The Drill Down

The Drill Down 151 – Surfing With The Aliens

comments@thedrilldown.com (Andrew Sorcini) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:30:08 +0000

The Drill Down crew is proud to welcome to the show Reddit admins Chris “KeyserSosa” Slowe and Mike “Raldi” Schiraldi. Chris and Mike discuss Reddit Gold, Reddit’s stance on ads for CA Prop 19, and Ben Huh’s public offer to buy Reddit. Later we discuss Digg’s Version 4, their revolting users, and their exodus from Digg to Reddit, Digg’s ‘broken covenant’, Kevin Rose addresses users’ concerns, and Digg gets a new CEO.

UStream encountered many connectivity issues during this recording, so no video this week.

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Did Digg’s Kevin Rose Sell Out Too Late?

comments@thedrilldown.com (Andrew Sorcini) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:49:16 +0000

Kevin Rose on the cover of BusinessWeek, circa 2006

This Guest Post is written by Asif Youssuff, a founder of quippd, a new social news network that enables more community involvement. Follow @quippd on twitter, or check out their site.

By this time, all of you have read about the new Digg, Digg 4. Some of you may have even tried it. Reactions to the new site seem to be mixed, with a vocal number of people saying that they dislike the changes. Those changes have been covered extensively elsewhere, so I won’t get into that here.

While much of the backlash has been focused on the technical changes, like the revised UI, following features, and changes to how “digging” works, the change that really annoys users and small publishers alike is the “selling out” of Digg.

Last week and this week started with the front page of Digg looking like something straight out of Mashable or reddit. While both are great sites, the variety of stories that Digg users have gotten used to was nullified.

Content will come and go, but no one site has a monopoly on quality content, something the new Digg does not seem to acknowledge. Kevin Rose seems to have completely sold out the userbase, the “power Diggers”, and has aligned Digg more closely to the large publishers. While the new Digg does away with the power of so called “power Diggers”, it creates a new monster — the massive publisher. CNN, Mashable, and others all have thousands of followers on the new Digg, and their combined follower count gives them a huge advantage over any one user, or even group of users.

Some have called the new site akin to an RSS reader — since many of the stories are coming from an RSS feed in many cases!

It’s not all bad though. Perhaps the new Digg is an acknowledgement of the interests of the userbase on Digg in general — give the user more power, and instead of seeing more variety, you see exactly the same thing you would expect any mainstream, large, community to consume. Big media.

Kevin Rose claimed that the new Digg would create a new age of the “tastemaker”, of content curators. That may be, if the users decide to remove the large media companies from their follows list. That may be optimistic; it may simply be too much micromanaging for most people.

I don’t know what Digg’s analytics look like, but I would assume that most users simply consume the content on the front page — they don’t know (or care) about the upcoming links. If the front page continues to resemble an RSS feed, users may flee the site, as the tastemakers– the former power Diggers find that their “tastes” no longer have much of an audience, due to being crowded out by much larger entities.

Can Digg be fixed? Kevin just stepped down, they have a new CEO, and maybe they can turn the boat around. Even if they manage to slow down the flow of declining users, it’s an open question on whether Digg can return to it’s glory days — maybe Kevin should have sold out back when Digg was was flying high, and Kevin Rose was on the cover of Businessweek.

An Open invitation to Kevin Rose, former CEO, Digg.com

comments@thedrilldown.com (Andrew Sorcini) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 06:52:46 +0000

Crossposted from Social Blade

We have never begged a guest to be on our show before. There are so many interesting social media people out there that finding guests is possibly the easiest aspect of doing the show.

Kevin Rose, CEO Digg.com

This week, we’re changing things. I, JD Rucker, am BEGGING Kevin Rose to be our guest on either The Drill Down Wednesday night at 6:30pm Pacific or the Social Blade Show Thursday at 7:00pm Pacific.

So that it’s easier to fit into your (obviously) busy schedule, we are opening it up to either show… or BOTH! Your appearance on TWiT was nice, but we would like to ask some more challenging and perhaps better-informed questions than what Mr. Laporte was able to pose.

Simply Tweet to @MrBabyMan or @0boy and let us know which you can make.

The Drill Down 150 – Le Digg est mort, vive le Digg!

comments@thedrilldown.com (Andrew Sorcini) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:30:17 +0000

Chris 'Crispy' Lloyd of Dragon*Con TV

This week, The Drill Down Crew welcome Dragon*Con TV‘s Chris ‘Crispy’ Lloyd, who talks about his upcoming involvement in Dragon*Con, and shares with us his latest video, Vaderex. Later we discuss Leo Laporte’s cautionary disenchantment with social media, accusations of rape leveled against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Intel’s recent purchase of McAfee, reactions to the new Digg version 4, Portal 2′s release date (and cast!), and the most inspired viral marketing stunt since Old Spice on YouTube.

Discussion of Digg v4 on audio begins at appx 38 min.

UStream broadcast

Digg V4 discussion video highlights:

Part 1 Part 2

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Vaderex @ Dragon*ConTV

Stormtroopers Gone Wild! (dragoncontv.com)

Portal 2 Dated, Gets Stephen Merchant on Cast

The Last Exorcism – BEST OF Chatroulette reactions

The Drill Down 149 – Is The Web Dead?

comments@thedrilldown.com (Andrew Sorcini) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:30:00 +0000

This week, the crew tackles Chris Anderson & Michael Wolff’s incendiary piece in Wired, “The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet“. We also discuss Facebook’s new Places geolocation feature, AT&T’s take on Google/Verizon’s Net Neutrality proposal, a recent poll that shows a third of AT&T’s users would switch to Verizon if the iPhone were available there, Hulu’s potential IPO listing, Sony Ericsson’s upcoming new PSP-like Android phone, Twitter’s new “followed by” lists, advertisers’ frustration with Apple’s tight control of iAds, and…do iPhone users have more sex?

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The Drill Down 148 – Investigating the Digg Patriots

comments@thedrilldown.com (Andrew Sorcini) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 12:30:42 +0000

This week the Drill Down team welcome Ole Ole Olson, aka Digg user Novenator, lead investigator of the Digg Patriots conspiracy scandal. He breaks down his investigation and fields questions from the TDD audience. Later we discuss Skype’s IPO offering, Google and Verizon’s proposal for Net Neutrality, HP’s CEO Mark Hurd leaves amidst alleged sexual harassment claims, Twitter launches tweet buttons, and 4Chan’s founder explains the finer points of the site to a federal court.

Just can’t enough Digg Patriots news? Both sides appeared independently on Banned On The Web (The DP crew) and Social Blade (Patriots vs. Investigators) this week. Also, check out Nightly Media for full Digg Patriots coverage.

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The Drill Down 147 – What’s Brewing with Zack Luye

comments@thedrilldown.com (Andrew Sorcini) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:30:57 +0000

This week we’re happy to have as our guest video producer and creator of Bottles, Blends and Brews podcast Zack Luye. Zack shares his experience in creating BBB and the most unusual beverages he’s ever had. Later we discuss Nielsen’s report on how we’re spending time online, Disney gets into the casual games space with purchase of Playdom, Android sales overtake iPhone sales in the U.S., Saudi Arabia bans Blackberries, college students gain higher awareness of privacy on Facebook, YouTube expands upload time to 15 minutes, and RIP, Google Wave.

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The Drill Down 146 – Better Than A Poke In The Eye

comments@thedrilldown.com (Andrew Sorcini) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:30:24 +0000

This week The Drill Down crew enlist the help of Latino Review.com‘s Kellvin Chavez as we review the best (and worst) of San Diego’s Comic-Con International 2010. Later we assess the impact of WikiLeaks’ Afghan War report on the state of internet and mainstream journalism, A contract that calls Facebook’s ownership (and its 500 Million users) in question, how a 15-year-old kid tricked Apple with a disguised iPhone tethering app, iPhone jailbreaking now considered fair use, Apple’s Magic Trackpad, the end of internet addresses, and the Flipboard phenomenon.

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SDCC 2010: An Evening with Kevin Smith at Comic-Con (NSFW)

comments@thedrilldown.com (Andrew Sorcini) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:30:52 +0000

Every year at Comic-Con, Director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy, Cop Out) regales the Hall H audience as only a master raconteur can. Here is his 2010 Comic-Con session.

WARNING: The following audio contains explicit language and is not for younger or impressionable listeners.

The Drill Down 145 – Bumpers for EVERYONE!

comments@thedrilldown.com (Andrew Sorcini) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:30:11 +0000

This week JD, Mu and Andy discuss Steve Jobs’ make-good for Apple iPhone 4 owners, rival cell manufacturers snap back over Jobs’ ‘death-grip’ claims, NYT attacks Google, The Times loses 90% readership after paywall, is the RIAA’s business model worth it?, Arrested Development is coming to the big screen, and Inception twists our minds.

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