Fighting Back The “Digg Will Fall” Rhetoric - Again

I tend to keep my eye on about a dozen or so feeds (gathered by Google Reader, if you’re curious to know) every day in order to scrounge up enough fodder for my posts here at Profy. (Si, soy un moocher.) Some of course receive more attention than others.

Case in point: I passed over my subscription to CNET’s Tech News Blog for the first couple of days of the week, and in so doing, missed quite a delectable piece of commentary authored by a Mr Don Reisinger, a fairly well-known opinionator. Well, this morning I finally looked it over.

Now, as you can probably deduce at this point, I of course couldn’t resist putting forth a few thoughts of my own on the subject Reisinger touched on Dec 31st. A subject that, quite honestly, annoys yours truly to no end. A subject so [bleeping!] exhausted, that you’ll really have to excuse me if any foul verbs and/or adjects happen to escape the grip of these irascible digits of mine and burrow themselves inside this here page. The topic? Digg’s imminent decline.

Or probable decline, anyhow.

Indeed, in a piece titled, “Is a Digg rebellion in the works?,” Mr Don revisits – once again, after one million too many once agains, in this writer’s opin – the subject of Digg’s apparent troubles, its purportedly shaky social “community,” and general unsustainability.

Mind you, the article’s author isn’t very much interested in raising that big ol’ red flag himself. He only means to relay a collection of messages and impressions given by users of the so-called social news website. (That’s the feeling I gleaned from the read.) But in so doing, Reisinger happened to unleash - for the upteenth time - a can of boring and baseless worms (looking back, that’s definitely in my personal top five terriblest illustrations published at Profy for sure) that he had no effing business prying open.

Why? Because the idea he proceeded to recycle in the final hours of 2007 is an utterly ridiculous one. It has no place in current conversation. Digg, by a process of solid growth and development over the past couple of years, has proven its mettle as a sterling destination on the Web. Its engineers and designers have assembled additions and expansions with rather good speed and thorough quality assurance testing, just as site members have asked of them to do. Most requests have been requited. And requited rather superbly, to boot. So what, I must question, is the goddamn problem, negativistos?

The number of complaints leveled at Digg since its first delivery to the public Web has been quite large, no doubt. There once was a time when all anything its users relayed to one another were links to technology-oriented blog posts and the occasional old-media news page – also tech-centric, on the whole. And people tired of that. And it has only been in recent seasons when users have been given the option to share video clips and images with friends, family, colleagues, and strangers alike.

But changes to fill such holes have been made. The aggregator has evolved. And I dare say Digg is looking so refined at present that it could soon very possibly manage to command a number fairly close to its supposed asking price ($300m), without so much as batting an eye. Its value is unmistakably great. Sure, it’s not so precious as to be entirely irreplaceable, but it nonetheless has a good bit of heft and staying power. Those characteristics count very much to its favor, I think you’ll agree.

Look, here’s the thing. Digg is not a “social news” site, as the term may now loosely be defined. I’ll attest to that truth. I imagine something of Newsvine’s making could better exemplify the phrase. Digg is more a social bookmarking utility. A Del.icio.us derivative, if you will. (Why derivative? Think chicken and egg.) Sure, the site’s bookmarks carry with them lots of additional information, not the least of which is the material born of the comment system, but at its core, it is a place to share links. Links that interest you and I and perhaps millions of other people on the Web.

That’s what I think attracts so many people to its front page each and every day. One can clearly see that, on the basis of the many link submissions made, there is a good amount of substance being served at the site by various parties. Whether or not it is a perfectly democratic solution to a need that was terribly underserved for many years, it is a solution all the same.

It’s time the talk about Digg’s allegedly shaky future gets shelved – for good. I don’t see the site heading anywhere but higher up the ladder. And it’s bound to remain a formidable presence for a good while longer.

I presume, with a good look at its history and its current standing among the best of Web 2.0 inventions, most all of you see it much the same way.