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Sorry guys, Digg does suck now. Mixx is pretty cool though
I’ve been using Digg for roughly about 2 years now. It was the staple of my Google Reader, it was the reason I had to actually use an RSS reader because I couldn’t easily keep track of the hundreds of stories it gets in a week.
There’s been some recent lashing of words back and forth between Digg and new competitor Mixx.com (Which I previously wrote about here and here), and despite some big names defending Digg I just simply can’t stand it anymore and must rant. So here is why Digg does indeed suck now:
Faulty system and spammers get terrible content to the front page
I can’t stand this anymore. In the past month, I’ve opened so many Digg articles titled “What <X> would look like with <Y>!” thinking it would be something mildly amusing. Turns out it’s total shit. Yes, absolute shit. I was almost annoyed out how this crap is hitting the front page. Today, an article about Google designed in Comic Sans hit the front page with 100 diggs. It was probably the least amusing thing I’ve seen in a very long time
That comment was one of many that showed how unfunny and terrible this article was. There was no 50/50 split of like and dislike. NO ONE liked this tripe, yet somehow it hit 100 Diggs and got on the popular story list, showing up in my Google Reader, causing me to waste my time with this shit.
That’s one of the major problems with Digg. It’s grown so big, and with various friend features now spammers can add hundreds, or even thousands of friends and send them a link to their crappy story whenever they publish one. With so many friends, you are bound to get at least a nice percentage of Diggs.
So much repetition it hurts.
After reading Digg for 2 years, I’ve honestly seen the same crap over and over again. Hell, some articles are titled “This is old, but you have to see it again!” Ok great. Digg is supposed to be a news site, showing new content not old, dried out internet memes. I understand with such a large user base and where pretty much everything is user-moderated it can happen, but when it happens this often, at such levels, it gets very very annoying.
I don’t care what people say about numbers mean your the best, at a certain point you turn into stale shit, and that’s what Digg has become.
Mixx is a growing alternative, that can make it great.
Mixx is a new one out there, and it can do things right but it needs to make sure it doesn’t turn into what Digg has become. With the correct moderation and some more content (Basically, users) I think it could grow to be something awesome. Mixx has a nice look, the user base so far is very friendly, it just needs content
As of this day, I’ve added the Mixx Popular feed to my Google Reader and put Digg away for now. If I actually enjoy the stories from Mixx and find myself reading them, then I will definitely hold onto it.