Did Digg Just Committed Social Network Suicide?

People who owns social networking sites are delusional if they don't realize that the most valuable assets are the users. The users are the one bringing a vast amount of content free of charge, and doing so increase the traffic on the sites making it a good prospect for advertisers.

Digg could claim to be the best social networking site for news & politics, up until to day that is. It had 3 features that made the discussions from all across the political spectrum and from all over the world more lively and urgent than anywhere else on the web.

One key feature remains: The front page one. It allows content to go "viral". The two other ones, scrapped by Digg today, were the "shout it " feature and the "Blog it " feature. The 1st one had the great advantage to let you share immediately a story link with your mutual friends, the 2ND one was useful for bloggers to post a link on their own blog.

Active Digg users will have to use other social networking sites (namely Facebook & Twitter) or email to connect with their friends on Digg. It will have the effect to give a serious blow to a burgeoning community.

This absurd business decision only make sense if Digg is in negotiations with either Facebook or Twitter, and one of the condition of the sale deal is for Digg to kill some of its unique features.

What social networking sites should keep in mind in that their only valuable assets are users,nothing more and nothing else.

I would not be surprised if Digg put back the features very soon once traffic on the site go down to a trickle.

CNN: Iranians Regain Access to Facebook and Twitter.

The social networking sites were back for Iranians on Tuesday, a day after the Iranian government banned access to them...

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