Social Bookmarking

One of the few pieces of good news that came out of the Jan 30 mishap that swelled Diigo's ranks with former Ma.gnolia users was that many of the lost bookmarks were recoverable, especially if those users were using Friendfeed as well. I'm not generally a fan of that service, as it doesn't allow for comment screening, but one can set one's feed to "private", and a little extra insurance doesn't hurt. Let's hope that Diigo never suffers a similar incident, but just in case it does, being ready for it isn't a bad thing.

Something from better times for a little company. Video of Larry Halff talking about his plans for open sourcing ma.gnolia.

Updates - if any more will ever be seen - on the progress of the service that many of Diigo's current users came from, after the January 30, 2009 data loss incident.

Development site for an open code release of the Ma.gnolia social bookmarking platform. Ma.gnolia is another bookmarking site that, prior to a well known crash of its system, planned to decentralise itself by encouraging the creation of a great many "little ma.gnolias" - satellite sites running ma.gnolia software, that would maintain a tie to the home site. The loss of all user data from the main site has set such plans back, but hasn't necessarily ended them altogether.

A group I've created as a gathering pplace for users of that service. So far (I'm posting this on 8:35 pm on March 15, 2009) there seems to be little interest in the idea.

Post about the data loss incident at Ma.gnolia and what users of other services can do to reduce their risk

A blog that Zaibatsu (of former Digg user fame) contributes to, as one of the "hosts". No signs of multilevel marketing were present, as far as I could see. A fact that you can confirm for yourself, and I hope you will remember, as you read some of the remarks below.

Twitter profile of the wrongly banned Digg user, of whom you will be hearing more.

New profile of the former Digg user mentioned in a few bookmarks below, who was banned on what would appear to be unconscionably shaky grounds.

Larry Halff of Ma.gnolia (where I was before I came to Diigo) is interviewed, following the collapse of that service, and explains what he did wrong, without evasion. Many of us wish him well, and hope that both he manages to rebuild his company after this regrettable incident.

WARNING: Mild profanity appears once at the other end of this link. (Word for excrement used to indicate that something is objectionably nonsensical) News about Zaibatsu, who was Digg's top user at the time of his banning. Message of the story: anybody who submits a link to Digg is at the mercy of the owner of the site at the other end of the link, because Digg will not listen to any explanations, no matter how reasonable, and no matter how innocent the action taken on the part of the user. Something for any SU user who likes GigaOm's suggestion of a Digg acquisition of Stumbleupon (linked to, below) to think about, because that very activity is at the core of what almost all SU users do.

WARNING: Mild profanity at the other end of this link, too. Unavoidable, as it is found in the quoted material. Brief report of the incident, along with a much longer taped interview with the banned user, marred by prejudgement from the interviewer, who can't seem to let go of a fixation on the idea both sides in this absurd incident must have a point, or that at least Digg must. Quoting the post: "We get the feeling that there is more to this story than we have managed to unearth ... Clearly Digg feels that Zaibatsu has violated their terms multiple times and it appears they've simply had enough." In other words, corporate spin should be taken naively, at face value. Zaibatsu does himself no favors in his response, by choosing to be conciliatory in his response. In a civilized society, there's nothing wrong with that, but we're not living in one of those. We're living in one that still bears imprint of the same fun loving culture that brought us the concept of "trial by combat" and it shows. When you are wronged and you are speaking, keep it short, keep it sweet, and let your anger show. Do not offer to turn the other cheek, and do not express concern for those who have wronged you, for these civilized acts will never be understood by the uncivilized men with whom you deal to be anything other than a confession of guilt.

Points to a disproportionately large number of posts about the political candidate Ron Paul that were buried on Digg, in support of the premise of that so-called "bury brigades" exist on Digg, groups of users who vote against articles en masse when they don't like them, "philosophically". This should surprise absolutely nobody who is familiar with Digg's basic operating principles and has been online for more than ten minutes in his life, but sometimes people need evidence in support of the obvious. Putting the feeedom to be heard on a topic to a vote - how do people expect that to work out?

A list of article burials on Digg, along with the users who buried them. One does note that one is seeing a very few users doing a lot of burying. See link above, on my list of bookmarks.

Not only allegations that a small group of hyperaggressive users (50 in total) are burying posts on Digg, but with a little unexplained hacking being alluded to, the members of that local cabal are allegedly named. The question this raises being how much faith we should put in strangers who don't explain their methods - but then, if they did, we wouldn't be allowed to link to this article, would we? The fact that a search turned up 16900 hits for "Digg" and "bury brigade" does make this a little easier to believe, though, and a little more of a source of worry for the Stumbleupon user when he hears a suggestion that Digg take over that other service.

Warning: Some profanity at the other end of the link, in the comments section, which should be seen at being a part of this post. A list of some of Digg's most active users, all of them recently banned, appears, along with a message from "Jen" at Digg explaining that this is because of script usage. As somebody points out in at least one of these cases, the facts don't support the charge - the user in question had hardly been posting at all during the time when script usage was alleged. In the audio interview on the previous site bookmarked, Zaibatsu discussed the issue of new diggers having a hard time being heard because established diggers had such an unfair advantage, going on to say that there were better ways of dealing with the problem than chasing off the users who had done so much to build that site. We are left with the impression that the Digg staff is more than willing to trump up meritless charges in order to do just that. Of course, you get to see the obligatory troll show up and play the "I'm not listening" game, and somebody drop by to drop a little mild antisemitism, but on quick inspection I found that the reasonable users seemed to be in the majority. That's always a pleasant surprise.

The blogger GigaOm argues that Digg would benefit from gaining Stumbleupon's content and users. The question he leaves unanswered is whether the SU users would be likely to stay, given semi-recent press about Digg. If one company takes over another, which of the two sets policy on the acquired company's site?

Chris Crum (the author) writes about a rumored upcoming Digg toolbar incorporating random search, and asks if this is bad news for Stumbleupon, as that is the service's key feature. Perhaps, but Crum hasn't given us reason enough to think so. Randomness, by itself, isn't a big deal. Webrings had incorporated it into their code long before there was a Stumbleupon. Carefully weightened randomness is what Stumbleupon does. Stumbleupon offers a blogging platform, albeit a seriously flawed one. Digg does not. Those who submit content to Digg risk loss of membership if the content proves to be unpopular enough; so far as I know, Stumbleupon users don't have the same worry, outside of a little political whackiness in the fora. I'm left with the impression that Crum repeats somebody who has read too much into too little, having little familiarity with the capabilities of the SU system, and with the policy differences between the two sites.

Alex Laburu raises a serious point about Stumbleupon; that perverse incentives are built in to the system by SU's business model, in which the company makes money, not from visits to blogs on their system, but by getting paid for "stumbles" - random visits to sponsor websites taking place through their system. Under such a model, Laburu argues, a well written blog costs the company money, because it is a blog visitors are less likely to leave soon via a stumble - and those following its links aren't stumbling. He raises a good point (among others), one that should lead SU users to view with concern the supposedly good feature that is the absence of advertising on our blogs on SU, because it provides SU admins with a short term incentive to side with those misusing the system at the expense of those using it constructively. Which does leave us with the question of how Diigo is making its money, does it? One might ask if many of the users bring this sort of thing upon themselves - listen in on the screaming when the very possibility of introducing advertising is raised, on some sites, as if the hosting service didn't need to make money. Perhaps when the subject arises here - Diigo is still in Beta as I write this - some of us might want to speak in support of that very sensible source of revenue for a company we'd like to evolve in a healthier direction than that being taken by some of its competition, at the moment.

The article points us toward a reason why the business model alluded to in links above (paid for stumbles) is ultimately unsustainable - those visiting bounce through without doing much more than briefly glancing at the pages they visit, very often. This is plausible. People get enthusiastic about their new toy, they get a rhythm going, and they don't want to stop.