Digg Mafia Strikes Again

Yesterday, Yahoo launched their new Suggestion Boards which has a digg-like voting mechanism and looks quite close to Digg, but unlike Digg, it’s not for promoting stories, but for sharing comments over various Yahoo Service. Infact, Yahoo had even generously credited Digg in their blog post. Digg mafia didn’t quite like it, so nearly 2800 diggers dugg a post titled “Yahoo Shamelessly Rips Off Digg and Brags About it,” and started screaming, flaming on Yahoo through comments.

That’s not all; they even went upto spamming Yahoo Suggestion Board and their blog with their immature messages. Kevin Rose invented Digg, but he didn’t invent the voting system, he didn’t invent democracy. He just built a good community, that’s it. (Duncan Riley explains it better)

I’m not blaming the entire Digg community for this; some good diggers are even asking others to stop it. From this entire episode, I think Digg mafia is hurting Digg’s own reputation. It brings no good to Digg!

This post was published by on February 16, 2007

About the Author: Thilak Rao works as a Social Media Expert. He is one of the first professional bloggers from India, and he loves to write, travel and click photos. Follow him on Twitter @thilak

  • Chad

    F*ck Digg. Lately, more and more of the Digg fanboys piss me off. Digg is nothing more than a top site for the “Top 10 [Insert YouTube Video Category Here]. It’s way, way over rated.

  • http://www.reviewsaurus.com Mayank

    ha ha, I know that’s the way digg works. Amit agarwal, I myself have noticed this a lot and I wrote an article just like you’ve done a while back.
    http://www.reviewsaurus.com/2006/12/02/digg-users-need-to-apply-brain-and-must-use-their-eyes/

    But the Digg Mafia (nice term used by you) will not understand things and will actually make digg a bad experience.

  • http://www.alieneyes.wordpress.com knight17

    Digg is full of fanboys….

  • http://freakitude.com Lovedeep Wadhwa

    Yahoo suggestion boards is no social news sharing website, only suggestions and feedback for certain Yahoo channels and they also gave credit to digg,

    Now Digg really needs to get a grip on the community.

  • http://bryansrants.com/ Bryan

    I am sick of seeing all of these big companies run out of their own ideas. Companies like Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, to name a few, have gone out there and started buying out websites or taking their ideas and customizing them. I would say the only big stream company that isn’t doing this of now is Apple.

    I used to hate Apple but I have to give them props. They stay true time and time again and create an edge others, cough Microsoft cough, would like to mirror.

    If I was the inventor of Digg I would be upset too. Yahoo! should pay some sort of customary fee or ask for permissions. You know if you did that off of one of their sites you would end up in court!

  • http://tech-buzz.net Thilak

    Lovedeep: That’s what I said :D

  • http://www.freakitude.com Lovedeep Wadhwa

    lol thilak, i was shouting at digg mafia not you. :D

  • http://www.wisetome.com/splat Vyoma

    There is lynching and there is democracy.

    Digg sometimes borders at the latter. But it comes as no surprise when you check the maturity levels of Digg members going through their comments.

    But it is a shameful incident for the good Digg members. I wonder how they are tackling all this.

  • http://tech-buzz.net Thilak

    Lovedeep: Na.. You never gave a shout at me. Infact, It was I who gave a shout :D

    Sorry for that

  • http://www.nyssajbrown.net/ Nyssa

    Wow, amazing to say the least. I’m not a huge fan of Digg and never really have been but that type of system has been around before Digg. Digg just made it big and recognizable in my opinion.

  • http://tech-buzz.net/2007/02/17/dell-pays-tribute-to-digg-with-new-ideastorm-site/ Dell Pays Tribute to Digg with New IdeaStorm Site

    [...] Days haven’t passed after the Yahoo – Digg episode and Dell has already launched its own suggestion site called Dell IdeaStorm. It looks quite close to Digg, but the idea is no way related to promoting stories. [...]

  • http://www.blog.lgr.ca LGR

    “He just built a good community”

    Did he really build a good community if this is what they are doing? Last time I checked good communities know how to behave themselves.

  • Sam

    Why is there an expectation that digg members should be “good?” Who cares if they get pissed, they aren’t 100% crazy for being unhappy with Yahoo’s new features, Yahoo even admitted it was similar. I would be upset if my favorite site was ripped off by a big-box. Who cares if they credited them? YAHOO is still at the top. If anything, that would be more of a slap in the face than if they hadn’t credited them at all. Nobody will leave digg because of this. Bad publicity is better than no publicity.

  • http://www.blog.lgr.ca/2007/02/has-digg-jumped-the-shark.html LGR Webmaster Blog » Blog Archive » Has Digg Jumped the Shark?

    [...] was stumbling along today and kept running across Digg stories. The first was about the “Digg mafia” spamming the Yahoo suggestion board. The second article was similar, talking about the “Digg mafia” and why it will cost [...]

  • keith jones

    Digg mafia? I think you should be looking at Yahoo mafia http://endmafia.com

  • http://endmafia.com keith

    Google along with Yahoo are heavily involved with Mafia who use captive women. http://endmafia.com
    Tak my advice & stick with Microsoft, a lot of this open source & ‘free’ stuff is a vehicle for spyware.