Macenstein

Posted by Dr. Macenstein

Over the past months I have noticed an occasional but re-occurring glitch on the website Digg.com, but (like most people) never thought to comment on it until it directly affected me.

The “glitch”, as I’m calling it, occurs when articles that make it to the front page do not show up on the front page of their category, but DO show up when viewing the category via the RSS feed. And example can be found now in the “Apple” category’s front page, where the following articles are missing, yet appear when viewed via RSS:

Mac OS 10.5 Leopard makes an Amazon appearance
Today, 03:40 AM

MacAppADay is over. Rated a complete waste of time.
Today, 12:10 AM

Apple seen launching new iPod, iTV and iPhone at Macworld
Yesterday, 11:50 PM

iWork 07 already available on Amazon.com
Yesterday, 10:10 AM

iLife ’07 and iWork ’07 show up on Amazon.
Yesterday, 09:10 AM

Month of Apple Bugs loses all credibility on day 2
Yesterday, 09:00 AM

The problem is, of course, that because these “front page” stories are in effect “hidden”, they receive a fraction of the amount of “diggs” a normal front page story would have. All 6 of these stories are hovering around 65-105 “diggs” after 2 days up in some cases, a fraction of the normal 500-2000 Diggs stories usually receive. Not many people view Digg as an RSS feed because Digg’s streamlined design is almost already an RSS feed, looks wise.

Sure, I’m complaining because one of our stories was personally affected, but whether or not you think our story was particularly “digg”-worthy, the fact remains that enough other people DID, and they also thought those 5 other stories were too, and yet the Digg system failed them as well. Is this an actual technical glitch, or is there some extra Digg algorithm that decides on “feed-only” Digg articles, and true Front Page articles?