Cameron Olthuis

Spam issues. It’s so bad I can’t even read my feed subscriptions for keywords anymore.

/end rant

When Facebook launched their platform a little over a month ago I thought it was very exciting news. I said that it was going to change everything.

The Facebook Platform will basically be a mini-web in a sense and this will make it the most important portal on the web.

The platform is still very exciting and I believe it will help Facebook grow to become the biggest social network on the web. But they won’t become the most important portal or site on the web and here’s why.

As Jason Kottke points out - Facebook is a walled garden with nearly everything published under private profiles.

Facebook is an intranet for you and your friends that just happens to be accessible without a VPN. If you’re not a Facebook user, you can’t do anything with the site…nearly everything published by their users is private.

This is a huge roadblock for the majority of people on the web. It’s also a huge roadblock for Google indexing the information and making it available in their search results. It’s for this reason that Facebook won’t become the most important site on the web anytime in the near future.

I do think, however, that we’ll start to see a lot more open platforms like this one in the future. It seems to be a win-win for both users and companies (on both ends) alike and so far we’ve some pretty stellar successes.

So while Facebook may not be ‘the one’, their example will set the tone for what will be a important direction of the web. Of course, as Jason points out, if Facebook opens up in the future this argument means nothing.

Facebook launches Facebook Platform, this changes everything….

Facebook is giving an unprecedented amount of access to developers. The API would allow, for example, a third party to recreate Facebook Photos, the most used photo application on the web. Users could then remove the default Facebook Photos and install the third party version instead.

Applications can serve their own adds and/or conduct transactions with users. Ads can basically be shown anywhere that Microsoft ads are not currently shown.

There will be a special applications area on Facebook where users can browse and add third party apps. But there is also a crucial viral component - when a friend adds an application, it is noted in their news stream on their profile. Clicking on the item brings you to the app, where you can add and/or interact with it yourself.

It’s now very easy to see why Facebook has been turning down large buyout offers saying there is a large disconnect between the value they have on the company versus that of the outside world.

The Facebook Platform will basically be a mini-web in a sense and this will make it the most important portal on the web. What do you think of this news?

After thinking a lot about my post about Digg yesterday and following the story from all angles, I have come to a couple of conclusions (or are they theories?).

1. Perhaps some of the stories are being buried based on an algorithm to prevent collusion. It seems that there are some common traits for some of the stories that are mysteriously disappearing. They are being dugg up really fast and they have many of the same people (friends) digging each story.

The problem with this is that Digg seems to be throwing the baby out with the bath water. Why is there a friend feature on Digg if they don’t want friends digging each other’s submissions? How can they tell what the users true intent is? How many stories are perfectly legitimate that are getting deleted?

2. Digg needs to be completely transparent on this issue. If they want to bury stories for one reason or another that’s fine, but they need to stop lying about it and tell the community the truth.

Is there an algorithm to prevent collusion or is Digg burying stories based on their own disgressions and interests? Is this some kind of vendetta against marketers or is that a tin-foil hat on my head?

After some great detective work, Neil broke the story this morning that Digg is censoring content internally by burying stories before they reach the homepage.

You probably think users buried the story, but it actually was one of the Digg employees who buried it or an algorithm that is targeting specific content topics/sites. If you don’t believe me, here is a document that contains 10,000 buries from that day and none of them seem to be buries for the “I’m in like with You” story

I’ve suspected that Digg has been censoring content internally now for quite some time. I’ve seen many great stories get buried just before reaching the homepage with no evidence of the community burying them. The problem is that I’ve never had proof before.

When this issue has been raised in the past Digg claims the reason is that Digg Spy doesn’t show all activity, only a small sample. Well, now there is proof with this URL that shows the last 10,000 buries on the site. If you have a submission that has been buried and you check that URL and see no buries then chances are you’ve been censored by Digg.

So why is this a big deal? Well because the Digg model is supposedly based on a non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. Meaning the community is supposed to dictate what does and doesn’t reach the homepage, not Digg itself.

Is this more evidence that Digg has jumped the shark?