Just hours after Kevin Rose’s blog post today, announcing that the Digg algorithm has been changed in a way that would impact how stories were promoted. Kevin’s post, like most things on the Internet, was closely scrutinized and different blogs critical of Digg popped up everywhere. Blogs such as Brent, Bablin55, and Soshable created a lot of noise. (Coincidentally my post about “blind digging” was posted at around the time, but admittedly it had nothing to do with these events)

Top diggers saw all this as a move to suppress and penalize them for their popularity. Led by Andy (mrbabyman), Reg (zaibatsu), and Muhammed Saleem (msaleem) held an emergency session of their podcast The Drill Down with more than 120 participating in the session. After two hours of heated discussion, the majority agreed to boycott Digg for 4-5 days and possibly forever if Digg did not respond to their demands! Amazingly enough, founder Kevin Rose and CEO Jay Adelson showed up and were ready to have a heart to heart!

Kevin and Jay answered the revolter’s questions regarding the algorithm, unanswered e-mails, auto bury, among other things (click here, here and here for more details on the discussions) . The revolt seemed to be squashed faster than it started.

More than a few would probably disagree with me, but I think that Kevin and Jay failed to address the community’s concerns but shrewdly managed to lull the community:

  1. They failed to give a reasonable explanation of the algorithm. No algorithm would automagically “just work”
  2. They failed to own up to ignoring E-mails
  3. They failed to disapprove the auto-bury rumor. It’s their word against hard evidence.

The fire of the revolution might be extinguished and reduced to embers, but these embers still have traces of life in them! Don’t be surprised if it emerges again!!

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