When Digg first came out with their short URL service, they saw tons of usage right off the bat, regardless of the fact that they were attaching their patently annoying Digg bar to every page instead of using a real redirect.
Thousands and thousands of people used it, but some hated it. I personally never went back to the site, even for daily link browsing. After they changed it to an actual redirect, I was still wary of clicking digg.com short links.
It seems I had the right idea. Yesterday, Digg changed their short URL behavior (for all existing and new short URLs) to send the unwitting clicker to a Digg landing page. Nobody was notified beforehand.
A few hours later Kevin Rose tweeted that he had no idea this was going on.
Yeah, Kevin, we didn’t either.
So what can we learn from this?
No small changes
There are no small changes to a web app. URL shortening is a fairly simple, straightforward service. A tiny change gets noticed, and a big change like this can rock the entire landscape.
Values are a company thing, not a CEO thing
It’s interesting that Kevin Rose was on vacation for two weeks before this happened, but not particularly meaningful as a defense for Digg. Ethics should be company-wide. The “I didn’t know” or “It was the employee’s fault” excuse only gets so far.
Big players can ruin the game faster than small players
There’s anxiety brewing already over short URLs. Some people think they’re ruining the Internet. Digg has twice now delivered heavy blows to consumer confidence for an entire group of sites. It’s probably not fair that bit.ly (what I currently use) will suffer because of what Digg did, but that’s how it works.
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- Having a code of ethics, in and of itself, is meaningless
- When it comes to channels, think like a basketball coach
- The farming game craze, from Harvest Moon to Farmville to Happy Farms
