Digg is New Media, Diggnation is Old Media

In an interview with AdAge Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson riff on digg and their successful podcast, Diggnation. What's struck me is that while digg is a novel form of media where the wisdom of crowds prevails, the latter is, well old media.

According to Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, Diggnation gets 250,000 to 350,000 unique viewers for each week. They say viewers, but to me this means downloads since it's very difficult to track eyeballs on a mobile device. Further, the entire Revision3 network, according to the duo, does 1.5 to 2 million downloads a month.

The article also touches on the fine line Diggnation walks when it comes to the ever eroding church/state line between editorial and advertising in a world where the entrepreneur wears both hats.

Tags: digg, diggnation

Comments

[Pascal Venier]

... or even Listeners! ;-)

[Russell Page]

"wisdom of crowds" is a total farse.

Digg is all about competition of individuals trying to get to the front page of digg. Wisdom takes a back seat to the ability to market well.

[RBA]

I wouldn't go as far as saying that wisdom of crwods is a farse, but I have to say that Digg has a lot of competition built in, and while sometimes that's a good thing, some other times it isn't.

For instance, sometimes someone may rush to submit a story to Digg so that he's the first submitting the story (that's competition), but perhaps two hours later a much better article may cover the topic, yet that article will be marked as dupe and buried.

That's just one example. I've been studying the Digg method for quite a while, and while its success is undeniable, it has quite a lot of 'holes' that make it a less than ideal way to track interesting news. That's not to say it's not a useful site. It defintely is, but it all depends what you're using it for. Getting news that (may) matter to you isn't one of them.

[Robert Andrews]

Not exactly, Steve. Diggnation comprises some of the most popular stories as Dugg by Digg users, the users are namechecked, the number of Diggs is read out.

The show hangs on those user submissions, framing the show for the duo to analyse.

[jamier]

the purpose of diggnation is to be a subversive warning sign for all potential investors to RUN! it gives a "face" to digg.com users -- a male, white, nerdy, sexist, slightly racist face whose secret fantasy is to be an alabama frat boy.

if they keep up this image, digg.com and many other internet 2.0 sites will never grow beyond the userbase they have. there's a reason phenomena like youtube and myspace broke into the mainstream. they had good ideas but they were not new ideas or new technology. it's because they were not female, male, black, arab, white, poor, rich, nerdy, or cool. they were welcoming to everyone who knew how to use a web browser.

after just watching a few episodes of diggnation i know i will never use digg.com, unless they completely overhaul their personality. it's the same reason a young white man won't buy oprah magazine even if the cover article would sound great if it were in wired.