Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Here, here. Hey, I think digg serves a purpose ... ironically, to me its wild popularity is kind of a stopgap while more focused communities develop.

Ultimately, it seems like as the blogosphere matures, we'll see traffic coming more from actual bloggers than the so-called social sites. That's what gives you actual, regular, focused readers. You can watch digg spikes alongside RSS -- often, not a blip. I think a lot of us would prefer people willing to sit down and actually read something. And some of these traffic spikes mask the reality for most blogospheres, which is at this point overall traffic is actually too low to sustain those kinds of readers for a lot of the most interesting sites. Even the megablogs from Weblogs Inc. and Gawker are still unfamiliar to a lot of average Joes, once you talk to people from outside our tech-savvy bubble -- which is why I'm often saying to friends, "hey, go read download squad, etc., etc.". (Seriously!) ;)

I think digg is just one step on the way to the larger phenomena, as web publishing grows. And it's certainly not the only game in town. Stumbleupon, while also a social site, has much more interesting content, a sense of "social norms" and politeness that digg lacks ... it just says to me that this space has more developing to do. Interestingly, rather than giant, server-busting spikes, SU tends to deliver traffic over time. (I was very surprised when it started topping my referrer logs.)

And I work for neither AOL nor digg. ;)