Do you all remember Digg's algorithm change in January? Well, it looks like I was right when I claimed that Digg jumped the shark. Pierre at Social Alerter actually provided an in-depth analysis of how the algorithm impacted the popularity of front page stories. In his post, Digg's Algo Change Cut Promotions by 38%, he shows data that supports this statement. Then he asks, "The question is, was the change worth it for Digg? Did the quality of promoted stories go up? Did it increase the number of users? Only Digg the company and the Digg users can answer those."
Let me give you a short answer: Digg became less of a tech-centric site and more of a mess of random junk. For example, did this story need to hit the front page? Thank you, captain obvious, but I like informational news, not junk.
As some people notice, however, the Digg stories that do get promoted get a lot more traffic. (Not from me, though.) And at this point, I think that Digg can't really have a "fan base" because it totally killed user morale--at least to some like yours truly.
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.
