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"A few years ago, Digg was much like Twitter now, in that it was the hottest social media service around. It could be argued that just like Twitter owes its early success to power users that tweet more than most, much of Digg's early success is likely owed to a handful of power users.  Well known across the site, these power users wielded influence and helped shape the early service, until in 2007, Digg decided to restructure its algorithm and stopped promoting its list of top users.\nIn retrospect, as Digg struggles to remain relevant and other sites rise in popularity, we can draw definite conclusions about those decisions.  Here's why the move to downplay, rather than cultivate, power users may not have been the best move for Digg. \nBackground\nUsers that submit the highest number of popular stories - those that got promoted to Digg's front page - were called top diggers, and Digg itself maintained a list of these users. However, for various reasons, Digg ended up removing the list and changing its algorithms so that top users now have a harder time pushing stories to the front page. \nFor the most part, it solved Digg's problems. But how big were those problems, anyway? Can a social media powerhouse such as Digg really crumble to dust because of several rogue users? It seemed like a big issue back then, but looking back, it may have been the wrong decision. The  controversy around the service may have died down, but so has a lot of its appeal.\nEnter Twitter. One of its most important \"features\" is the public number of followers for each account.  The drive to build follower count and influence is something that adds a level of fun to Twitter and drives many people to keep putting out good content and interacting with other users.\n\nLike it or not, social media is - in part - a competition. It's a game. Services like Foursquare have caught on to this idea, giving little rewards, such as badges and mayorships, to its top users. The only way to get recognized in the social cloud is to have more friends, more influence, more followers, more badges, more everything. \nDigg's active campaign against being elite - a top digger - actually made it less interesting to participate. And while you can still see stats for each Digg users, and even create a top list out of that data (such as this one), trying to achieve greatness on Digg and being shunned for it left a sour taste for many prominent users. The very phrase \"top digger\" has become almost extinct. \nWhat Digg Should Have Done\nInstead of ignoring top users, Digg should have cultivated those power users and put emphasis on other metrics besides the number of promoted stories; number of friends, for example. The list could have been expanded according to Digg's content categories, and power users could have been promoted to others Digg users - something Twitter does. In short, Digg's social graph should have been groomed and nurtured, instead of killed. \nAlthough Digg is still doing well traffic-wise - even better than Twitter, by some metrics - it's in trouble. Recent changes at the helm of the company have indicated that even the leaders of Digg may not be sure in which direction they should be heading. Even more importantly for users, the feeling of camaraderie and unity amongst Digg users is not as strong as it once was. And while Digg's traffic is still formidable, one cannot help but wonder what it could have been had Digg chosen to go in a different direction. \nThe lesson to be learned for all social media services and networks: measuring influence of individual users, as well as creating and maintaining tools to showcase this influence, are crucial features. It gives users a reason to participate; it gives them satisfaction for a \"job\" well done; it gives them a way to know they're more successful than others. Just like in real life, taking these away from people will merely make them numb.\n\n\nFor more technology coverage, follow Mashable Tech on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/05/12/diggs-biggest-mistake/>