Stop Shouting! (Digg Buries the Shout Feature)

The ongoing attempt by Digg.com to fake a user-content generated, “democratic” website while pleasing it’s proressively-minded investors continues. After “tweaking” it’s algorithm to make “Diggs” (votes for stories) generated from shouts worth almost nothing, the front page still was not reflecting Digg admin’s desired results, so they’ve simply done away with the feature. Here’s part of what the Digg Bloggers had to say:

…As some of you know, shouts have been a controversial feature since their inception and considering the ever-changing landscape of the social web, we’ve elected to remove them in favor of more popular options. We’ve added easier access to sharing via email, Facebook and Twitter. As always, we want to encourage sharing and communication within our community and will continue to look into features that address these needs…

So, if you want to alert your friends about your great stories on Digg, you’ll need to do it via e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter. But be prepared. If it hasn’t happened already, Digg will find a way to make “Diggs” from those sites worthless as well.

Ministry of “Truthiness” – thy name is Digg.com.

10e20 has some good perspective and more details about the changes here.

Hat-Tip, Dr. Bill of the ARRA News Service