The Web Services Report

There's always a lot going down at the annual South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. As you probably remember, SXSW served as the original launchpad for Twitter, so it seems fitting that Kevin Rose's new Twitter directory, WeFollow, was launched there this year.

It's interesting, however, that Rose didn't choose to make his announcement during a talk at the conference, but rather through Twitter and Digg. At its core, WeFollow keeps track of different groups of Twitterers, as defined by tags, such as #tech or #celebrity and displays them in order of popularity.

Although current Twitter directory services already exist (see Twellow and Just Tweet It), WeFollow has the unique advantage of Rose's star power.

The directory has already and will continue to attract a lot of early users, simply due to Rose's enormous Internet presence. The hope is that Rose's following will be enough to push WeFollow into being the dominant Twitter directory, which people will use despite Rose's involvement, as is the current situation with Digg.

The "Kevin Rose factor" definitely plays a role here, but will it be enough to make WeFollow successful? It helped Pownce for a while, but the site was ultimately bought by Six Apart and shut down, so we'll have to see.

Users can add themselves to WeFollow simply by tweeting @wefollow, followed by up to three tags that they want to be classified under. For example, my tweet read: "@wefollow #tech #blogger". It's very easy to do, and by choosing this method of adding people to the directory, I think it could very easily start to spread virally. Since the tweets to @wefollow are public, people might see one, get interested, take a look, and enter themselves.

While WeFollow is, so far, a great tool for finding the top users in a given category, I do have a few criticisms. First off, WeFollow makes looking at anyone outside of the top 50 or so in a category a major pain. Unless you want to click through pages and pages of Twitterers, all you will likely see is the top users. Twitter itself suffers from the same tedious clicking through of pages if you want to see who a particular user is following.

Second, I know that this release is a very early version of WeFollow, but users should definitely be given the ability to sort using multiple tags, in order to yield more relevant results. If I am looking for tech bloggers, why not let me see people who match the tags #tech and #blogger?

Overall, WeFollow appears to be a solid offering, with a clean interface, that's taking a real stab at organizing the Twitterverse. With Rose's help, I think we're going to see it get very popular fairly quickly here. If they can add some better searching and filtering options, WeFollow will really be a killer service.

Everyone's favorite beer drinking techies, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, are now breaking down Digg's weekly top stories on Hulu with their wildly popular show, Diggnation. Thanks to a deal between Revision3 and Hulu, announced back in May, Diggnation is now featured on Hulu, alongside popular mainstream shows, such as Heroes and SNL.

While Diggnation has gained immense cult popularity, its availability on Hulu could help bring it to an even larger, more mainstream audience. Hulu (along with other online video sites) has definitely played a role in bringing even more popularity to shows in the past, with prime examples being the current It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and a renewed interest in the dearly departed Arrested Development. By putting this content in front of the eyes of a lot of potentially new viewers and allowing them to get into shows that they may never have seen before, these shows have been able to broaden their audiences.

Revision3 is leading the way in terms of becoming the poster child for web TV networks. Deals like this one with Hulu will only extend their reach. Click through for a Diggnation clip, courtesy of Hulu.

... Read more

The concept of the "wisdom of crowds" is a fundamental building block of a lot of the Web 2.0 services that we see today. While not all of them are built on this core concept, major sites like Digg, Wikipedia, and Mahalo rely heavily on crowds being wise. There have been several instances of this system breaking down in the past, one notable occurrence being the infamous Digg HD-DVD revolt. On occasions like this, a mob mentality tends to take over a very vocal and active segment of a community, greatly skewing the product of their collective "wisdom." We are seeing the latest meltdown of crowd wisdom over at IMDB, the popular movie information database as we speak.

Since the release of The Dark Knight, the film has made an incredible surge to the No. 1 position on IMDB's Top 250 list, a spot that has only been held by The Godfather for the last decade or so. While most serious movie watchers would argue that claiming that The Dark Knight is the best movie of all time is ridiculous, we might be able to chalk the massive surge up to the unparalleled amount of hype that surrounded this movie, particularly in Internet communities.

Since The Dark Knight's initial rise, an even more interesting trend has revealed itself. /Film is reporting that, in an attempt to keep the movie on top, fans of The Dark Knight have been voting down The Godfather. The movie has gotten hammered so badly by Batman fans that it has fallen to the No. 3 spot. So, not only has The Godfather dropped out of the No. 1 spot for the first time in a decade, but now it has dropped from the second spot as well. This sort of drastic shift hardly seems the work of a wise crowd.

We are seeing a similar effect here to what happened with the Digg HD-DVD debacle. This mob mentality, brought on by a significant event (in this case, the release of The Dark Knight), causes a total breakdown in a system that is otherwise fairly accurate, useful, and trustworthy. The original theory of the wisdom of crowds discusses this sort of failure. A quotation from Wikipedia on the topic reads, "...in these types of situations their cognition or cooperation failed because the members of the crowd were too conscious of the opinions of others and began to emulate each other and conform rather than think differently."

Cases like what is happening on IMDB's Top 250 right now are not the fault of the users of the site. They are just acting how humans have always acted. Mob mentality is in our nature. We are always being influenced heavily by these outside sources. Sites like IMDB and Digg need to be set up to deal with and process the effects of an eventual mob action.

I am still a firm believer in the wisdom of crowds. I think that it is a tremendously powerful concept that can be applied to a variety of areas. However, if it is not implemented correctly, you will occasionally get breakdowns like we see here. In the cases of Digg and IMDB, these breakdowns happen infrequently enough that it is not a major concern and does not usually disrupt the use of the site. That said, we have seen, with some consistency, that the system can be broken or manipulated by the actions of a passionate group of individuals, acting as a mob. If these incidents are not largely prevented in the future and become commonplace, we risk a lot of people losing faith in this otherwise very useful system.

Digg commenter Hiji writes, "This is the beginning of the end. In a few years all the major blogs and social-media sites will be owned by large corporations, putting us right back where we started."

The topic of discussion is, of course, TechCrunch's rumor that Digg will soon be acquired by Google for somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million. Digg's users are debating what Google acquiring Digg might mean for their community in this thread on the site. The question is, would being controlled by a big company like Google ruin--or enhance--the community that Digg has worked so hard to build?

Some background on Web 2.0 acquisitions
A few of the major Web 2.0 sites that have been acquired by big companies include YouTube, Flickr, and MySpace. Each of these sites has been greatly affected by being acquired by a larger company.

Once it was acquired by Google, YouTube was forced to take down much of the copyrighted material that had helped it rise to popularity. I would argue that YouTube has benefited from the financial backing and support that Google was able to provide, so the acquisition may have been a necessity at the time.

Flickr has seen little to no improvements in the way of new features, aside from Flickr Video, since being acquired by Yahoo. Despite the lack of innovative new features at Flickr, its photo community is stronger than ever, thanks in no small part, to Yahoo's ownership.

Although MySpace is still a force to be reckoned with on the Internet, especially in the music scene, it has watched its seemingly insurmountable lead in the social-networking space slip through its fingers and into Facebook's. Whether this is due to being bought by News Corp. is purely speculation, but the influence of the big media company may not have helped.

Why does Google want Digg?
In the case of Digg, Google would clearly be buying the site to acquire Digg's community. Digg has one of the strongest communities in the social-media space. Google certainly has the engineering power to build a site similar to Digg, or Yahoo Buzz, if it wanted to. But what it is really after is the people. If we can agree that Google wants the community, it would only make logical sense that the company would do whatever it could to keep that community happy and to get it to stay, post-acquisition.

How Google would change Digg
The other side of the coin that must be considered is the volume of people who would be streaming into Digg if it is acquired by Google. The added promotion of the Internet giant would send lots of newcomers to the site, who could break the delicate dynamic that Digg has right now. Digg suddenly being flooded by gardening tips, for example, might drive away a lot of the core users. Digg would, almost certainly, survive under mainstream attention, even thrive. But it could become a very different place from what we see today. The category structure of Digg submissions was built out for this very reason. If and when the mainstream public turns its attention to Digg, the audience that it has today might be able to find refuge in its own sections of the site--if it decides to stick around.

This acquisition would be a tremendous opportunity for Kevin Rose and company to cash in on some really hard work. They have done a great job building this company and carefully crafting the Digg community into what it is today. Being taken under the wing of a company like Google may be their big shot at really breaking into the mainstream.

Like I already said, the move would absolutely change the dynamic of the site. Some would like it and stay, some would hate it and leave, and many more would discover Digg for the first time. So, what do you think? Would Google destroy Digg or take it to the next level?

The social news/video/photo site, Digg, will be rolling out their long anticipated recommendation engine to users this week. The rollout will be starting with a random sampling of users and eventually moving towards the entire user base at the end of the week. Digg's recommendation engine will try to engage more users in the upcoming section of the site by recommending stories from similar users.

Digg's upcoming section, where stories wait for enough diggs in order to get promoted, has been very intimidating for users to jump head first into, given the volume of stories being submitted. It was fairly hard to sift through all of the crap in order to get to the real gems. Hopefully the introduction of a recommendation engine will make it a lot easier for users to find the quality submissions.

I believe that the addition of a recommendation to Digg is going to significantly help with the usability of the site and direct people towards the long tail of submissions. By adding a lot of new eyes to the upcoming section, Digg's homepage will certainly get a much fresher look than we have seen recently.

The other important factor to look at here is the apparent benefit that the recommendation engine will be giving to websites. Making content more discoverable on Digg means more traffic for the sites that the content has been submitted from. I suspect that more and more sites will begin to feel the Digg effect as a direct result of the launch of this feature.

The introduction of a recommendation engine should give Digg a nice jolt. I haven't seen the feature in action yet, but if it is implemented correctly, I see Digg becoming a much more valuable resource and frequented by a lot more people. Kevin Rose posted a couple of videos on the Digg Blog which you can see embedded below. The first is an overview by Kevin of the recommendation engine, complete with graphics and the second features Anton Kast, Digg's Lead Scientist, talking about the new engine. You can read his whitepaper on the subject here.

... Read more

Adding to Tuesday's release, Facebook has added an additional service for Mini-Feed importing, Digg.

This is a big win for Digg. Over the last six months, I have seen a significant increase in the usage of Digg by college students, and this inclusion in the Facebook Mini-Feed will only improve its reach in that demographic.

Of course, Facebook has expanded greatly beyond its initial college market, and the inclusion of Digg may alert a lot of users to the service for the first time.

A concern that I have with the integration is that your Mini-Feed will probably become really cluttered with Digg stories, if you are a heavy digger. Digg does, however, have a Facebook application that keeps your "dugg" stories neatly in a module on your profile page.

At this point, I haven't decided whether I like the application or the Mini-Feed approach more, but I do think that it is great that Facebook is integrating these third-party sites and turning users on to more Web 2.0 services.

In response to some of the recent community concerns, Digg is holding a town hall meeting tonight at 6pm Pacific/9pm Eastern on Ustream. Obviously Digg has a very strong and vocal community and this event should serve as a good venue for voicing opinions directly to those in charge.

Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson will be taking questions and responding to concerns, as well as talking about the future of Digg. Topics are likely to include censorship, moderators, Digg's new algorithm, and maybe even rumors of possible acquisitions.

This town hall should also serve as a means to test how Ustream handles an extremely large number of users on their service. Caroline McCarthy will be liveblogging the event and we will have some analysis after all is said and done. Here's to hoping that the servers involved don't die a horrible death when this thing kicks off.

Mashable is writing about a new news site called Newspond. Their "about" page boasts that the site is "the most advanced news site on the planet." That's certainly a big statement to make, given the competition that already exists. Its main function is similar to that of Techmeme, with some of the social features of Digg thrown in for good measure.

At first glance, it appears that the content that is floating to the top of Newspond is very different to what is atop Techmeme right now. It's not clear whether this is due to the sources that Newspond is drawing on, or due to differences in their algorithms. I tend to think that it is a result of the algorithm, since many of the sources for popular articles are comparable on both sites. I think that the content needs to be tweaked, although it may improve as the site matures.

As far as functionality and look goes, Newspond is at the top of the heap. Everything on the site moves so smoothly, and there are beautiful gradients and rounded corners as far as the eye can see. Comments slide out and boxes light up all over the site. The design of Newspond should be the poster child for Web 2.0.

I don't think that Newspond will dethrone Techmeme or Digg anytime soon, but they are definitely a start-up to keep your eye on. If any of their claims end up coming to fruition, we will be hearing from them a lot.

Social news site Digg launched on Wednesday night a new algorithm to try to prevent groups from gaming the system.

The update effectively punishes people who vote in groups to promote certain stories. The result of the update is that stories that reach the homepage will need to be "dugg" by a diverse group of people.

"Digg's promotional algorithm ensures that the most popular content dugg by a diverse, unique group of diggers reaches the home page," Digg founder Kevin Rose said in a blog. "Our goal is to give each person a fair chance of getting their submission promoted to the home page."

He goes on to say that as a result of the new algorithm, it will not be uncommon to see stories with more than 100 diggs still in the "upcoming" section. As I am writing this, there are three stories in the upcoming section with more than 150 diggs, the most popular standing at 155.

This is supposedly evidence of the new algorithm at work, but I can't help but think that it must be disheartening for the submitters. The other side of the coin is that Digg's top submitters do wield a good deal of power and often receive a lot of diggs just because of who they are; that's not to say they didn't deserve to get to that point in the first place. The top submitters are in this position because they consistently submit great content.

This update will certainly give the little guys a better chance at getting a story on the front page, but it may anger some of the longtime users.

If the top stories are going to be read by a very diverse group of people, then it is important that they are determined by a diverse group of people. The truth is, however, that a lot of the content on Digg has been determined by groups of hardcore users, and this update may render some of their actions ineffective.

On the whole, I think it's important to stop gaming on Digg, and this is a really good way to do that. I'm sure that a good deal of thought was put into these changes and that Digg would not want to mess with a winning formula without careful consideration.

However, as we have seen in the past and as we are starting to see now, Digg fans are very vocal when they don't like something. Digg could have another great uprising on its hands if the new algorithm does not show any apparent benefits to the community.