Digg users have begun calling with increased volume for the creation of a special section of the site designated for photographs and pictures. Two requests to this effect have received more than 6 and 8 thousand diggs in the past 2 weeks. It’s hard to imagine that some sort of photo section of the wildly popular news site won’t be introduced soon. I’m looking forward to it.
From item descriptions on the front page of the site that include a call for a photos section to repeated requests in comments left to photos – the desire from at least some users is increasingly visible. When the upstart blog CenterNetworks posted a petition yesterday titled Dear Kevin Rose, Please Create a Photo Section, Digg users quickly responded with thousands of diggs. Two weeks ago, a photo of a Digg error page at the URL http://digg.com/view/pictures became the second most popular item on Digg this month.
What would a photography section mean for Digg? It would likely make Digg one of the most high profile and accessible places for photos to quickly find a mass audience. If a substantial portion of Digg users take interest in a pictures section, more than they have the site’s Extreme Sports section for example, aspiring photographers could come in droves. I can only imagine that many of those photographers could sell rights to the most successful photos after gaining the approval of tens or hundreds of thousands of Digg users. A photos section could become particularly interesting.
Digg introduced major video and podcasting sections in December. While the video part of the site is relatively active, podcasts have not proven to be conducive to the Digg model. Since individual episodes of serialized podcasts can’t be listened to and voted on in any practical matter, the podcasting section of Digg has become a nearly static popularity contest. In order to provide the maximum value for Digg users, a section needs to see large numbers of submissions and churn. I expect we’ll see at least an announcement that a photos section is coming soon, perhaps at the same time OpenID support is added.
What kind of photos do people on Digg like? The following are all the photos that have received more than 1000 diggs in the last week.
Marshall Kirkpatrick is the Director of Content at SplashCast and will be assisting with TechCrunch while Michael Arrington travels.