Digg users revolt, turn site into massive ad for competitor Reddit

We reported earlier that things over at social networking/link sharing site Digg.com got a little wonky with a recent site redesign. When Digg v4 launched, there was an uproarious user protestation due to a wealth of bugs, absence of features, and what was seen to be the “selling out” of Digg to large sites and corporations.

Most of the tech problems have gone away, and founder Kevin Rose has promised fixes for most of the missing features. Unrest regarding selling out, however, has burgeoned into full-on revolt. On the new Digg, users are encouraged to follow other users, who are able to auto-submit entries from their own websites. Large sites with strong Digg followings already in place have been able to dominate.

Hilariously, that has never been more true than today, with legions of Digg users subscribing to the feed for Digg competitor Reddit, and voting up that site’s posts (which link to Reddit, and then on to the actual web page of interest). Essentially, Digg has been transformed by its own users into a massive advertisement for its rival.

The image to the right is a screen shot of the most popular entries on Digg today. Every single one of them is a link to Reddit. The comment section of every one of those, as well as just about every other entry on Digg, is filled with anti-Digg, pro-Reddit sentiment.

Reddit has been kind enough to respond by putting a shovel in the hand of their mascot, and starting a help thread for new users.

I’ve seen plenty of mass-user reactions before. I’ve seen community revolts, forum invasions, and 4chan topics that evolved into real-world protests. I don’t recall ever seeing so many users of a site so valuable or popular manage to screw things up so badly for that site’s owners.

Image: Screenshot of Digg