2.0 backlash

It’s no secret that Digg and Facebook - two of the most publicized social sites - have faced backlash from some users as of late. Digg is angering only a few, while facebook has angered the masses. The problem is that Digg gets it strength from a few and FB gets its strength from those mind-numb masses. We’ve all seen the numbers of FB users joining the ‘new FB sucks’ groups, I was invited to join one myself (and no I didn’t join), and it seems that most of the users are joining the groups the same way that they joined FB… without any real thought.

The FB situation is bleak, many say that 400,000 is just a drop in the bucket, but enough wrong drops and 100’s of thousands turn into millions. And I don’t care who you are, no one likes to lose 100s of thousands of users. [Palopia are you listening - launch NOW!] To make matters worse, the Facebook blog has essentially told users, ‘you don’t like it, and we don’t care.’ That may not be what the blog post was going for but that’s certainly how it comes off. Starting the post with Calm Down, is enough to turn most users off - turn down the arrogance or lose your base. Remember you’re trying to flip a site for $2B based on the strength of the network, lose the network and you lose everything. Am I overreacting, yes, but so are all of the users that are joining the anti-FB groups. Who wants to buy a product that has an ever growing chunk of users pledging their hatred for the product? Either look confident and lose your users or look like you care about those users and re-gain their loyalty. I don’t know how long I’ve been hearing about how loyal of a user base the FB users are (based on how often they visit the site) - that loyalty only lasts as long as you give them what they want. Sure the numbers have been good in the past few days - but that’s similar to the Digg effect, people are going just to see what the buzz is about. Speaking of Digg effect…

Digg on the other hand is in great shape. Get rid of the users that are gaming the system and the system gets better. I applaud the efforts. I’ve recently had to put in some extra security that prevents users from gaming Lopico and I couldn’t be happier with the results. Digg is for the masses, when it starts being about a few you have to change. The confusion is with the power users that thought that they could game Digg forever, and that think that there aren’t users #20-30 who would love to take their spot as the highest ranked Digg users. This is probably the first positive Digg post I’ve done in a while, because this is the first move I’ve seen from Digg in a while that gets them closer to what they claim to be - socially driven news made by the masses.

Digg Blog: Digg Friends
Facebook Blog: Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.

- J.D. Amer is guy from akron who is about to launch motask.com