Digg
URL	www.digg.com
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Social content website
Registration	Free
Owner	Digg, Inc. Uniform Resource Locator is an URI which also specifies where the identified resource is available and the protocol for retrieving it
Created by	Kevin Rose
Launched	December 4, 2004

Digg is a website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories, in a social and democratic spirit. Robert Kevin Rose (born February 21, 1977 in California After dropping out he worked for the Department of Energy, at the Nevada Test Site, A website (alternatively web site or Web site, a back-construction from the Proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages The Internet is a global system of interconnected Computer networks Democracy is a form of government in which the supreme power is held completely by the people under a free electoral system Voting stories up and down is the site's cornerstone function, respectively called digging and burying. Many stories get submitted every day, but only the most digged ones appear on the front page.

Digg's popularity has prompted the creation of other social networking sites with a story submission and voting system. ^[1]

History and description

Digg started out as an experiment in November 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson. Robert Kevin Rose (born February 21, 1977 in California After dropping out he worked for the Department of Energy, at the Nevada Test Site, Jay Steven Adelson (born September 7, 1970) is the CEO of Digg and chairman of Revision3. All except Owen Byrne currently play an active role in the management of the site.

Digg, Version 1. 6

"We started working on developing the site back in October 2004," Kevin Rose told ZDNet^[2] "We started toying around with the idea a couple of months prior to that, but it was early October when we actually started creating what would become the beta version of digg. In 1991 Ziff Davis Publishing Company brought together a small diverse set of online forums and information services (most notably "PC MagNet" under the name The site launched to the world on December 5, 2004. "

Kevin Rose's friend David Prager (The Screen Savers, This Week in Tech) originally wanted to call the site “Diggnation”, but Kevin wanted a simpler name. David Lawrence Prager (born January 17, 1977 in San Diego California) is one of the co-founders and Vice President of Special Projects for Revision3 The Screen Savers (broadcast May 11, 1998 – March 18, 2005) was a live American TV show on TechTV THIS WEEK in TECH casually referred to as TWiT, and formerly known as Revenge of the Screen Savers is an award winning weekly He chose the name "Digg", because users are able to "dig" stories, out of those submitted, up to the front page. The site was called “Digg” instead of “Dig” because the domain name “dig. com” was previously registered, by Walt Disney Internet Group. The Disney Interactive Media Group (DIMG pronounced DIMM-GEE formerly known as the Walt Disney Internet Group oversees various websites and interactive media owned by The Walt “Diggnation” would eventually be used as the title of Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht's weekly podcast discussing popular stories from Digg. Diggnation is a weekly Video podcast produced by Revision3. It is hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, who had previously hosted TechTV Robert Kevin Rose (born February 21, 1977 in California After dropping out he worked for the Department of Energy, at the Nevada Test Site, Alexander Jennings Albrecht (born August 14, 1976 in Vienna Virginia) is an American Television personality actor and podcaster

The original design was free of advertisements, and was designed by Dan Ries. As Digg became more popular, Google AdSense was added to the website. AdSense is an advertisement serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text image and more recently video Advertisements In July 2005, the site was updated to "Version 2. 0". The new "version" featured a friends list, the ability to "digg" a story without being redirected to a "success" page, and a new interface designed by web design company Silverorange. ^[3] The site developers have stated that in future versions a more minimalist design will likely be employed. On Monday June 26, 2006 version 3 of Digg was released with specific categories for Technology, Science, World & Business, Videos, Entertainment and Gaming as well as a View All section where all categories are merged.

Digg has grown large enough that submissions sometimes create a sudden increase of traffic to the "dugg" website. This is referred to by some Digg users as the "Digg effect" and by some others as the site being "dugg to death". The Slashdot effect, also known as slashdotting, is the phenomenon of a popular Website linking to a smaller site causing the smaller site to slow down or even temporarily However, in many cases stories are linked simultaneously on several popular bookmarking sites. In such cases, the impact of the "digg effect" is difficult to isolate and assess. Wordpress is especially known for its tendency to crash under the increased traffic. WordPress is an Open source blog publishing application. WordPress is the official successor of b2\cafelog, developed by Michel Valdrighi ^[4]

On August 27, 2007, Digg altered its main interface, mostly in the profile area. Events 479 BC - Greco-Persian Wars: Persian forces led by Mardonius are routed by Pausanias, the Spartan Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. The domain digg. com attracted at least 236 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com survey. Competecom is a United States Web traffic analysis service that publishes the approximate number of U

Criticism

Digg has come under criticism for varying reasons. Most disparagements are centered on the site's form of user-moderation: users have too much control over content, allowing sensationalism and misinformation to thrive. Sensationalism is a manner of being extremely Controversial, loud or attention grabbing ^[5][6] The site has also suffered the risk of companies paying for stories submitted to the site,^[7][8][9] similar to the phenomenon of company-attempted Google bombing.

Other critics feel that the site's operators may exercise too much control over which articles appear on the front page as well as the comments on Digg's forums. ^[10][11] Some users complain that they have been blocked from posting, and their accounts disabled, for making comments in the user-moderated forums that conflict with the personal interests of Digg's operators. ^[12] The existence of the "bury" option has also been criticized as undemocratic and due to its anonymous nature, unaccountable,^[13] which often leads to expungement of criticism of hotbed topics that do not mesh with the prevailing view of the community. Another criticism in this area has been^[14] how a faulty or misleading article can reach many users quickly, blowing out of proportion the unsupported claims or accusations (a mob mentality). An article is a stand-alone section of a larger written work These nonfictional Prose compositions appear in Magazines Newspapers Academic journals Herd behaviour describes how individuals in a group can act together without planned direction

Certain Digg users have been accused of operating a "Bury Brigade" that tags articles with which they disagree as spam,^[6][15][16]thus attempting to bury stories critical of Digg. Spamming is the abuse of electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send unsolicited bulk messages One commentator states that one of the site's major problems:

. . . is the ability of a small number of users to "bury" stories without accountability. Burying news is meant to help separate spam and inaccurate stories from the general morass of ordinary, viable stuff. But there's long been the suspicion that plenty of users use it to get rid of stories about things they don't like (eg political parties or corporates) - since burying a story is much more powerful than simply voting against it. ^[17]

It has been reported that the top 100 Digg users controlled 56% of Digg's frontpage content, and that a niche group of just twenty individuals had submitted 25% of the frontpage content. ^[18][10] A few sites^[6] have raised the problem of groupthink and the possibility that the site is being "manipulated", so to speak. Groupthink is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing analyzing and evaluating ideas In response to this question, the site's founder Kevin Rose has announced an upcoming change to the site's algorithm^[19]:

While we don't disclose exactly how story promotion works (to prevent gaming the system), I can say that a key update is coming soon. In Mathematics, Computing, Linguistics and related subjects an algorithm is a sequence of finite instructions often used for Calculation This algorithm update will look at the unique digging diversity of the individuals digging the story. Users that follow a gaming pattern will have less promotion weight. This doesn't mean that the story won't be promoted, it just means that a more diverse pool of individuals will be need to deem the story homepage-worthy.

^[20]

Some popular news sites have reported instances of possible censorship, including Digg users who claim to have been banned for criticizing sponsors^[21][22][23] and allegations of the unreasonable banning of entire domain names^[24]. Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable harmful or sensitive as determined by a censor In response, Rose has stated that:

Once a story has received enough user reports it is automatically removed from the digg queue or homepage (depending on where the story is living at that time). The number of reports required varies depending on how many diggs the story has. This system is going to change in the near future. Soon, reported stories will fall into a 'buried stories' bin. Users will have the ability to pick through this story bin and vote to have a story reinstated should they believe it was falsely reported.

^[22]

AACS encryption key controversy

Main article: AACS encryption key controversy

On May 1, 2007 an article appeared on Digg’s homepage that contained the encryption key for the AACS digital rights management protection of HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. Before editing this article or commenting on this article's talk page please read the Electronic Frontier Foundation's legal primer on this issue http//www Events 305 - Diocletian and Maximian retire from the office of Roman Emperor. Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. The Advanced Access Content System ( AACS) is a standard for Content distribution and Digital rights management, intended to restrict access Digital rights management ( DRM) is a generic term that refers to Access control technologies used by hardware manufacturers publishers and Copyright holders not insert the publicly disclosed HD DVD key into this article for the time being Then Digg, "acting on the advice of its lawyers", removed posting submissions about the secret number from its database and banned several users for submitting it. The removals were seen by many Digg users as a capitulation to corporate interests and an assault on free speech. ^[25] A statement by Jay Adelson attributed the article’s take-down to an attempt to comply with cease and desist letters from the Advanced Access Content System consortium and cited Digg’s Terms of Use as justification for taking down the article. Jay Steven Adelson (born September 7, 1970) is the CEO of Digg and chairman of Revision3. A cease and desist (also called C & D) is an order or request to halt an activity or else face legal action The Advanced Access Content System ( AACS) is a standard for Content distribution and Digital rights management, intended to restrict access Terms of Use are rules set up by the owner of an Intellectual property or service to govern how they may be legally used ^[26]

Although some users defended Digg's actions,^[27][28][29] as a whole the community staged a wide-spread revolt with numerous articles and comments being made using the encryption key. ^[30][31] The scope of the user response was so great that one of the Digg users referred to it as a "digital Boston Tea Party". The Boston Tea Party was an act of Direct action protest by the American colonists against the British Government in which they destroyed many ^[32] The response was also directly responsible for Digg reversing the policy and stating:

Competition

On February 26, 2008, Yahoo! launched a similar community bookmarking site entitled Yahoo! Buzz. Events 747 BC - Epoch (origin of Ptolemy 's Nabonassar Era 364 - Valentinian I is proclaimed 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common Yahoo! Buzz is a community-based news article website much like Digg, that combines the features of Social bookmarking and syndication through a user interface The service, much like Digg allows users to buzz news stories that are published by users and the most popular stories are displayed on the main page. The site was created in direct competition of Digg's online market, and is an attempt at creating a narrower gap between the popularity of Yahoo!'s major search competitors Google and MSN. Google Inc is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online MSN (The M icro' s' oft N etwork is a collection of Internet services provided by Microsoft.

See also

• Kevin Rose
• Alex Albrecht
• David Prager
• Jay Adelson
• Yahoo! Buzz
• Diggnation
• Web 2.0
• Social bookmarking

References

External links

• Official site
• Official blog