Earlier today we reported on a change in how Digg handles URL redirects from its URL shortening service called DiggBar. Users of the service are not happy – links are now sometimes going to Digg’s summary of the story instead of the story itself. The term “Bait and Switch” is being thrown around liberally, and Digg founder Kevin Rose is steering himself right out of the mess.
Before the change, a shortened URL would point to the underlying URL (example). If the person clicking was a logged in Digg user they got the Digg toolbar on top with stats and the ability to Digg the story. If they were not a logged in Digg user the short URL simply redirected to the original URL, which is how most other URL shorteners work.
Now it’s different. Logged in users still see the DiggBar. But non-Digg users get redirected right to the Digg page about that story. In the example above, they’d be directed here.
The reason for this? Digg clearly wants more unique visitors. Before they only “kept” people who were already using Digg and logged in. People who didn’t use Digg never hit the site. With this change all those non-Digg users are now hitting Digg.com and racking up the user stats.
I actually think this is extremely shortsighted of DIgg. Competitor Bit.ly (and they may be Digg’s biggest direct competitor soon) has a clean experience that is predictable and creates user trust. With Digg, you can’t be sure where people will end up once they click the URL. And the constantly changing policies only add to the uncertainty.
As we wrote previously, people are not happy. And Kevin Rose, fresh off a two week vacation, says he had no idea the change was happening. In a Twitter message an hour ago, he said “just now reading the digg short url discussion, I was not aware this changed and will check in on it tomorrow (was on vacation for 2 weeks).”
Translation: He’s not happy (otherwise he wouldn’t disagree with a new policy publicly). Look for a reversal on this policy sometime soon.
Haha I feel like he would’ve heard about this from coworkers first instead of reading about it on the internet.
you’re probably right, if he was more than a figurehead.
Techcrunch should reverse the posting order of comments so that the most recent show up at the top. Check out TED.
It’s more fun. It democratizes commenting. Everybody gets a little airtime. The way it is now, on highly commented blogs, the first comments get all the attention and the end comments get no attention. Its like going to the cafeteria and the first guy gets all the food while the rest get to watch him eat.
On low commented blogs it’s not relevant. On highly commented blogs it’s clearly a violation of the Second Amendment.
no they shouldn’t
Kevin Rose can’t code, he can’t lead and he’s only good at PR. So why would he know about this!?
Kevin is covering his tracks – at a cost. To not know about this type of change as the Founder and Chief Architect is to say that you are not really in control of your product.
Kevin’s barely in the office, he doesn’t *want* to be in control of the product. It’s the users that put him on that pedestal.
That may be so, but Kevin really isn’t in “charge” of Digg.
Besides, he was on vacation. I’m sure he strictly mentioned not to bother him on his leave of absence. I know I would.
We’ll see how things shape up in the morning, when Kevin really takes a look into this whole situation.
My thoughts:
1) The change isn’t that big of a deal and is a smart business move. If you don’t want your results to direct to Digg, use one of the many other URL shortners – or you know, just use the actual link. Chances are the users of the DiggBar are hardcore Diggers, and they will enjoy the redirection to Digg. After all, they are used to consuming news through the Digg community, so why not facilitate their participation in the discussion.
2) Either Kevin Rose is lying or he needs to get his act together. Two week vacation? Did he get married or does he just not care that the company he founded is on the decline? Either way, his response makes the company and himself look foolish.
He’s not lying, his trip to China was well-documented (and given how busy he’s been in the last year, well-deserved).
here’s why it’s a big issue: Digg is thinking of the tool as a way to direct more traffic to Digg. Bit.ly is thinking of their URL shortener as a massive data collection machine that can be used to build a “better digg”. Without the data, Digg can’t compete with Bit.ly. They need to figure out what they want to be and execute on that strategy. right now they look sort of half one and half the other.
I agree with Michael here Digg really needs to get its act together because as of now it looks they are either confused or completely clueless which direction they want to go.
I agree with Michael too. Digg is like a ship without a rudder.
I completely disagree. TechCrunch/Michael Arrington is just looking to create drama. Drama = visitors. I can’t believe I’m actually on TechCrunch. I make a point not to come here and to bury all TechCrunch stories. Michael Arrington reminds me of a Perez Hilton of tech.
@James (above): you just pwned yourself!
I completely agree with Arrington. Imo Digg is entering a shaky period if potential irrelevance. They need to get their act together, NOW.
he may have pwnt himself, but the perez hilton crack is spot-on.
though i just posted a comment (loaded with typos), i also wanted to agree with michael that digg is struggling with how to deal with bit.ly.
truth is, digg’s model is quickly becoming less applicable and bit.ly is moving fast to demonstrate what the new replacement streamlined model looks like.
bit.ly had some luck. sort of like youtube. they won the short url crown and got adopted as a twitter default. that was huge. tinyurl are fools for not making smart decisions early. besides, i still dont even know who the hell tinyurl is.
and all the others, even if some are in fact better than bit.ly… are going to find it near impossible to keep competing for more than a few years. some might get lucky. bit.ly might fuck up. you never know for sure. but it’s certainly a tougher fight today than it was 4 months ago. that’s not to say that other short tracker url services are useless. many will serve niche markets are just be a component of a larger service (like digg).
which brings me to my point. digg’s short url is not meant to really compete with bit.ly because digg is about a centralized link page for discussion and ratings by a community of digg users. bit.ly is a decentralized link handler that tracks discussion and formulates ratings on the broad open web. while digg figures out how to do what bit.ly does well, bit.ly might want to work on incorporating what digg does well (ie. the community component).
though i think digg has a right to take a user who clicks a digg.com link to a digg.com page (wow, how obvious did that sound?), digg should also consider cutting out some of that fat if they want to properly cater to non-digg (community) users like me. a simple solution would be to offer 2 different url formats to distribute. one would work like bit.ly… nice, clean and simple. and one would bring users to a digg page or utilize a digg bar. they can figure out which format to use as the “shorter” url but just offering the options would be a real smart decision… especially in hindsight.
Thinking of the tool as a way to direct more traffic to Digg is exactly how Digg should be thinking. As this publication and its readers have noted in the past, URL shorteners are evil (http://www.tech...il-or-just-evil).
The fact is, outside of Twitter, which confines the user to 140 characters, URL shorteners serve little if any purpose and do damage to the structure of the internet. The changes to the DiggBar at least attempt to add some value to this ridiculous trend by providing hardcore Diggers with exactly the type of behavior they already practice and obviously desire; i.e. discovering and sharing links via Digg. Sure, in some cases a user may want to share a link, but as I stated above, they can do so by using the actual link, or in the case of necessity (Twitter) user bit.ly. With the added functionality, using the DiggBar now has a specific purpose of allowing people to share links via Digg – something all Diggers should want, as it facilitates community growth and interaction.
Instead of quickly constructing a negative reaction because Digg chose to differentiate their product, let’s take time to analyze exactly what they did, why they did it, and how it benefits both Digg and its users.
Also, I stand by my comments on Rose. He should be aware of product/strategy changes like this, and two weeks vacation is too long for anyone, regardless of what their current involvement with the company is.
well said. better than my whiskey flavored replies
Both points are bad!
1.) It is a huge deal since anyone who’s not logged in to Digg or a member clicks that link will then be redirected to Digg’s site and not the publishers. Example: If I post to Twitter which in my case also posts to Facebook, then a follower on either site clicks the short digg url or retweets or copies it will then be taken to digg. Regardless if I created that link and chose to use it or even if I’m just retweeting a post or copying a post from anywhere else.
Point is they marketed and launched it as a link shortening service.
2.) It may be true he should have been a little more on top of this, but at the same time he recently stated he hadn’t taken a true vacation in a long time so 2 weeks in China disconnected (even somewhat) should be reasonable, especially since he’s not the CEO. Hopefully they’ll talk about it tonight/tomorrow and announce a change.
Anon – your first point couldn’t be more wrong. It is a huge deal and I haven’t found a Digg user yet who prefers it this way. People use the Digg URL in tweets so that their Digg friends can check it out and Digg it if they’d like but all their non-Digg friends can see the article they think is interesting. Everyone I know has vowed to stop using the Diggbar URL and Digg’s going to lose out on a lot more traffic.
What about the user? Creating tools that hurt them and help you cannot be a sound strategy.
maybe the idea is to figure out how much abuse their users are willing to take. it wouldn’t be the first time.
I fail to see why Kevin has to be lying about this. Is he not allowed to take a two week vacation? He’s the public face of Digg cos he founded it, but he’s hardly the only guy in charge.
If he says he didn’t know about this, either A: he’s prone to complete forgetfulness or B:totally lying. or C: lost control of the ship
No company that collects and redirects links would change a link structure overnight without buy in from ALL important figures within. Those of you who think he “didn’t know anything because he was on vacation” are (no offense) clueless.
Isn’t this awesome …. blogging/twittering about an issue and get it to the right people and get the problem solved asap.
It’s so easy to get a message to the CEO etc unlike about say 5 years ago.
erm, try that on a *big* company. startup CEOs always respond fast to emails/blogs/IMs/tweets
Your website looks pretty descent … a very good implementation with Facebook Connect.
Just curious what framework etc are you using ?
Thanks man. No framework – or rather, home grown framework
What company doesn’t respond quickly? I’ve seen Microsoft and Google respond within hours to issues like this.
their CEOs?
Ballmer will throw a chair within seconds of hearing a complaint that involves the word “Google”.
I will have to agree with anon 100%. Especially #2. Hm.. makes you wonder..
James F.
Owner, TwitterBackground.com
ditto
I’m actually a big fan of the new Stumble Upon service, su.pr.
The diggbar is okay, and I generally use bit.ly unless I’m trying to get a story dugg, but as of now I’ve been using su.pr because it gives you the option to schedule the tweets.
He is not happy because someone screwed up his vacation! would u be pleased if u get the message that the whole world is not happy with ur product, while on vacation??
Whatever it is, this is community at work.
So true, the social web is very, very powerful and when people speak up and all make a stand or express their opinions on something it is impossible to stop.
how is it possible the head of the company doesn’t know about it – what a load of crap. stop eating the shit sandwiches that these hollywood tech guys dish up
maybe he’s not really the head of the company.
Last I checked Jay Aldelson was the CEO of Digg. Has been for a while too. Hmmm. Maybe do a simple Google search before posting? Just takes a second buddy. Here I’ll even help ya…
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=digg+ceo
like there’s a real difference between head and Founder and Chief Architect – seriously you are a fool Bryan
I’d like to know how Mr. Arrington managed to turn a 139 character tweet into an entire news article. He even managed to spin it, a la sensationalist media, without any confirmation whatsoever.
Slow day?
You’re day must be even slower since you took the time out of your day to comment.
“Slow news day” comments are as ridiculous as commenting “First” and should get you banished from the web. Or at least beaten with a rubber hose.
“You’re” = You are.
Ha ha.
He extrapolated some. So what? The Twitter change is newsworthy, and the tweet is relevant.
And are you really using “slow news day”?
plus, this isn’t really even extrapolating. company founders don’t just make public statements that they had no idea a feature was launching that is getting backlash. This is frustration coming out, you don’t break rank with your team unless you are not happy about something.
Could just be a clever move on his part… Make change, if users protest claim the change was made without his knowledge and change it back. Kevin looks like the hero, users are happy again.
well i’m sure you were able to get his comment for the story right? or did you even try?
Or, you know, they could get rid of the diggbar completely. I hate it.
Mr. Arrington must have watched Kev on TWIT and was PO’ed about his comments about the trashy google story.
DIGG = DEAD
Very funny. LOL
Digg reminds me of the good old days of 2005. Oh, what a simple world it was…
Josh – I don’t really agree with your point. I was struck by Kevin’s message. I don’t think the founder/chief architect of a company should come out publicly saying he didn’t know something happened. Michael might be stretching the story but it’s Kevin’s fault for posting it.
Twitter is, like many other social networks, a public domain. It’s not a confidential IM. If someone died from a poison Pepsi, you wouldn’t see a Pepsi executive on Twitter saying he didn’t know an ingredient changed.
Startup or no startup, executives have to be more careful. Kevin’s comment doesn’t make Digg look good.
http://socialne...ner-on-twitter/
Apparently Kevin Rose thinks that this new idea ISN’T such a bad idea, and it’s been done on purpose. =/ Also, he references tcrn.ch links.
I think this will end up being a bug, here’s why… If I paste in the full URL, including the HTTP:// after digg.com such as:
http://www.digg...ise-on-diggbar/
it creates diggbar, but it goes to something weird: http://http:0/w...ise-on-diggbar/
The colon-zero is messing everything up.
If I only paste in the www (http://digg.com...ise-on-diggbar/) it creates the URL: http://digg.com/d1onxf which works fine when I’m not logged into digg.
Yeah, right he didn’t know. Can major policy changes like this happen without the leader knowing? If so, that’s a problem the investors should be worried about. Also, this was thought of and implemented in the two weeks dude was on vacation. ah, I don’t think so.
The Digg bar itself it a bullshit system that penalizes non subscribers and all the publishers. I don’t know why anyone still uses them, it’s such an old-school out of touch operation that’s just getting worse. They act like they have no competition…
This Digg thing’s been irking me for months, and I think it’s because I’m disappointed.
This isn’t the first time people at Digg have commented about Kevin not being around to be consulted on website changes. Kevin isn’t the leader, Jay is the experienced CEO, Kev’s just the hipster that hacked it together with a $1000 programmer and a $99/mo server
Kevin Rose did not say he was unhappy or that he disagrees, he only said that he didn’t know about it.
I have no problem with a digg url linking to digg, but the big issue here is that they changed the behavior of urls already out in the wild.
I call BS. Vacation or not,I’m sure he knows what’s going on. If not, shame on him. Either way, shame on you digg.
If you listened to TWiT today (204) you would have known that Kevin Rose was aware of it going to be changed, he just didn’t know if they pushed the code out yet or what not.
link?
Leo Laporte had Digg co-founder Kevin Rose on his show and asked him about this. You can see it on Twit Live – the Diggbar discussion starts at the 11:26 mark. Here is an excerpt:
* (Laporte gives Rose the background from an article on Techcrunch)
* Laporte: Is that true?
* Rose: That’s a good question.
* Laporte: You don’t know?
* Rose: I’ve been gone for 2 weeks so I don’t know what got pushed, what code got pushed and how it functions but my last understanding is that what we wanted to do is have it so that if you click on a Digg URL it takes you to the Digg stories so you can Digg it. Rather than providing a short URL service that just forwards and does redirection we would just do a URL service just for Digg articles. Just like the same way that Techcrunch does “techcrunch slash 85374″ – if you go to that you’re not going to go to some other site you’re going to go to techcrunch. That’s the story.
* Laporte: So you’re backing off on the original idea which is a general URL shortening service…
* Rose: Correct.
A link request? Seriously Michael? You know TWiT wouldn’t have been posted yet, but when it is, it’ll be:
http://twit.tv/twit/204
Funnily enough, Kevin mentioned TC’s url shortener (which redirects to TC stories ) has the model Digg looked at when deciding what to do.
I think it’s highly appropriate for Digg to point digg-links back to the digg story page. In the end it still gives the original site lots of re-directs, while not undercutting Digg’s business model.
no, i have actually never watched the show, no idea how it works with links, etc.
@Panamajack – it’s http://twit.tv/204
twit 204 was live today and will be pushed to their itunes feed overnight or morning monday
you know this mike
why does everyone assume i’m an expert on twit publishing policies.
Because you run one of the leading tech blogs in the world Michael! People have seen you (infamously) with Leo before, probably assume (rightly or wrongly) that you’ve been on TWiT before, and have listened to it at least once or twice.
At the very least, you’re guilty of needing a “let me google that for you”. Who asks for a link to a popular podcast without first searching it for themselves?
a google search generally wouldn’t pull something that new up. and to be honest, no i’ve never seen the show.
all i did was ask for a link. get a grip, people. you are starting to lose it.
http://socialne...ner-on-twitter/
So who’s in charge over there at Digg, if it’s not Kevin Rose? Something tells me he’s not as involved with the company as he makes himself out to be. Any time there’s a controversy that has anything to do with Digg, Kevin claims to be in the dark. Should we take his Twitter statements at face value, or is he knocking the Digg brand to protect the more important one… Kevin Rose?
But I agree with one thing, that the change is in essence really not a big deal. If you don’t like the Digg URL shortening service, no one’s forcing you to use it. I don’t know why people actually like having the DiggBar on the page to begin with.
It does seem like either A) he’s a poor manager or not very involved or B) willing to throw his whole team under the bus to save face.
he’s the public face. He started it, he has his show that reviews the stories, and thats about it.
I think dont think digg is in the wrong by doing this because digg itself is NOT a url shortner/tracker service like bit.ly. digg is only leveraging the usefulness of a short url for its own service, digg.com. they have every right to direct traffic to a page on their service that uses their service.s short url.
no, i dont like how digg works and i’m barely a digg user. i have an account but dont actively use the service. so i’m not a digg fanboy or anything. just look at this for waht it is and don;t stir it up into something else.
digg has been around. maybe they are trying to stay relevant and in dabbling with new methods and tech. in general, i dont like the use of a frame bar but this is digg, not a simple bookmarking site like delicious. the whole purpose of digg is to foster discussion and generate popularity of a link. that core recipe, though modified over the years, is what defines digg. not to be a 301 redirect short tracker url service like bit.ly. just because they have their own alt short url does not put them in that specific business/service category. and that, in my opinion, in the mistake of this article and the perspective of many people.
another note…. when an article on techcrunch contains a link to that is typed as the 3rd party service’s name but the link goes to a crunchbase.com about page for that 3rd party service…. how different is it? many times i have clicked a link thinking that i am going to be headed over to a website that is being referenced and instead i land on crunchbase.com and not thrilled.
think about it.
nailed it!
Most down-to-earth point of view I’ve seen during this conversation.
I have a feeling this is just a marketing stunt they are pulling to get publicity and will reverse the change soon.
If you were the owner, or even the founder of any website, or any company for that matter, you would know for a fact that bad publicity is no better than no publicity at all.
See, what you’re telling me right now by saying this may have been a “marketing stunt”, goes something like this.
Say I want to become popular through local news. Killing someone would definitely get me in the newspapers and on the local news channels, right? That in no way, shape, or form would push me to do such a thing.
It’s quite possible I didn’t have to escalate things as high as murder, but I’m just trying to get the point across.
In short, bad publicity is a big no-no.
Besides, Digg does not need publicity at this point. Like I mentioned within my comment left below, Digg is within the top 130 websites on the entire internet. Word of mouth, at this point, is _way_ more than enough.
There’s no such thing as bad publicity.
Digg…who cares.
Exactly. Who cares? Not I.
I really really want to like digg but the community just isn’t me.
Listings of Mad Atheists scream every day how religion is the cause of all man’s ills … gag. It’s paints too depressing a future.
There are other sites that actually have interesting, hopeful, news.
It’s a cool idea from Digg! But it should be different from what Twitter is providing for short web pages.
Wait. Judging by the way Kevin talked about it on TWiT today and by this Tweet how can you conclude he is not pleased with the change?! Just because he is going to check in on it does not mean he is entirely unpleased about it…
On TWiT he clearly made it sound like he know something like this was in the works but just wasn’t sure when it would be pushed…..
Just stop using obfuscated links. Easy as that.
It is quite interesting enough that Kevin did not know about the change, however Kevin is not the one in full charge of Digg, thus all the decisions made are not up to him.
Of course, it is always a good thing to contact him before doing any large changes, but it is quite possible that the person or persons who have made the changes to the DiggBar to do such a terrible thing figured this wouldn’t cause such a huge ruckus as it did.
Then again, Digg being as hugely populated as it is; within the top 130 websites on the entire internet, should take some precaution in doing what it does. Something like this could quite easily effect hundreds of thousands of people, if not several millions.
Here’s to hoping things get fixed up in the AM.
hope they get their act right
he so knew it happened.. how could he not?
This sounds like a non-story. One URL shortener guy getting pissed about a competitor. Big deal if they route people to their website. In fact, kudos to them for leveraging their property. Such is the word of Sanjay.
This is a non-story. He knew about it and mentioned it on TWiT on 7/19. He commented that he didn’t know if the code was pushed yet but that it was coming.
Man I feel kind of dumb. I didn’t even notice this effect, all I knew is that I was feeling a little more irritated then ever when it came to digg.com. Why? I didn’t know until now.
The digg iframe over the content, I really don’t like. It looks really congested and it slows down the page.
I don’t think its that big a deal and most people are just over reacting. I personally think its a good business move and I don’t blame them for doing it.
However, it does look like the board wanted to pull a fast one before Kevin Rose got back. Like testing the waters and if the public are somewhat ok with it then they will keep it.
actually i am happy with dig until this time , but don’t in the future
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