racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

“Macgyver” over at ForeverGeek ponders on the true nature of DIGG.com, the social bookmarking-cum-tech news site that had gained massive popularity among the geek crowd (and even non-geeks/techies) as it was touted as the Slashdot of Web 2.0—meaning it’s a news site where the content creation/submission and editorial control is decentralized. Essentially, it’s the readers and users who are supposed to say what comes up the front page (they “DIGG” articles), or what’s not newsworthy (either not “DUGG” or simply “buried” with negative votes).

Digg as an idea is fantastic. As a system of disseminating news without having to wait for editors it is amazing. But it seems to be suffering from a power complex. The two articles we originally mentioned were obviously promoted to the front page in an artificial manager.. Our website getting banned was obviously in retaliation to our story. Their entire philosophy now feels shallow and false – the editors decidedly put those two articles to the front page, just like they decidedly removed us from their system. Users may have originally driven the website, but it looks like that ideal is nothing more than a nice idea in the past.

So, ForeverGeek (a site which I also write for) has been banned from DIGG for allegedly being abusive. I’m all for getting “DIGG” into the dictionary as a verb, and having it as word of the year for 2006. But with concerns such as Macgyver’s, one might have doubts as to the sincerity of the creators’ efforts. I mean, I’m an avid fan of Kevin Rose and the rest of the DIGG creators/crew. But incidents like these (the FG banning) just show that even good things can be corrupted. And DIGG runs the risk of becoming just another centralized/editorialized news site. Whether or not the creators are involved, this would affect them in a negative light.

At any rate, I tend to think that a whole army of DIGG fans would, of course, be in defense of DIGG. But this should serve as an eye-opener: is Web 2.0 really what it’s set out to be? Or are we just eventually evolving into yet another Web 1.0 model?

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