Digg Me! Oh, Please, Please, Please!
November 30th, 2007 in Web Design Culture
by: Matthew Griffin
Digg is a great concept. In my opinion, it has made the single greatest contribution to the awareness of the difference between traditional media and the web. Because of Digg, we are now able to comment and vote on just about everything.
For these things, Digg, I thank you. You have made the task of spreading the good news of the web much easier. Now, all due credit having been given, I would like to point to a little mess Digg has created.
Digg-mania has caused my favorite blogs to fill up with funny little icons. I probably can't tell you what half of these icons are. Digg has made blogging kind of like playing the lottery. If all I have is one little "Digg it!" icon at the bottom of my post, it's like buying only one lottery ticket. I might as well put icons for every social bookmarking site and Digg wannabe out there.
I'm not buying it and you shouldn't either! Successful blogging is about consistency, content, and involvement. We all know what happens to most people who with the lottery. They spend all their money as fast as they can landing them right back where they started. It's the same with Digg and Del.icio.us and all the others. They may get you a reader rush but they won't make your blog successful.
Help your readers out and try just two or three Digg-like links. Or if you must have them all, at least get creative with how you display them. The mess you create with all those icons just isn't worth it. It's time to clean up Digg's mess.
- 5 Comments
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Comments
Posted By: Jake Bouma on 11/30/07
I think the cluster of icons is a bit annoying as well. Many people are opting to use Alex King's "Share This" icon/plugin, which was recently sold to Nextumi, Inc. () It makes things look much nicer, and is quite functional.
Posted By: Rod Templeton on 11/30/07
I agree completely. When I downloaded the Socialize plug-in for WordPress, I stripped everything out except the three major ones: Digg, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. I added BloggingZoom as well, but I'm stopping there. Too many does not help at all.
Posted By: Slusher on 11/30/07
I agree, and there's always the vaporware factor on some of these sites. If you choose only a few sites to allow your users to share content, your really only using the ones you think best suite your audience, but I think sites like sharethis, addthis and others are heading in the right direction overall outside of some standards based solution. On the flip side I think that any user who is intelligent enough to use the sites created in Digg's wake are probably smart enough to copy and paste the link anyways. However, if you really want to spread your content virally you can always rely on the most popular method of adding a small statement at the top of your post pointing to a declaration of impending doom if you do not forward this to 10 people immediately, or offer rewards based on how many times you forward it. Genius.
Posted By: Super Blogging on 12/09/07
When people put 20 little social media icons on their sites and nobody knows what most of them are, what's the point? It actually takes away from the chances of people voting for you, even if they DO know and use some of those social media sites. It turns people away and it's quite irritating.
Posted By: Mohi on 04/10/08
Agree. But I've heard that facebook is gonna dominate the new social media race. Is this true?