LooseSuits

I just looked at an Alexa graph (I know it's not accurate but it does show trends) and it is showing an overall decrease in in traffic. Ironically this is after their improved site design, adding more content (podcasts).

Don't get me wrong, they are still getting a lot of traffic (enough to bring a server down) but from more than one source, there is a decline. Perhaps they have finally matured and are plateauing.

I've never been a real Digg fan but the truth is the stuff being submitted (making it to the front page) is mostly from the top sites in the industry - ones most people are subscribed to or I ended up hearing about anyway. Right now on the front page:

Yahoo
NYT
Gizmodo
Lifehacker

Digg lost it's usefulness.

my opinion:

digg was a fad. just like anything that becomes extremely popular really quickly, the popularity is bound to die off!

No it's just seasonal like all technology news.

You can't really tell the seasons from that graph because Digg is so new, but that's just how tech news works. you have busy seasons where people are just going completely schitz over a few products (ala iphone) and then you get the dry season (summer) where nothing very much happens at all...

Digg won't go anywhere until there's something taking the traffic away from it. At the moment, I don't think there's anything that is as wide and powerful.

If you look at the traffic graph, you'll see that everything is pretty stable.

Why? I thought I just said it should be peaking and dropping off seasonally... Well yes... But when there's less news, fewer people look at more pages, actually looking for stories... At least that makes sense in my head.

Oli that didn't make sense... Or I've lost my marbles.

Digg isn't the site it once was, it seems to bring the same few sites to the top of the pile time and time again. I wouldn't mind so much if mine was one of them...

I zoomed in more - the six month graph.

One rule I would love for them to implement: the story submitted must be the link of the originating author. I'm not talking about You Tube - I'm talking about the writer who took the time to write an article for a bigger site to mash it up and link to it, resulting for the bigger site to get on Digg.

edit: so much for Alexa's widget working haha

Haha I can share that sentiment...

Too many content aggregating sites like the Gawker network's sites that keep reposting other people's stuff, getting it all over digg and taking all the advertising revenue...

I've got no problem with sites like that posting entries like that, but Digg shouldn't be taking submissions from them if that's what 90% of their content is.

I hate to admit it.. but I find digg extremely entertaining.. I read it everymorning :( boo me... i suck...

I stopped visiting Digg when they branched out from being a tech only site. Digg used to be like a huge list of cool links and interesting stories. Now it's a teeming mess of pop culture. Not that there's anything wrong with it. I just preferred the tech-only Digg.

In fairness to it, the tech-only side still exists. You can screw down on the technology sections through both preferences and RSS.

That's true, but the point still remains that the other categories are starting to dominate the site now and given the demographic of Digg I don't know how well that will work. I think when they added the new sections they meant for them to bring in new audiences, but that doesn't seem to have occurred.

I know the tech section is still there, but it's just that, a section.
I used to hit Digg to find interesting things, and now I read the entire first page, and just go, meh.

It is bound to happen with any large congregation of asshats, WoW is seeing a bit of plateauing also so I imagine the same thing is happening to Digg.

How can you compare a game to a news/social-content site? One has a fairly fixed lifespan (get to level 60... and...? that's about it) while the news keeps coming on Digg.

People visit digg for the links, not the digg site itself. There's very little in the way of meaningful social interaction there other than burying twats in the comments and slandering microsoft... All fun.

The tech section isn't just a section. It's a section with the most subsections. It's the default section. You don't get stories about cats up trees etc if you go to digg.com unless they're armed with a frickin laser or they're using their macbook to hack their neighbours wifi.

Introducing all the new sections had a MASSIVE impact on the traffic throughput! Look at April 2006. Look how their reach doubled. Sure they've got a long way to go before they're completely mainstream but for the love of god, do they need more traffic?

I meant to say it had a massive impact on the reach.

But then again the traffic has nothing to do with whether or not they are getting less submissions. I wonder if people got so frustrated of never reaching the homepage.

Oli: Both WoW and Digg are full of asshats. That is the basis for comparing them.

But then again the traffic has nothing to do with whether or not they are getting less submissions. I wonder if people got so frustrated of never reaching the homepage.

True enough, but submissions do have a lot to do with seasonal technology trends and also improvements (very gradual) in the duplicate detection system.

I thought there was a stat showing how many submissions digg gets but after 30 minutes of looking, I can't find the bugger.

Both WoW and Digg are full of asshats.

That's the internet for you...

Is Digg getting less and less submissions?

I've just noticed what you're asking... No I think the submissions are about the same size on average.

That's the thing, they should be more because they have more sections now but they remained the same meaning they've lost submissions. Maybe they've reached a plateau. Don't get me wrong they get a lot of submissions but from a business standpoint it should be more.

I'm just not sure there's enough long term data available (to the public) to prove or disprove that.

I think it's a seasonal dip but I'll be the first to admin that I'm not a technology "expert". I don't track all the PR wind coming out the back of all the tech companies... There could be tons of stuff going on.

I would, however, wait for an entire year's worth of news before saying they're losing traffic. We could also do with knowing the numbers of submissions for each month.

See I don't think they will lose traffic until people get tired of the stories they are seeing on the homepage. People still hit up Digg, but with less submissions it means a tighter group of sites can dominate.