From the OpenID website:

This morning the OpenID Foundation announced that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign, and Yahoo! have joined the board. The OpenID Foundation was formed in early 2006 by seven community members with the goal of helping promote, protect and enabling the OpenID technologies and community. Today’s announcement marks a milestone in the maturity and impact that the OpenID community has had. While the OpenID Foundation serves a stewardship role around the community’s intellectual property, the Foundation’s board itself does not make any decisions about the specifications the community is collaboratively building.

If you’re not quite sure why this matters, consider the future of online usage.  There’s a school of thought that would argue that everything will be connected and social networking will continue to grow, evolve and bring in millions of additional users.  In addition to social networking, blogging and other community and interactive websites will flood the internet like never before.  With this in mind, by soliciting the assistance of the major players in Silicon Valley, OpenID has all but solidified it’s status as the standard for online authentication.  Additionally, by agreeing on a standard for OpenID, there is potential for large companies to work on a reputation and/or profiling system for web users at-large.  To learn more about OpenID and the latest  news related to the maturity of the OpenID community, check out the following: “Evolving the OpenID foundation board“

Digg’s latest changes didn’t put an end to gaming as was intended. Instead, gaming is now required of active diggers who seek to hit the front page.

If you’re an active social network user, then you’re likely familiar with Digg and the latest problems that have arisen with recent algorithm changes. In short, Digg recently made an effort to curb gaming of their website by changing how stories are promoted and if you’ve been following the drama, it looks like Digg succeeded on some levels.

There has been a lot of talk about the casual-digger versus power-digger conundrum that has played out on Digg. Casual Digg users have laughed and even prodded at the Digg community’s top supporters for losing “power”.

Who got squeezed by the new Digg algorithm? It’s not who you think!

New users got what they wanted and top diggers with a huge fan-base are a tad uncomfortable, but they’ll survive. Arguably, the most important users of Digg’s community are the ones hit hardest by new changes, it’s the active diggers that provide the Digg community with diggs, comments and link “new users” to “top users” via social networking.

If you don’t believe me, ask the top digg users if they have hit the front page in the last 48 hours. The response will be similar from our mini-celebrities in the community. MrBabyman / Muhammad Saleem and Zaibatsu (aka “Reg” / Z) aren’t the ones denied access to the front page, nor should they be! It is not those users that have had their Digg experience ruined and chances are they didn’t miss a beat despite participating (in some form) in the backlash against Digg last week.

Did Digg go too far and were active diggers right to react angrily to the new changes?

My initial position was that diggers were being melodramatic and reactionary. But hey, drama is what makes the world go ’round and it sure helps drive communities on social networks, especially if you follow politics.

I’ll give an example of something that the new Digg algorithm did cure and explain how this cure essentially served to squeeze out the large base of users that are active but lack the strong fan-base that Digg’s top users have.

Digg’s Front Page — taking out the trash

Digg did a good job of removing the spammy lame garbage posts from the front page. What I mean is, some blogs essentially quoted long passages from other sites and added a line or two of commentary and would make the front page.

The reason these garbage sites would hit the front page was because of the way the algorithm worked – it focused on friends and lobbying and sites with already large communities would get automatic diggs in addition to the friend’s of diggers who would submit the articles.

The problem that Digg is going to have to deal with is that they seem to have tightened the screw a bit too much making it difficult, if not impossible, for active diggers to have their content hit the front page. In fixing the ‘garbage-blog’ problem, Digg killed the ability of middle-of-the-road diggers and some quality digg content-submitters to hit the front page. One of my active interests on Digg is politics, so a good analogy is when cities actively clean the streets by ‘removing’ homeless people during the Olympics. They may have good reasons for doing it, but hiding the problem and cheating the public out of the truth only temporarily hides the homelessness problem and doesn’t actually fix it!

Where does that leave top diggers that are marginalized by the new system?

Whereas active diggers previously may have accomplished multiple front-page articles with quality content before, they can’t make the front page to save their lives. A number of diggers who actively engage the community on Digg are no longer front-page worthy using prior Digg strategies and friend support.

Where does it leave active users who don’t have two to three thousand fans? People in my boat aren’t interested in switching social networks, we don’t have time to get situated in a new community or learn a new system, so my only option is to do exactly what Digg programmers are trying to prevent.

In order for active users to hit the front page with quality content, gaming is now required! Essentially, users like me are forced to add more friends and shout-spam while commenting and lobbying for support on articles I’d like to share. The entire purpose of Digg is defeated for people like myself who are boxed-in by the new rules.

Based on what I know so far, I can’t defeat the algorithm without ‘gaming’ the system and I’m not exactly a new user in-fact I’m probably one of the more active diggers around! Here, let me explain. Before the Digg algorithm changes, getting to the front page with ‘good stuff’ wasn’t terribly difficult for me because I managed to make friends with a lot of active diggers and frequently contributed to discussions that would help give my profile exposure.

Digg wants to prevent ‘trivial’ front-page submissions, understandable, but the problem is that now a lot of really good stories will not hit the front page. If you’ve been paying attention – like I have — minus the spam-blog fix, the over-all quality of Digg’s front page stories have diminished considerably.

Prior to the Algorithm Changes…

I purposely kept my list small, maybe in the 100-110 range for the most part and I did so for the purpose of following all of my friend’s submissions. If they submitted good stuff, I wanted to be there to digg and/or comment! It made sense, it worked well but it made Digg a strong lobby system that spammers quickly exploited for their own profitable gain. The fact is, however, that I never felt a need to “game” the system when I was submitting quality articles… the system just worked.

Digg fixed the problem with mass-friend adding and spam-shouting but because of the user interface, many stories on “upcoming” aren’t seen. The only way I can imagine getting articles on the front page is by adding a few hundred more friends and hope they aren’t on the digg shit-list.

Active Digger “Shit-List”

I call it a “shit -ist” because if you’re friends with active diggers chances are ‘you are one.’ If this is the case, the threshold for promotion is very high and requires the effort that you’d expect from a full-time job.

Fine, I’ll play along with the “new Digg” and I will go ahead and add a bunch of new friends that allow ‘shouts’ to their profiles. If they don’t allow shouts they are useless because others won’t see my shout-spam for articles I’d like on the front page. Is that the effect that Digg programmers were hoping for? I really hope not, because it sounds counter-intuitive and inefficient. Further, the system is so damned slow as it is I can’t imagine why they’d want to see the system taxed further.

Conclusion: I’ll play the game, but it isn’t a very fun game because I feel like I’m working a job now and getting no love in return. My intent is not to come off as a whiny digger and I know that my words may come off that way to some. The idea was to share my latest Digg experience and the logic that goes through the minds of people adversely affected by the algorithm who nevertheless want to be front-page capable again.

I’ll report back with my results and findings to complement my above views on how the middle guy, not just the ‘top diggers’ got squeezed out of the equation by Digg’s brilliant new algorithm.

As you may be aware, Digg recently tweaked the algorithm it uses to determine which stories make the front page. This might not seem like a big deal to most, but some of the top Diggers were up in arms and staged what they referred to as a near “revolt”. Several of the top Diggers expressed concerns that the new algorithm makes it more difficult for their submitted stories to make it to the front page, amounting to what they construe as punishment for their success.

It’s been estimated that approximately 30-50% of the top stories on Digg are submitted by top Diggers. As such, many of the top diggers feel that they have “built this site from the ground up” and are mulling a move over to other social news networks such as reddit and mixx.com

According to Wired,

“Several top contributors to the social news site Digg held an emergency online meeting at around 8:30 to discuss their response to a recent change in the algorithm Digg uses to determine which stories appear on the site’s front page.”

First of all, some of the top diggers need to get over themselves. This is Digg, so when one reads of “emergency online meetings” and “boycotts”, it’s hard not to laugh at the absurdity. Now I understand where the top diggers are coming from. They are responsible for a good number of the front page stories that hit Digg and they feel that it’s unfair that they are essentially being punished for their past successes as top contributors.

In Defense of Digg:

It is well accepted that new users have a considerable disadvantage when it comes to getting stories to the front page. In contrast, many of the top diggers have an online following that range in the thousands. When they submit a story, they instantly get numerous Diggs from their fans. With that in mind, doesn’t it make sense that a top digger like Mr. Baby Man (with over 4,000 fans) should have a higher hurdle to getting to the front page than a digger with no fans?

Digg wants to continue to grow. It wants new users to join and feel like they can become part of the community. It’s daunting, however, when new users see quality stories they’ve submitted go nowhere simply because they have no clout. The changes in the algorithm might not necessarily be about blindly helping new users get to the front page, but more about leveling the playing field on Digg, where a few of the top Diggers arguably have too much power.

Another reason why Digg might have decided to tweak its algorithm is that Digg has turned into a lobby system of sorts — “I’ll digg your story if you digg mine.” As people began amassing friend lists in the hundreds, spamming via the shout system became common place and though it didn’t happen all the time, some questionable content starting hitting the front page.

There have to be safeguards in place in order to prevent users from simply adding an inordinate number of friends and mass shouting to them for diggs. Digg’s new algorithm supposedly takes this into account, and deals accordingly, with diggs that come from users who digg every submission sent their way. The problem with this, however, is clear. While this might take care of the user who blindly diggs away at anything their friends send them, not all diggers are spammers. In fact, the majority of them will only shout when they feel they have a high quality submission that will be of interest to users. So if a friend of mine on Digg consistently sends me great stories, and I digg every one, is it fair that my digg should be weighted less?

On the other hand, let’s hypothetically analyze a story submitted by a top digger. Let’s assume that 50 diggs on that story means 20 diggs on weight due to serial diggers, and that thats visually represented in the “hot list” as a “50 digg” article. At that point, it’s up to the non-friends to digg it up and achieve that highly coveted “diversity” spread. If it’s a good enough article, the diggs will start coming in and the article should be queued for the front page. Is that really so outrageous?

In Defense of the Users

One might assume that if all the top Diggers decided to leave Digg that others would simply fill their void and the stream of quality content would continue. But if you peruse the submissions of the top diggers, they really do a great job of finding interesting and obscure stories around the web.

The question then, is this: should we assume that only the top diggers can find great material online? This is a dangerous line to toe because we risk elevating the top diggers to a status akin to an editor on Slashdot, the complete antithesis of what Digg is supposed to be about. Moreover, because it’s so difficult for a new user to make the front page, new users (potentially the next Mr. Babyman) might be inclined not to even bother submitting. The fact that a Digger has a history of great submissions should not be overlooked or taken for granted, but that shouldn’t give diggers a free pass for the rest of their Digg days.

The fact remains, however, that Digg is a user-generated content website and Digg must be open to hearing the concerns of those who helped make Digg what it is today. Otherwise, it risks “alienating its most loyal users.”

Digg’s Dilemna

The heart of Digg is quality content, and to get that, you either need an algorithm that favors power users or a completely blind algorithm that favors the masses. The problem with a completely blind algorithm that lets the masses decide what makes the front page is that there are so many submissions to Digg that people will miss a lot of great stuff if there aren’t ‘power users’ to shape and shift what makes it through. Essentially, there has to be an incentive for ‘power users’ while also having measures in place as to prevent them from attaining too much editorial power.

Some have suggested that Digg should remove the “friends and fans” aspect of the site. This would presumably ensure that people will start digging for content, rather than out of obligation to friends or for reciprocal diggs. This won’t happen anytime soon, though, because the system of friends and fans is actually beneficial to users. If I see that a user is consistently submitting stories that I find interesting, I should be able to add him as a friend and follow his submissions. With such a setup, I am more likely to become an active member of Digg.

What’s interesting about Digg is that its created a virtual world where you have “elite” users who happen to be the top diggers. Then you have the serfs who are fighting for their “rights” as users. Then there are a slew of random diggers with no loyalty to digg who might login to the system once every two weeks. And then, of course, you have a large number of people who don’t even have digg accounts but make sure to visit the Digg homepage a few times a day.

Keeping all of these users happy is no easy task, and Digg is trying its best to maintain the most beneficial balance. Before even giving the new algorithm a chance, however, some top diggers decided that Digg wasn’t listening to them and they were going to jump ship to other social networking sites. The talk of a revolt was amusing because some of these top diggers clearly felt that they had some sense of entitlement. They feel that they’ve invested more of their lives into Digg and want that to be taken into account. That is an understandable position, but at the same time, no one forced them to digg for 8 hours a day. They did that on their own accord, presumably for selfless reasons.

Digg is being challenged with maintaining growth while, at the same time, maintaining the dynamic that made them so popular in the first place. Time will tell how the new algorithm tweaks affect the stories that hit the front page so all of the hullabaloo about boycotts was a) stupid and b) premature.

And in the spirit of being a provocateur, I say to the top diggers — Boycott away! This is the web, it’s not real life. Get over yourself and try to understand that you’re not the only people out there who can find great diggable content. The Digg community has 25 million people on the site, so by assuming that 10 diggers out of that mass of people are that important is ridiculous. Some of the top Diggers were contemplating moving to reddit, mixx, propeller, or any other social news network; imagine what they’d think if they came to an already mature social news network and no one cared about what they had to submit because they were newbies. A quote from their manifesto of sorts said:

“If Digg is a game then we are ready to play for keeps. What happens if the most powerful users in the community decide to leave? Will others join? Is Digg anything without us? Let’s prove it.“

Drama much? No one is born a top digger, so there really is no need to blackmail Digg.

Again, why should a top submitter who gets an automatic 50 diggs seconds within a submission have a perpetual advantage over a “new guy” who submits the same story and gets 3 diggs from complete strangers? At the same time, are automatic diggs really a problem if a top Digger has a proven track record of quality submissions?

A balance must be met and that’s what Digg is attempting to do. I say “attempting” because judging from the front page stories of late, the algorithm is not in full working order. The new algorithm, however, isn’t written in stone and is subject to constant tweaking, as admitted by Digg CEO Jay Adelson. Digg seems to have the best interests of the Digg community at heart so people need to relax, take a few days or weeks off and come back and see what happens. Long story short, stop crying and start digging.

Katina Schubert, a deputy leader of the Left Party charged the Wikipedia’s German site with containing too much Nazi symbolism and a fetish towards a Hitler Youth movement.

…there may be a Nazi plot afoot on Wikipedia itself: “There are signs neo-Nazis are trying to take advantage of such structures, and this needs to be stopped.”

Wikipedia Germany denied the allegations, saying that the imagery used was used for educational purposes.  Read the entire article at Tech Crunch: “Wikipedia Sued for Nazi Sympathies“

If you saw this one coming, give yourself a very large prize. Google is experimenting with Digg style voting features on search results that allow users to vote up or bury search results they see.

I’d like the very large prize! A bit over a year ago, I wrote up a business plan to create a search engine with social networking features. Imagine a search engine like Google that could be sortable and carry only quality material? What’s the best way to filter out spam? That’s right, have users regulate the content. Of course, there are issues with users abusing this kind of system and competitive jerks burying quality items to move their sites up lists, but there is some potential in having search engines revolutionized to encompass social network elements.

The tech crunch article continues:

This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you’ll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you’ve made.

At the moment the results of the program will only be stored per user and not applied to the general search index, so that sites buried (”I don’t like”) will not appear in future results for the user, where as sites voted up will stay up. Google Labs notes that “this is an experimental feature and may be available for only a few weeks,” still, who would have thought that Google would even experiment with Digg style social voting.

Honestly, I think Silicon Valley gurus need to get out and discover talent. They’re too bogged down by their corporate structure that innovation and advancement in technology is almost predictable. The difference between the evolution of Google’s ideas and those ‘creative’ minds out there is that there are ideas that will sit in notebooks years, maybe even decades before some of the juggernauts catch on. If Silicon Valley wants to do the Google shuffle, they really should reach out and look for rainmakers in nontraditional places.

Maybe it’s just my bias, because I’m a budding entrepreneur, but these companies are falling flat (Microsoft, Yahoo, and other ‘mainstays’) because they can’t think outside the box, it’s really sad!