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February 15, 2007

Yahoo Launches Digg-Like Suggestion Site

Michael Arrington

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Yahoo is taking some criticism for launching a site that includes a Digg-like voting feature earlier today. The main criticism is coming from Digg users, who can sometimes stop fighting long enough to band together into a very angry mob. But a few bloggers are adding their own fuel as well.

I don’t have any problem with what Yahoo did. First, Yahoo credited Digg in a blog post announcing the new product. Second, the purpose of the site has nothing to do with finding and promoting news stories. Rather, they’re using the Digg-voting mechanism to power the Yahoo Suggestion Board where users can submit their comments to Yahoo on various products.

It’s an excellent way for Yahoo to gauge the popularity of suggestions, and is in no way competitive with Digg. It’s simply a compliment to the efficiency of the Digg model. I’m siding with Yahoo on this one.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 2:51 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Vic Okezie

    February 15th, 2007 at 3:09 am

    Digg-style voting has set a pace in giving online users power to influence. But like you said, I think its good that Yahoo gave them the credit for this style and did not act as if Digg doesn’t exist.

    I think it should not be a big issue among hard-core digg users, since Jerry Yang is not directly competing with Kevin Rose on this matter - except if Yahoo extends this to Yahoo news and other of its services.

  2. DL

    February 15th, 2007 at 3:17 am

    In fairness Mike, the site looks like a Digg clone (in terms of design), and for that point alone they are wrong to do this. Yahoo has enough money and resources to build their own custom look and feel to the site, without having to copy Digg. The negative effect here for Digg, is that it makes the Digg design look like a template for anyone who wants to build a social voting system, and thus, dilutes their brand and image. I am saying this from a purely design and branding standpoint. All they had to do was change the colors, and move some stuff around to remove this effect. If they set up an auto blog that looked exactly like TechCrunch.com would you be happy?

  3. ...some Drifter

    February 15th, 2007 at 3:20 am

    lol - either way you want to spin this, yahoo is rubbing this in digg’s face

  4. RBA

    February 15th, 2007 at 3:44 am

    Wouldn’t you be scared to death if you were to launch something that even remotely ressembles Digg? Wow…

    I like Yahoo and I like Digg. I find this a tantrum thrown by a few, nothing more. It will pass. The “good” thing about those who behave somehow like a mad mob is that they don’t stay - they move on pretty quickly onto the next “news item”. But some comments were hillarious. Like the guy saying he was going to sell all his Yahoo stock because of his - as if he had any…

  5. rize

    February 15th, 2007 at 3:51 am

    I never quite understood why so many people take offense to “Digg ripoffs”. The method Digg uses to organize content has become more of a tool than anything else. Just like Toyota didn’t clone Ford by equipping their cars with power steering. Sites like videosift.com and muuvu.com simply take this method of organizing content and apply it to their own content. Only understandable that Yahoo would make use of the same method to organize some of its content.

  6. Tim

    February 15th, 2007 at 4:01 am

    I feel it’s a good thing that websites use the same style voting interface, so it’s obvious and the way it works is consistent between sites. Quite frankly if I had to build a voting interface, I would use a similar layout deliberately.

    Also the colour scheme of Digg is very common. It has blue links and a white background page, grey captions, and pastels along with strong bold colour. Thousands of other sites use something similar.

    Is it really a bad thing that voting systems become consistent, both in layout and graphic design, just like search results and text advertising have?

    http://bla.st/design/

  7. Rex Dixon

    February 15th, 2007 at 4:09 am

    It’s not only Yahoo. There are tons of digg clones out there. I’m running one that uses a voting method myself. I hate to say it, but it’s a voting system, a content management system.

    Not trying to be digg, personally speaking, and I think Yahoo probably just wanted a way to get user feedback that seemed to be easily understood. I have no problem with it. I mean, how can I? :) I would be a major hypocrite if I was! hahahha…

    Rex

  8. jda

    February 15th, 2007 at 4:09 am

    i think it’s a great new concept in direct customer communication. very cool way to let users help prioritize site issues. i love this idea… regardless of what the diggiots say about design.

  9. Alistair

    February 15th, 2007 at 4:10 am

    The Digg business model is essentially based on a piece of functionality / tool that allows users to rank stories (Amazon do it for books!) and it was invetiably going to be deployed by other organisations and already has been. I guess as some other comments have noted it’s a bit rough that the execution is so similar.

  10. DL

    February 15th, 2007 at 4:13 am

    Ok, I can see your points. I just think they could have been a bit more creative with their design, they are yahoo after all, I would expect them to be more inventive.

  11. victor

    February 15th, 2007 at 4:30 am

    Naming the the site mediarati would make for better branding. so would suggest they buy mediarati.com

  12. victor

    February 15th, 2007 at 4:30 am

    Naming the site mediarati would make for better branding. so I would suggest they buy mediarati.com

  13. Yohay Elam

    February 15th, 2007 at 5:08 am

    I don’t think that this is the first so-called “Digg clone”.
    Yahoo received unjust fire on this issue.

  14. Emma

    February 15th, 2007 at 5:10 am

    I think the DIGG mob need to get over the fact that voting for stuff was invented a long time before the internet was invented.

  15. Josh

    February 15th, 2007 at 5:13 am

    This is a very good idea, but Yahoo launched this style feedback site months ago with their Autos site.

    Niall Kennedy (and others) wrote about it in August 2006.

    http://www.niallkennedy.com/bl.....dback.html

    So… this isn’t really new.

  16. Pankaj

    February 15th, 2007 at 5:36 am

    Digg users are affraid that the popularity digg.com would go away if somebody like yahoo launches a Digg clone. Poor guys can’t make a difference between the two. They are already acting like a mob on that site with so many ugly posts. Regarding look and feel, I like Digg’s look and would want most of the sites designed in similar way :) . No issues for me.

  17. Alfred Toh from Payscroll.com

    February 15th, 2007 at 5:51 am

    The digg users are really hitting the yahoo suggestion site hard last night when I was looking at it. It almost reminds me that digg users are sprt of mafia or gangsters protecting their turf.. sorry digg users, don’t flame me for that. It’s what it is.

  18. Ryan

    February 15th, 2007 at 6:03 am

    Since when has digg owned the democracy system? Didn’t they just steal it from the Romans? Just because something has a voting system doesn’t automatically make it a digg-clone. That said, the designs are very similar, but the concept is completely different.

  19. Ryan

    February 15th, 2007 at 6:08 am

    As a digg user, it was a bit depressing to see the way yahoo got slammed by digg users last night.

    I don’t really take issue with them creating a similar system of voting but making it look like a slightly modified digg is what is wrong to me. The color are even very close.

  20. David Dalka

    February 15th, 2007 at 6:43 am

    lmao at Ryan…

    If they buidl the infastructure to truly listen using this product, this could prove to be a very powerful tool. Peter Drucker would be proud.

    Please give my suggestion regarding Yahoo! Mail needing better spam filters a boost.
    http://suggestions.yahoo.com/d.....p;fid=7522

  21. Thomas

    February 15th, 2007 at 6:55 am

    Hi,
    Salesforce.com was the first I saw do this with http://ideas.salesforce.com/ .

  22. Gene

    February 15th, 2007 at 6:58 am

    Finally Yahoo got a brain and realized that it’s much cheaper to imitate a web 2.0 than buy one. Digg should be flattered…although they’re understandably frustrated, they’ve had their day in the sun and their valuation has probably peaked.

  23. Kevin

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:01 am

    Can someone clarify how copyright works with something like Digg? If they developed a system to rank news, do they not own any intellectual property around it? Can they file for infringement against the Netscape style duplicates of the world? Is this the kind of patent that takes years to come through, and requires going back and fighting post, such as Friendster might do? If someone has thoughts on this, and wouldn’t mind writing me on it,
    - kskobac at yahoo dot com

  24. Randy

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:15 am

    Digg did not invent the model. All these Digg clones would be fine if they just didn’t ripp of Digg’s stylesheet.

  25. pallet jack

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:16 am

    I suggest, we all realize that most ideas are derivitives.

    - I bet 90+% of most ideas are overly influenced by other ideas.

    - Also most programmers, developers, designers are now taught not to re-invent the wheel. When I need to do hover images (professionally) in css I dont go buy a 500pg book on CSS and start readin. I search google for the best code.

    - Yahoo asked its people, to implement a voting system. They didn’t go back to the beginning and start researching the history, then develop some new liquid system. The went and searched ‘google’ Heh :)

    - Rb

  26. Duncan

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:18 am

    I still find it incredible how many people commented on that article and on this one without having read and understood what Yahoo! were doing. The voting button looks like the one on digg.com, so what? People are familiar with that style of voting button, it works, end of story, why should Yahoo have to re-create the wheel on this one.

  27. steve

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:19 am

    Once again - this demonstrates the wisdome of idiots that blindly follow that digg is the coolest thing, I generally tend to find that the so called news on digg is only interesting to 15 year old boys.

    Stupid pictures of cars in odd spots - or people bickering over petty things.

    I agree with Gene - Digg has had its day - the alexa rank has digg dropping massively at the mometn - ever since the end of December - it appears that 2006 was the year of the digg.

    Its time for something newer that cant be Digg cheated.

  28. Daniel

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:26 am

    It’s not the fact that the voting system is being used that Diggers are upset about, it’s the fact that the visual style is so close to Digg. Surely they could have come up with their own design, and Diggers wouldn’t even care about this story if they did.

  29. Ed

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:26 am

    In a way it’s nice. It gives Yahoo some reality of how some of their services suck. It’s up to them to fix it or continue with the peanut butter.

  30. PohEe.com

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:27 am

    This is main purpose of Yahoo acquired Digg. We are expected it. I guess Google will implement the similar action to YouTube very soon.

  31. bdb

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:30 am

    Sure, the look and feel are the same, but the intent is completely different. There are numerous digg clones out there, and, as Tim stated, a common look and feel is good and helps users save time from learning every “new” interface. To be clear though, Digg is meant for the benefit of the users, while this is meant to benefit Yahoo Mkt folk by giving them a clear method to accumulate and track feedback. Now they don’t have to rely on the intuitive abilities of their mkt staff to determine what users want. MBAs hate intuition…

  32. FavoTube

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:33 am

    I agree with bdb, it’s not the same thing as digg,its just the rating system with the finger that looks like digg in there.

  33. Protrox

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:33 am

    I totally agree with you Favo.

  34. kb

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:46 am

    Newsvine does indeed rock.

  35. Similarity Auditing Dept

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:59 am

    I don’t see what the big deal is - people have been rating comments for years on whether or not they were useful. Giving Digg credit for anything that involves voting is completely misplaced…

  36. flatjeff

    February 15th, 2007 at 8:25 am

    A french team developped a very well designed interface : feedback2.0.
    Exalead uses it for gathering suggestions about their website : http://feedback.exalead.com/

    French designers rule !!!

  37. Gregg

    February 15th, 2007 at 8:27 am

    So does Digg have to give credit to kuro5hin.org, which was doing Digg long before it was even a twinkle in Kevin Rose’s eye. They’re all cosmetic twists (all social networking and news sites) on the age old BBS that predates the web itself. So get over it. None of you invented anything new.

  38. China Internet Market Blog

    February 15th, 2007 at 8:28 am

    Pardon me for ignorance, but didn’t Yahoo buy Digg for $35M? Or what is it some other company? With so many acquisitions, for simple people like myself, sometimes it’s hard to keep track of them all.

  39. Gregg

    February 15th, 2007 at 8:35 am

    “Pardon me for ignorance, but didn’t Yahoo buy Digg for $35M? Or what is it some other company? With so many acquisitions, for simple people like myself, sometimes it’s hard to keep track of them all.”

    Nope, Yahoo bought del.ico.us (not sure of price). Wired.com (Conde Nast bought Reddit.

  40. Ben Long

    February 15th, 2007 at 8:36 am

    I’m glad to see Yahoo introduce another method for communicating with their customers. I don’t see that it matters if Yahoo is using UI patterns proven by other Web site. There are only so many ways to say, ‘I like this one’, ‘and this one’, ‘and this one’.

  41. Mike D

    February 15th, 2007 at 8:54 am

    Kevin needs to come out and issue an apology to Yahoo fast. His drams of cashing out for millions are slipping away. If he can’t even control the mob how would a suitor fair?

  42. Can You Digg It

    February 15th, 2007 at 9:00 am

    Sorry guys, but the Digg voting system was/is not original.

    Yahoo did make it look too much like Digg though.

    What about DotNetKicks.com?

  43. dreadsword

    February 15th, 2007 at 9:01 am

    GC, Yahoo. Seems like a great way to not only collect, but validate feedback. Validating feedback is such a tricky thing that’s often missed; as opposed to making a change and then waiting for the community to weigh in, this provides a means for Yahoo to guage the success of the change prior to release - seems like a winning proposition.

    http://slantt.net/news/techcru.....stion-site

  44. Berlin

    February 15th, 2007 at 9:07 am

    the digg collective are a crazy bunch. 300 comments since yesterday. i guess most stayed home on valentines day.

  45. Joost Schuur

    February 15th, 2007 at 9:24 am

    The ancient Greeks called and they all want you to stop ripping off voting.

  46. Kosso

    February 15th, 2007 at 9:40 am

    I agree - this is nothing like Digg.

    Just adding a rating system to any website CMS does not make it Digg-like

    puuurrlease!!!

  47. Tat

    February 15th, 2007 at 10:47 am

    I don’t see how it can really been seen any other way than what you’re saying. Were it not, it would be a competition issue only. It’s like Kosso said, the idea of voting on stories, on anything is fair game. Why aren’t they mad at Netscape or PHP-Nuke or Ezine Articles?

  48. Dan Isaacs

    February 15th, 2007 at 10:48 am

    If anything, they’ve simply ported over the recommendation feature they’ve been using on Y! Answers for some time now. Digg needs to get over itself. As Joost intimated a few posts ago, voting wasn’t invented by Tech TV personalities.

  49. Francis Burdett

    February 15th, 2007 at 11:01 am

    Berlin
    February 15th, 2007 at 9:07 am

    the digg collective are a crazy bunch. 300 comments since yesterday. i guess most stayed home on valentines day.

    :-)

  50. DanMac

    February 15th, 2007 at 12:13 pm

    I don’t see what the big deal is. Digg should be flattered that Yahoo would imitate it’s style and yahoo was right to give them credit. What’s the big deal?

  51. Damon Billian

    February 15th, 2007 at 1:45 pm

    I personally don’t see why the diggers would be upset. The product doesn’t challenge digg in any manner & it isn’t like voting/polling/ratings weren’t around the internet before. I think this is a great feedback mechanism for Yahoo!

  52. Anthony

    February 15th, 2007 at 3:16 pm

    IT doesnt matter if Yahoo gave credit to Digg the fact that they copied an idea still remains.

    If Yahoo had created this style of voting first then they would have done everything possible to make sure others didn’t copy. I also noticed that there was a lot of “Digg Rules” spam on the Yahoo Suggestion Boards

  53. Diego

    February 15th, 2007 at 3:58 pm

    What is it with diggers getting so upset when something like this happens? Digg isn’t a completely original idea either. http://www.calacanis.com/2007/.....e-idea-for

    If they copied Digg, because Digg invented something, lets see if they can defend it in court. Would it hold up? Is there anything they can truly claim as their own on which they could win a case?

  54. David Dalka

    February 15th, 2007 at 4:01 pm

    Uhm, I think they have some kinks to work out…

    http://daviddalka.com/createva.....n-deleted/

  55. Steve Magruder

    February 15th, 2007 at 5:31 pm

    All art is derivative.

    Move along kiddies to the next controversy. :)

  56. Diego

    February 15th, 2007 at 5:52 pm

    Microsoft ripping-off (joking!) Digg too?

    http://news.com.com/2061-10811.....;subj=news

    Those Digg lawyers are gonna be so busy with everyone stealing from them :D

  57. Ilya Lichtenstein

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:35 pm

    I agree with Arrington completely. The people who are saying this is ripping off Digg are missing the point.

    For the record I proposed the exact same idea a couple weeks ago..uncanny:
    http://neomeme.wordpress.com/2.....s-my-blog/

  58. Steve

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:39 pm

    Yahoo Suggestion is not ripping off Digg. Also rating is so common now, how it can be said it is a rip off.

  59. jack

    February 15th, 2007 at 7:59 pm

    It is just an enhancement for its own application. Digg users are too sensitive on that.

    I also believe the easy to use “Just digg” way to get user feedback will be appeared in more & more sites

  60. Hornswaggled

    February 15th, 2007 at 8:05 pm

    Hey Mike,
    You stole my title, I wrote about this 2 weeks ago! :)
    http://www.hornswaggled.com/20.....ion-board/

    It was launched Jan 5th btw.

  61. Shrikant Joshi

    February 15th, 2007 at 10:46 pm

    How is it that Netscape ‘copies’ Digg, but Yahoo! actually ends up paying a ‘compliment’?

    I agree that the Digg voting engine is revolutionary, and one of the best. But why use two opposites to describe the same act?

    Sheer hypocrisy, if you ask me.

    Regards,
    Shrikant Joshi

  62. IKT

    February 17th, 2007 at 8:27 am

    have a cry will ya’s

  63. karlfest

    February 17th, 2007 at 5:38 pm

    This whole thing that it ‘looks like DIgg’ is a little out of context. Digg looks like, and conforms to, the standard noew, soft edge, glassy motif that every two dot oh site realises is a nicer interface…and has a large number on a big button. It’s nice idea. Lots of people will use this. Websites resemble websites.

  64. gary

    February 18th, 2007 at 8:30 am

    Interesting that this kind of negative reaction doesn’t happen more often when one of the GYM companies copies an innovative startup. Google doesn’t this as much as anyone. Google Reader has had some nice things lately, but it’s a blatant copy of Bloglines. If their mission was to create new things for the world rather than just advance their own cause in taking over the world, wouldn’t they have focused on creating something new and truly innovative? Same thing here. This is land-grabbing.

    Still, the Digg model of voting is different than Bloglines in that the functionality applies to so many other things, it might become a de facto standard for any kind of user voting system. Certainly looks that way to me in my wanderings around the Web.

  65. mustafa

    March 15th, 2007 at 1:52 am

    Dear Sir/Madam,

    We have noticed that your web site (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061207115937AAKv6P2&show=7)
    an old email address for the Consular Section of the American Embassy in Abu Dhabi. The address you have posted is no longer in service. Please correct the email address to read as follows:

    For immigration visa inquiries, please write to: AbudhabiIV@state.gov
    For visit or student visa inquiries, please write to: AbudhabiNIV@state.gov
    For American citizen service inquiries (not visa related), please write to: AbudhabiACS@state.gov

    Consular Section
    American Embassy Abu Dhabi

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