Digg Shoots Self in Foot

This could be my last Digg submission…

What were they thinking? Taking away our ability to shout articles among our Digg friends makes no sense. Yes they added convenient share buttons for Facebook and Twitter, but not everyone on Digg is also on those sites. Plus, why take away the ability for members of a community to communicate? This move makes me wonder if they’ve finally gone too far.

The DiggBar was annoying and many felt interfered with traffic numbers. Articles staying popular for multiple weeks on Digg made it difficult for articles posted by anyone but power diggers from popping. But taking away the ability to share stories could very well be Digg’s biggest mistake yet.

After all, why would I submit an article on Digg only to have to share it on Twitter or Facebook when those sites were created to share things on their own? Wouldn’t it be easier for me to simply share on Twitter and/or Facebook while cutting out the extra work of submitting to Digg? If Digg is suddenly not it’s own community, then what exactly would be the point of using it?

It would be like MySpace saying, “forget posting photos, use Flickr instead,” or YouTube telling us all to go back to using locally-hosted flash players.

C’mon Digg, you were the cool kids. You shoulda known better! The only thing you’ll get from this is geek flight to another service.

Oh and Reddit, Mixx, Twitter, Facebook , etc … up your server capacity. Expect new signups in 4 … 3 … 2 … 1