As the popularity of Digg has grown through the social media landscape, so have the efforts of those looking to game the system. Digg founder Kevin Rose addressed this controversial issue in his latest blog post.
There have been articles galore written on how sites are looking to game Digg in order to gain exposure and increase inbound traffic. In equal fashion, there have been very public campaigns throughout the blogosphere to out the companies looking to manipulate the system.
Notably, Jason Calacanis offered $100 a pop to anyone willing to rat out advertisers and marketing firms that were trying to pay “Top Diggers” to submit stories.
With controversy mounting and the integrity of Digg at stake, Kevin Rose attempted to set the records straight on the Digg blog.
After making the case that attempts to game Digg are mostly ineffective, Rose moved on to discuss the future of the “Top Diggers” list:
Some of our top users – the people that have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours finding and digging the best stuff – are being blamed by some outlets as leading efforts to manipulate Digg.
These users have been listed on the “Top Diggers” area of the site that was created in the early days of Digg when there was a strong focus on encouraging people to submit content.
After considerable internal debate and discussion with many of those who make up the Top Digger list, we’ve decided to remove the list beginning tomorrow.
As for what’s next, we’re currently working on designing and refining the technologies required that will help enable our nearly 900,000 registered users to make real connections that we believe will greatly enhance the Digg experience – whether you’re brand new to the site or have been on Digg since the beginning.
Without a definitive list of top users, those looking to manipulate Digg will have to come up with new methods of infiltrating the community infrastructure. I wonder, however, what kind of internal backlash the removal of the “Top Diggers” feature will have?
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Joe is a staff writer for webproworld. Visit webproworld for the latest ebusiness news.