Breaking: Digg is too Bigg

Back in the day, when someone overstepped their bounds, someone would say that they had become “too big for their britches.” I bring that up because I believe that Digg has gotten “too big for it’s britches.” And as a continuation, Digg founder Kevin Rose has gotten “too big for his britches.”

I can’t argue that there are some things that Digg should expand into. Video being one of them. Restaurant reviews is not one of them. Digg’s core user base are technology based. That’s because Digg started off as a tech news social site. They’ve since added numerous categories and subjects. And none of them are worth a darn. At least not in the way that the tech news section is. So why add more? If you are only truly successful in the tech area, why keep trying the others and adding to them? Why not turn back to tech and emphasize it? Why not add more categories for tech. Like video, podcasts, blogs… Embrace the tech users and don’t get greedy.

Even more importantly, tech users are the most technological advanced of the bunch. It’s obvious I would think. That’s why the tech area is so popular. Part of it anyways. The other part is the jump start that the area has had on the rest. But the others will never catch up because the user base for them is small in comparison to tech.

Add it’s over abundance of topics to it’s somewhat hazey dealings with it’s users and you might just end up with another dot com bust. You can’t betray your users by removing their posts and banning them for using your service and expect them to embrace everything you do. The fiasco surrounding the HD-DVD key caused quite the stir not too long ago. They backtracked pretty quick when the users rioted, but the fact still remains that they backed down to the lawsuit threat. If they hadn’t backtracked, however, they just might have lost the majority of their user base. The threat of that was a little more pocket book affecting than the lawsuit I guess.

The bigger Digg gets, the more people there will be to game the system. They’ll try and stop them and end up ostracizing the very people who got them started. Maybe then they’ll shrink back into their britches.

Technorati Tags: digg, dmca, hd-dvd, video, kevin rose