One of our favorite clients, R.O.W. Contracting Corp., just acquired a pretty sweet new piece of equipment for pulverizing trees. Little did we know that the machine has a unique history:

Let me start off by saying “I know what this looks like”.  This appears to be “the little emo-kid trying to raise a huge ruckus by throw rocks at Digg because his/her articles never get dugg”.  But, let it be known, I have no gripe my lack of success in the Digg Popularity Department.

My problem with Digg is that it has seemingly abandoned the sections that would most appeal to technical/web professionals, the people who made Digg great.

State of the Union

Digg has seen a plateau in its number of visitors to its site, resulting in recent staff cuts . Although layoffs are normal to this economy, it doesn’t explain the leveling off of users.  And I’ve noticed a drop in my usage too, when Digg shut down the API key for Eventbox (an app which I’ve already blogged about here), I decided to just see if I could live without my digg addiction.  I have gone on living just fine and am quite happy.  And that sparked my “investigation” into why I wasn’t affected by cutting out 300 articles a day from my RSS diet.  My research led me to the sections that I care about most.

The Programming Section

There’s currently only 2 pages of frontpage articles an the 2nd page just has a handful.  On the Programming frontpage (see screenshot below) there are the typical stories you would expect to see - jQuery 1.3.1 and the Rails/Merb merger.  But the programming industry is extremely volatile and there are new technologies coming out everyday which should make it here (read Ajaxian.com).  Where are the .git tutorials and the WCAG 2.0 articles?

Most of the posts that get promoted are are titled “30 Essential Wordpress Plugins” and “100 Essential Firefox Plugins”.  The words “Essential” and “Plugins” must be key to getting your story promoted by the Digg Algorithm.  

The Design Section

This section is desolate as well. Although it has 4 pages of articles, by page 3 I noticed there were articles I read when submitted 19 days ago.  This is unnecessary because there are thousands of people churning out new web/print/illustrative designs everyday.  There are also designers out there looking for inspiration cruising countless inferior CSS gallery sites that don’t have the comment engine and user base of Digg.  Now, there’s a digg clone just for design and the only limitation of the site seems to be the low number of users.  Like the Programming section, Design is extremely fluid and changing everyday.  Design inspiration isn’t too hard to come by (see FFFFOUND!) and with modern/retro/web/print/UX/interface design all being sub-genres of this catagory, the well is clearly not being tapped.

Articles in this section tend to be titled “50 Free Wordpress Themes” and “20 Free Icon Sets”.  I guess “Free” will always be successful.

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Rework Ur Algorithm Plz

Digg was an awesome+awesome alternative Slashdot and was a great new home for Slashdot refugees to participate in tech topics and discussion and feel like they’re on the cutting edge of web technology…  then came the high school kids… and Ron Paul… If there’s a reason I’m not going to digg now it’s because I’ve already got XKCD and Smashing Magazine in my Google Reader.

So, I’m pitching the usual whine of most digg users: “rework the algorithm”. Give me more stories that don’t have to reach the impossible algorithmic threshold to compete with “X Essential Plugins I need for Y”.

Techcrunch was apparently following my lead on this whole newspaper issue… actually they probably most definitely don’t read this blog.  But, if you’re still interested in the issue of modernizing the Newspaper Industry, I suggest you read this article.

Study: Newspaper Websites Are Still Figuring Out This Whole Conversation Thing .

Continuing my (unintentional) series on newspaper redesigns I felt the journalistic pull to update you, Dear Reader, on recent dramatic developments in the world of print newspapers.

Print is not dead… yet.

Fig.1 No Money

My revisitation to the world of Print Newspapers was sparked by and article Jason Santa Maria recently posted entitled “The Death Throws of Print“, which starts by pointing out that Tribune Co. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.  Tribune Co. owns such properties The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune -who started this whole redesign conversation- and they even own the Cubbies.

The $10 billion dollars in debt is unrecoverable due to the current economic crisis and the resulting drying up of advertising revenue.  The bankruptcy of a large dependable news source seems that it could be heralding the end of the era of print.

Newspapers are unprepared

Mr. Santa Maria’s primary grievance is that newspapers were ill prepared for the resulting drought of advertising.  He cites a recent retrospective BoingBoing article about Tribune Co’s filing.  The big zing at the end of the article is that the death of print and the rise of the digital era is not a sudden upheaval, “this change has been more like seeing oncoming glaciers ten miles off, and then deciding not to move”.

As I pointed out in my Omaha World Herald Redesign review, the biggest failure of that newspaper’s image was the web aspect of it.  Jason Santa Maria says it beautifully in his post:

Few have invested any real time or talent to make their websites even half as remarkable as their print editions. Most publishers seem content to blindly dump their prized content into a lifeless shell of a site. Why should we give a damn about your site when you clearly don’t?

And that’s just aesthetics.  Pointed out in the BoingBoing article, the advertising revenue model of newspapers is outdated and defunct.  

“Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

All newspaper advertising revenues have been wiped out.

Classifieds were wiped out by Craigslist.  Free was the perfect price for someone trying to make a buck off their old sofa.  

Subscriptions are being wiped out by larger news sources and their websites.  An applicable take on the timeless chauvinistic adage might be “Why buy the whole print edition when you can get the RSS feed for free?”

Full page ad spreads are being wiped out by 300 pixel ads on mass appeal online portal sites like Yahoo.com or CNN.com.  Or simple news aggregators like Drudge Report, Digg.com, or even Perez Hilton *shudders*.

Tears for Fears

I do feel remorse for the end of print.  I love books more than oxygen, but I’ve also had my eye on a Kindle.  And I have ACTUAL dreams of a full color Apple iTablet (c’mon Apple!) that is like a glorified iPod Touch with wi-fi, email, and an internet browser [/drool].

But there is hope!  Designers and Web Developers are MORE THAN ready with ideas to make the web a better place and could give your business a better foothold in your local market in exchange for a fair wage.  I had like 10 ideas writing this article.  Email us if you are reading this [/shamless pitch].

Lately I’ve been trying out EventBox by Cosmic Machine.  It’s an All-in-One app for various social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, etc).  It’s essentially an RSS aggregator with a few extra tricks, like being able to post statuses to Twitter and Facebook.  It’s designed for people like myself who have trouble balancing all their social networks.  Now with EventBox in my dock, instead of meandering around 3000 sites, clogging up productivity in my browser, I just check one app for the incoming feeds.  Extremely handy if I need to buckle down and not “socialize”.  I just close the app. Easy as pie.

If you have to much “networking” going on, I suggest you at least try out EventBox and see how it affects your life.  So far, I enjoy it.