Diggnation is being retired by Revision3. Diggnation is just a fun show in which Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht talk about cool stories from Digg.com.
After 340 episodes Diggnation will end even though it seems to be among its five most watched shows, according to the The New York Times.
Goodbye Diggnation.. it was fun!
We haven’t reported about Digg since its ill-fated redesign and since then things seem to have gone from bad to worse. There are lots of reports this morning that Founder Kevin Rose has departed Digg and will only stay on its board of directors.
There has been a mass exodus at Digg since its redesign and this has really pushed Reddit into a great position in social news.
Has Digg become completely obsolete?
fforward is the new show hosted by Kevin Rose.
It was reported earlier this week that Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg, and co-host for the massively popular show, Diggnation, would be stepping down after five years of instigating laughs, on air pranks, and general fandom news based around his site. What is to become of Diggnation is apparently up in the air as c0-host Alex Albrecht is still attached to the project, but for Rose, it’s time to move on.
Rose, who is trading in his five years with Diggnation for greener pastures and new opportunities has already announced a new show, titled ffwoard (pronounced “forward”). Thus far Revision3 will be the home for the new show and in a change to what Rose is familiar with, the show will be recorded and aired LIVE.
According to sources, fforward claims to be a tech/geek culture show where Rose will be able to interact live with fans, and there are many, along with having rotating guest hosts, how-to’s, and product demos. There’s no doubt that thus far Rose has a huge following, the question is whether they will transfer their allegiance to a new show.
Only time will tell, but one this is for sure, travel time for both Alex (based in L.A.) and Rose (based in San Francisco) will be greatly reduced. Are you amped for fforward? Get in on the launch announcements by visiting the site and signing up.
It was a week ago today, that Pownce lost it’s bounce. Co-founders Leah Culver and Mike Malone took their team with them to work with the company that acquired Pownce, Six Apart, on a new micro-blogging platform called Motion.
Pownce launched with wild-acclaim, supported by the founder of Digg, Kevin Rose, it seemed to have all the necessary features to put it toe to toe with Twitter, photo and video sharing, status updates and a delightful interface. It just never really took off, despite being more stable than Twitter.
What does this mean for other micro-blogging sites?
Twitter, the biggest micro-blogging site thus far, recently shook off a $500 million offer from Facebook. And rightly so. As pointed out by Cnet’s Rafe Needleman, “…when it comes to business philosophies, the companies do not mesh. And I’m not just talking about the well-reported SMS expense that Facebook would take on if it integrated Twitter. More than that, Twitter’s stated revenue plans don’t work for Facebook.”
Twitter, one imagines, see themselves as fighting in the same field as Facebook, but on the other side of the fence. They are competitors, but not competitive.
The likes of Tumblr and YouAre are the main rivals to Twitter’s crown. How will these guys possibly stand up to fight with a company that can brush off a bid of half a billion dollars?
The key thing is to offer user friendly tools, such as sharing photos and videos, which Twitter just doesn’t do at the moment, unless you’re a fan of the tinyurl. Secondly it’s important to make it easy to sign up (box ticked) and to make it easy to encourage your friends to sign up and be a part of the action.
My problem with a lot of the newer micro-blogging services is that they’re falling into the trap of being too customisable. Look at Facebook’s wide ranging apps – how many are actually useful in our day to day lives and make a difference to the way we communicate? Very few. Similarly with Bebo and Myspace – the integration of new and exciting things to put on your page is exciting for a moment, but nothing more.
If Twitter is to be ousted, or at least equalled, competitors will need to find niches that they can cling on to and exploit. I see Tumblr as being a brilliant way to share photos for example – the message boxes are just large enough for a high definition image to be shown clearly, but not at a size that will set your PC into meltdown.
It is this specialisation that will see each service acquire a following and then grow as that group develops a culture unique to them. All these different cultures will eventually begin to intermingle as users being to find each service useful for different things and then telling their friends to join them on xyz.
It comes down to talent in the end however. Six Apart will have known all along that they were really just after the Pownce team, and not their name or platform. The biggest challenge facing all of the micro-blogging services will be to hold onto their key staff, thinkers and doers alike.
Social Networking, at the moment, is a philosophy that is becoming increasingly tangible, but not ingrained in mainstream culture as Facebook currently is, yet.
