The growth of a community (Digg vs Mixx)

If you have dabbed into web 2.0 a little bit or even visited a forum, you would have noticed a unique atmosphere or community that forms. Users with similar ideas and ethics gather together over the internet and discuss about news and other things that cater specifically to them. But often they ignore things that do not cater to them. Oh sure forums are supposed to do that and so do a lot of other sites and you are right but this shouldn’t happen to these so-called “social content” which should be promoting all kinds of media. But for right now I am specifically talking about Digg and Mixx.

Digg- What was an internet phenomenon for a good amount of time is now turning into a corrupt community with a strong bias. Lets start with the good things first. It was best known for:

• The digg effect which was when an onslaught of viewers all go to the same website and essentially crash it under its own server
• The first to popularize the “up” and “down” buttons for rating things which has now even spread to Facebook
• Promotion of good technology and offbeat news
• Usually endless laughs from witty comments and replies

This was all fine and dandy back when I first registered since it was a unique system that worked. You would promote the links that you liked until it hit the front page where it would grow immensely. But as the community grew, it created a strong bias and essentially became “corrupt”. People would only digg their friends’ posts and most submissions would go unnoticed. The finer points of this bias are:

• Pro-Apple and anti-Microsoft
• Anything Ron Paul and anti-Fox News
• Anything with a hot girl (because according to them, all Digg users are hopeless male computer nerds)
• Anything Kevin Rose
• Blogspam (because friends digg up other friends)

Because of the growing worries about the “corruptness” of Digg, a new social/content/bookmarking/sharing site has emerged and it is called Mixx.

Mixx- Just another digg-like site where users register and add their links where it can get voted up or down thus rating its popularity. Sounds overused but of course it claims it has its own unique features such as groups and rearranging of the content that you want to see. According to Techcrunch it is becoming the place for “Digg Refugees” and I’m not sure it should be keeping that title. It is only two months old at the moment so the community is still small and pure. It is emphasizing the fact that it will weigh each story equally so the proper amount of pro-Apple stories will get voted on as well as pro-Microsoft as well as the anti’s so that all sides of the topic get equally heard. I say “Good Luck”. One thing I am already seeing is this:

• Pro-Mixx
• Anti-Digg

Of course this was bound to happen as it builds appreciation for the site they’re on (think patriotism) and trying to downgrade the power of Digg. It is causing quite a stir in the web 2.0 community as users have to evaluate which to stay loyal too.

Now I am not bashing either of them because it is inevitable that as a community grows larger, this is bound to happen. But it is true that both have many similarities (I mean look at their names; 4 letters, i as the second letter, and a repeated third and fourth letter). And there is no difference between these two and all the other digg-like sites such as Reddit, del.ici.ous, or Thoof. Mixx was just a site I happened to come across today and these are some things I noticed. I of course do not have solution nor am I suggesting one but I do hope that it gets solved in some way. More power to ya

~Kevin X