Digg users strike back, create a revolt over HD DVD crack post.
No commentsUpdate, Kevin Rose has cried uncle. Seriously as mentioned in the post below, there wasn’t much he could do. He posts:
“Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…
In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration…… read the full post here.
By the way this little snippet is what caused the whole uproar:
09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c*
Call it mutiny, call it biting the hand that feeds you but in just a short time there was a MASSIVE movement against the popular social media website Digg.com yesterday evening.
It seems that it started out a couple of months ago when a Digg user originally posted the HD DVD crack . To my understanding I think that it went under the radar or it was removed but there wasn’t much said until yesterday. Apparently another user reposted the crack. Suddenly the post along with the user account dissappeared. That started a fire storm of posts that contained the 32 digit crack in the post titles, stories etc. There was myspace account created with the digits and who knows what else.
After seeing the uprising taking over Digg, Jay over at digg posted an explanation as to why they had removed the post. It didn’t help any and I personally think it was throwing fuel on the fire.
Now that we have a little idea of what happened let’s look at how this relates to Internet Marketing.
The best way I can try to explain this uprising is comparing the incident to a revolution. You may think I am going overboard in that comparison but think about it. The definition of Revolution is as follows:
A revolution is a relatively sudden and absolutely drastic change. This may be a change in the social or political institutions over a relatively short period of time, or a major change in its culture or economy. Some revolutions are led by the majority of the populace of a nation, others by a small band of revolutionaries. Compare rebellion.
There is no question whether this was a drastic change or not. You will see and hear the fallout for days to come and in this new social revolution that we are in, well that is a long time. The bigger question is will this be a lasting change? While the idea of social controlled media is still young, the Digg revolt shows that there is power in numbers. When those numbers are working together it is a formidable force. For example, Digg cannot close every single Digger that played a role in this revolt. They would lose way to much money as well as a majority of users. They would be better off by going to court and taking their chances there.
Either way it is going to cost Digg big time.
This begs an additional question, will Digg users continue to abuse their power and will other online social groups follow? The power is returning back to the people that fill the pockets of some these large online media companies. Not Digg, the old brick and mortar type of media companies that have controlled our lives for years.
I did a post a while back somewhere explaining the social movement currently taking place and this event is a prime example of how it is reshaping the world we live in. Imagine a world where you can watch what you want when you want. (yes we can do this on a limited scale now but not like we prefer to) BTW have you noticed the broadcast companies trying to screw this up by extending or shortening of programs? They have American Idol running over and over on NBC they are starting one Thursday show early. Why? Because we are gaining groud on them with our Tivos and DVRs.
I will go ahead and wrap this up. I know I have probably created more questions than answers for you but I will leave you with this food for thought. We are in a cultural revolution. In this new revolution people are discovering that they can read and watch what they want to, when they want to. They have tasted the freedom of a socially controlled medium and they like it. If you are not planning for this new revolution then you may want to revisit your marketing plan.
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 2:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Internet Marketing, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.