Digg: From Cult Favorite to Mainstream
The method that Digg uses to rank a submitted story has also become an issue with the launch of the new Netscape.com. In an interview with BetaNews last week, Netscape spokesperson Andrew Weinstein made claims, echoed by Calacanis in similar press reports, that stories could self-perpetuate on Digg.
Both Adelson and Rose were adamant in debunking this claim. "It's completely untrue," Rose quipped. "We have proof." Adelson went on to explain that Digg does indeed use a velocity formula much like Netscape does, and that it has been well publicized that Digg's method takes into account a number of factors.
"Any story on the front page has never stayed there for more than six hours max ever," Rose added.
Additionally, the two took issue with claims that Digg needs some type of moderation in order to continue to operate effectively. On several occasions, inaccurate reports have made their way to the top of Digg, such as reports of former Sun CEO Scott McNealy's firing, which was one of the most recent occurrences.
Digg believes that putting an editorial staff on top of the site's premise would not work, as it takes out the social aspect. "Every user has the admin power to report stories," Rose said. "The community is very good at removing inaccurate stories from the queue."
Adelson also said that Digg was committed to neutrality and balked at the AOL concept as a type of censorship, where the opinion of the "anchor" superseded that of all other users. Additionally, with the backing of a large corporation behind it, there is a greater chance that Time Warner's opinion could play a part in editorial decisions in Netscape, he said.
"Digg isn't censored. There's no agenda," Adelson argued.
Neither Adelson nor Rose expressed any concern that having to compete with a large corporation like AOL for the eyes of the Internet public would affect the site's opportunity to grow. "We'll counter AOL with innovation," Rose said.
More features are on tap for July, including Flash integration and other enhancements that Rose says "will blow you away." Within Digg, there is a belief that "we've only got 10 percent of digg deployed," Adelson said, saying there is a long list of objectives for future versions of the social news site beyond this next release.
Additionally, the site plans to continue its commitment to the open source community, releasing the Digg code base as an API so that others can innovate on top of the platform.
While the AOL spat may have seemed to create some bad blood within Digg on clone sites, Digg does not plan to take the legal route against others any time soon.
"We'll take action to protect our trademark," Adelson said. "We won't chase Web sites for copying." However, the site does have a few patents on the way, and if need be, would sue to protect its technologies.
"[Digg] won't become the generic portal," he continued. "But we'll be associated with sorting the information overload on the Web."