Blocking the Digg Toolbar-Why would anyone want to do it?
By Emily Price
Last week the social news site Digg released a DiggBar tool that gives users a new way to use Digg. At first glance the service seems to be a win for everyone, the tool bar lets makes it easy to Digg Web pages, and allows users browse new content quickly, theoretically driving more traffic to Web sites that people find popular. Many Web publishers however aren’t very happy with the service, so much so in fact that they’ve decided to block it from being used on their sites.
One of the main concerns with the DiggBar is the fact that it doubles as a URL shortening service. With the toolbar Digg has you add “digg.com/” to the front of any URL, and then it creates a new URL for that content for the toolbar. So for instance if you wanted to Digg the main tech page on Blorge you would type http://digg.com/tech.blorge.com/. The Digg toolbar would then shorten that URL to something smaller such as http://digg.com/12345 and the link to the page on the Digg homepage will now link to the new shortened URL rather than the original source URL.
For Web publishers this is an issue because rather than being redirected to the original source, users are now being sent to a page that frames the original content in a Digg toolbar, and displays the URL for the site as the shortened Digg URL rather than the actual URL for the site that’s being viewed. While the service is bringing users to the site, it’s not giving them a good idea of where they actually are, and it doesn’t give them the ability to bookmark the site to view later, or share a link to the site (that isn’t Digg’s) with a friend.
Traditionally, no one likes to have their content put in a frame. At the end of the day the content on the page belongs to the writers/owners on that Web page, and Digg doesn’t have the right to alter that page by putting their own toolbar over top of it. Blogger Josh Gruber wrote a code (whcih is already being used by Engadget) that allows Web sites to block the toolbar from being used on the sites. You can read more about the code, and why Gruber decided to create it here.
What do you think about the DiggBar?
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on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
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Read more entries by Emily Price.
Stumble It!
April 12th, 2009
Digg’s DiggBar and all other frames/toolbars should be blocked. If one is allowed to frame, others with follow and the Web will be reduced to nothing but frames within frames (see image below). That’s exactly why frames didn’t last when they started showing up in the late 1990’s.
http://tomuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/multiple-iframes-digg-facebook-hootsuite-krumlr-hijack-web-users-large.png
April 13th, 2009
Smells of Digg wanting to benefit from other people’s content, without providing the means for some link love, which is the only real benefit anyone can get from Digg.
April 13th, 2009
It’s not about SEO, at least not entirely.
Let’s say Digg worked out the SEO part 100%. Then it’s cool to use? Of course not!
1. It’s poor web etiquette. What if every site did it? (”Yeah, but Digg is just not ‘any’ site.”) OK, what if the top 100 sites did it? What if Google did it?
2. It’s ego driven. You love Digg so much, why would you want to leave? How about you just stay on Digg, and we’ll pull over that site and put it on the page for you. Copyright violation, anyone?
3. Digg is putting their ads on other people’s sites. In their frame, click on something to take action, and the frame expands complete with an advertisement. Digg displays your content below, but puts their ad at the top. Above any of the ads you might have. So, not only are they displaying your content to generate ad revenue, but they’re also diluting the value of your ads by putting their ad first.
4. This isn’t about user experience, or to make it easier for the Digg community, or whatever else they’re feeding everyone. It’s about money. Digg’s only motivation for the Diggbar is to increase the Digg audience, increase the time on the site, increase revenue, and so on. Whatever else Kevin Rose says is part of the Pollyanna PR spin. Making money is great. I’m a big fan of that personally. But, when you’re pulling this kind of crap to make your money, i guess you’re better off putting the “it’s really for the user” spin on it!
5. It’s not opt-in. What if a site doesn’t want the Diggbar at the top of it’s page? I mean, it’s not Digg’s page, right? If a web site owner doesn’t want his user experience altered, that his/her right, yes? (”Well, they can block it using various tools.”) Why should they have to? Isn’t that the unsolicited emailer’s creed? “You didn’t ask for this, but if you don’t like it, just click on the unsubscribe link.” Diggbar sounds spammy to me.
For being the tech saint he is, lover of open-source, feel-good guy, I expected a lot more out of Kevin Rose.