The response to the new Digg
released this week has been as mixed as can be expected for a total relaunch of a site with a lot of history. But a very loud contingent of Diggers is very pissed off: the people who used it to promote themselves and their clients. As it evolved to hugeness,
Digg saw its community suffer as spammers, marketers, and voting rings gained too much influence over the site. Of course, the spammers, certain marketers, and voting rings loved it — they had access to the crowdsourced content aggregator that at its peak commanded 29 million unique monthly visitors.
Online marketer Neal Rodriguez, who wrote an ebook claiming he drove "over 37 million pageviews and closed millions in sales for clients through social media," is especially miffed. A one-time power user, Rodriguez has had a lot of advice for Digg over the years. He's
argued that Digg should "embrace marketers" and once chided the site for banning users that used scripts to automate actions and modify parts of the site.
