Overnight, Yahoo launched suggestion boards. In effect, it’s Digg but for suggestions on Yahoo. All in all, nothing to be alarmed about.
That is unless of course you’re a Digg zealot. If you’re one of those, this site represents a slap in the face to the “community” at Digg. To their credit, the majority of comments I read on the story (that of course hit Digg’s front page) have been rather “I don’t care”ish. Most of the commenters realize that there are open source Digg-style API’s available for anyone who wants to write some code. They even manage to realize that, for the most part, Digg is in a space they didn’t even invent.
Oh, and the folks at Yahoo were even kind enough to mention digg in the blog post announcing the new service:
We call it a Suggestion Board — you can browse suggestions from other site visitors or post your own. Digg-style voting means we can quickly discover what’s most important to users. In addition to reading feedback from other users, you’ll find responses from Yahoo! employees about the issues. Product teams regularly read and take action on your feedback. Though we aren’t always going to immediately act on it, it’s incredibly helpful to us in making the best sites we can… and we’ve even been known to reward great suggestions with some Yahoo! schwag.
Some of the reactions were good, but I think Mike Arrington says it best (as he usually does; it must suck to be that right all the time):
I don’t have any problem with what Yahoo did. First, Yahoo credited Digg in a blog post announcing the new product. Second, the purpose of the site has nothing to do with finding and promoting news stories. Rather, they’re using the Digg-voting mechanism to power the Yahoo Suggestion Board where users can submit their comments to Yahoo on various products.
It’s an excellent way for Yahoo to gauge the popularity of suggestions, and is in no way competitive with Digg. It’s simply a compliment to the efficiency of the Digg model. I’m siding with Yahoo on this one.
Me too. Diggers had a point with Netscape. Despite the differences, Digg and Netscape are essentially competing in the same space and for the same eyeballs (although Netscape isn’t competing very well, but that’s not really the point). Like Mike Arrington, I don’t understand the ill-will directed at Yahoo or the vandalism that’s going on with the Digg fanboys trashing the suggestion board with “Digg Rocks” stories. One commenter on Digg opines:
This is just lame. So Yahoo stole digg’s design. How can we solve this? Ah yes, by smearing their site with obscenities. Brilliant. Congratulations, you have just given digg a bad name. Which is ‘home to thousands of amateur hackers’.
Grow up guys!
I can’t even believe this is an issue, but the fanboys are a loud lot…
Technorati Tags: digg, yahoo, tango
