Digg in between a rock and a hard place
Michi has some great insight on the troubles Digg will face as it continues to rise in popularity:
Digg no longer serves a niche. When I first found Digg a year ago, it was amazing: you could always find new hidden treasures of the Internet on the front page. But nowadays, it has swerved dramatically “mainstream”, constantly covering the same anti-Iraq or pro-iPhone stories or spammed with links to funny pictures.
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What does Digg cover well? If you answer with “everything,” you just fell into the trap that Kevin Rose did. It covers nothing well. It doesn’t cover celebrity news as closely as tabloids. It doesn’t cover business development as closely any industry publication. It doesn’t cover Apple news as closely as Apple rumor blogs. It doesn’t cover politics as closely as the thousands of newspapers across the country.
The point is, Digg has scaling problems in the social sense. If it grows, it only covers more topics in less depth since front page space is always limited. As more users join, the collective opinion continues to “average out,” allowing more quality to slip through the cracks, especially on niche topics.
I agree that Digg was a great web site about a year ago, but is now becoming polluted with spam and inaccurate, sensationalist stories. Another major issue is that many sites go offline shortly after they reach the front page. Duggmirror is often unable to save a cached copy of the story, rendering the front page headline worthless to the reader.