm not quite as down on the new Digg as Vaughan-Nichols and others, but then I wasn't that engaged in the old one. I like the direct integration with Facebook, Twitter, and email via buttons built right into the interface, but even weeks after the launch, I'm still finding it a bit buggy, so I could see how folks could be getting fed up.
What could Digg's experience mean to Facebook or to any popular online community? It's hard to say, but I believe Facebook and others should take this as a social networking cautionary tale. Online communities are built from groups of like-minded people who have a large stake in the social site.
If you are going to make wholesale changes, you’d better make sure your user core is onboard, or you could alienate and lose them, and in this go-go online world, once you lose them, it's going to be extremely difficult to lure them back.
Facebook in particular seems to care little about its user base. It takes for granted that because they are today's go-to site, they can do whatever they want and users might complain and grumble, but they won't leave.
Digg's experience shows that sometimes users do leave, and when they do, they're gone, baby, gone.
Facebook may be today's social networking flavor of the month, but things change fast on the social Web, and Facebook and other social sites would be wise to keep that in mind.
— Ron Miller is a freelance technology journalist, blogger, FierceContentManagement editor, and contributing editor at EContent magazine.
Facebook's 'like' button might have a lot to with that.
Twitter might have a lot to do with Facebook's possible demise. More and more friends are using twitter to communicate, because their own FB is invaded with hundreds of "friends" but its a problem with the user, not FB.
Great article, it was sitting on my browser but hadn't had the time to read it.
I agree completely. Facebook has overlooked at all the negative comments when it redesigns its site. People create groups, pages, etc., etc. but seems they aren't leaving.
It's like Facebook is playing Russian Roulette every time it redesigns. One day, it'll be the deadly blow.
I understand the constant need to innovate and "be better" but it's a risky and fragile business - you can ask MySpace and all the others that came before.
I might agree if it weren't for the timing. Losing 26 percent of the monthly page views a month after an interface overhaul leads me to believe this all about that change and not some fundamental shift away from social bookmarking services in general.
I agree. It showed a complete lack of common business sense, especially in a site with a tight community such as Digg's. Maybe it was Kevin Rose's lack of real business background that was the company's undoing. By the time he stepped aside and handed the reigns over to a seasoned executive it was too late.
What happened to good old fashioned marketing techniques? I used to handle consumer/product development research for hardware and software companies so I know how valuable it is to research your base. In the old days, we surveyed our consumer base before making a major upgrade or introducing a new product. The problem Digg experienced was assuming it knew best rather than conducting any qualitative or quantitative research. They paid the price and may this be a lesson to others.
As a consultant, I am constantly frustrated with this type of 'shoot from the hip' strategy just to save money. With consumer research costing so little these days, there really is no excuse for cutting corners.
Oh, I see what you're getting at. You could be right. I know many people who have been annoyed by people who gamed Digg to get on the front page and the Bury button could have been part of that.
Whatever the reason, Digg failed to open this to a discussion in their community, where it could be debated in the open.
Instead, it went on its own and made big changes to the site and have paid a steep price for this approach.
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