Comments on: Is Digg digging its own grave?

By: Gabriele Pierfederici

Gabriele Pierfederici — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:47:19 +0000

As new technologies evolve and prices drop, highly scalable web hosting facilities should become more and more affordable and widespread. Today most shared hosting plan are based on the concept of overselling single server’s hard disk space, CPUs and network bandwidth. That has obvious limits and doesn’t scale. However, more flexible solutions are spreading rapidly. Some example are:
- cluster based shared hosting (like MT GS, not as common as single server hosting but already quite cheap),
- complex application platforms like Mosso and Joyent Accelerator (not so cheap yet, but very scalable)
- grid based on demand infrastructures and utility computing, like Amazon Web Services, Sun’s Grid, 3Tera (pay just for what you use, almost limitless).
Definitely, being hit by a lot of traffic shouldn’t be anything to worry about. From my perspective, Digg’s steady growth should be taken seriously into consideration by every hosting company that should adequate rapidly if they don’t want to loose customers.

By: Andrew Baron

Andrew Baron — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:25:51 +0000

I have noticed the opposite.

It seems like Digg stories do not lead to as much traffic as they once did because all of the people on Digg are spread out more around the site. Thus, it’s not like everyone goes there and clicks on the top stories. They are saturated throughout all of the stories.

The more people, the more stories and thus the more saturation.

Rocketboom does not get a lot of traffic from Digg but for any story with x number of Diggs, we used to get a lot more for the same number.

We have seen a lot of traffic from various sites and over the last few months there is no site that has come close to throwing us as much dense, sudden traffic as Stumble Upon. I dont know whats going on over there, but we are waking up big time to that site.

By: Royal Pingdom

Royal Pingdom — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:05:59 +0000

Sal Cangeloso > Yes, there are many things to take into consideration but we still think the post tells what is happening.

One of the main things with Digg is that the people choose the content and because of this it can have news and interesting information before any of the big news sites pick it up.

And this shouldn’t be lost or Digg will be a aggregator for all the big news sites.

Hosting is indeed changing and getting better, but like you said this is happening slowly.

Also, did you see the note about Diggs growth in the end of the post? Growing their userbase almost three times during a year is pretty good But of course it has to stop sometime.

Andrew > Yes, we know about Slashdot, which was the original source of this phenomenon. But it seems Slashdot isn’t growing any more and it has lost some of it users to Digg.

lestranger > You are right, there are several other sites out there besides Digg. But Digg is the largest one and the one with the biggest issues.

Think of getting on all of these sites at once though.

By: lestranger

lestranger — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 09:32:26 +0000

I would argue that StumbleUpon, as Firefox spreads, will become more and more difficult for web hosts to handle. It is not necessary to read reviews of sites linked, only one click and the database directs you to a random site based upon your preferences. While it is very friendly for the end user (I found this site through StumbleUpon), I’ve found that an increasing amount of sites Stumbled return “CPU quota exceeded” or “Bandwith quota exceeded” announcements, which is alarming.

It’s a great social bookmarking service, and the idea is great, but it does take a great toll on web hosts, as there is no guarantee the content is needed or wanted by the end user.

I would say it is not uncommon to simply click the StumbleUpon button after another “unsuccessful” Stumble without voting it out (I’m afraid I have done it too often too), which leads to increased unwanted traffic to sites that necessarily wouldn’t get as much load.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:45:47 +0000

This effect already exists with Slashdot (the term is called “Slashdotted”, quite original, really). Thing is, Slashdot hasn’t killed itself yet. It’s unlikely to happen with Digg, I suspect.

By: Sal Cangeloso

Sal Cangeloso — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:58:59 +0000

That’s an interesting analysis, but I think some things have to be taken into consideration.

1) As digg grows and becomes more commercialized it tend to focus links more on large, popular sites that can handle the hosting. For example, sites like Engadget and Techcrunch get lots of Diggs, so they expect the load and build hosting systems that can handle it.

2) Traditional shared hosting is being (slowly) replaced by grid and slice systems. These are going to offer a lot more power to the individual account when necessary. Media Temple’s Grid is only $20 a month and can handle a Digg. It has it’s own issues, but it can handle a heavy load.

3) If a site gets on Digg and it goes down, it gets buried and pulled from the front page. So the impact of the issue is limited.

4) From what I understand Digg’s readership is already beginning to plateau. So while it may still grow, we are not going to see continued explosive growth. So your trend line of continued arithmetic growth doesn’t make sense.

Interesting post. Good food for thought…