Arrington is absolutely right about Digg. They are pandering to users too much. Assuming they want mainstream traffic they should only listen to the users who represent the vision of a mainstream product.
However, Arrington is wrong about Apple and Facebook. They have stepped over a line somewhere and alienated themselves. Both of these companies have gotten mainstream media attention for their recent dictatorship activities. They are going to be paying the price for it. Don't forget how Microsoft got dragged into court in 1997. Arrogance.
I think you're wrong about Apple and Facebook. I'd like you to be right, but the fact is, you care about what they do and you feel alienated. You are not the audience they target; you read news.yc. The market this article is talking about will continue to use Facebook and buy new iPhones.
Hmmm, yeah. I guess I agree that the dictator approach does in fact land more successful products. But, like Calcanus has recently spouted off "Facebook has overplayed their hand", and I think the same goes for Apple.
It is true that I do not represent the mainstream, but Facebook's recent privacy actions has caught the attention of the US Congress. Congress people make a living by throwing grass in the air to see which way the political wind is blowing. When Facebook draws the attention of Charles Schumer we're no longer talking about just the news.yc crowd.
When Microsoft found themselves in the same situation in 1997 they went to Washington DC, told congress that consumers didn't really know what was good for them. When summoned by the US DOJ Bill Gates went back to Washington personally to tell the DOJ that they didn't know anything about computer software and were in no position to prosecute them.
This level of arrogance takes a company out of the tech industry echo chamber and right into the nightly news.
And even within a group like news.yc, you don't always get a true representative sample of opinion. Yes, there've been many posts and comments about how Facebook sucks, but there are also lots that don't care.
And those minority are also less likely to post about it, too. I was pretty active on these discussions at first, but by now, I don't even read the comments section of a post with "Facebook" in the title. It's just turned into one big giant circlejerk, and it's boring.
It's easy to think that a site has a 'hivemind,' but there isn't really a consensus of opinion.
> Assuming they want mainstream traffic they should only listen to the users who represent the vision of a mainstream product.
I don't think that's the point of the article. It's the early eighties, you're running Apple, and you've just flopped with Apple III for business and the graphical Apple Lisa is going nowhere.
If you ask users who represent anybody at all you're going to wind up making PCs running MS-DOS. The OP's point is that Digg shouldn't listen to any users at all. They need a dictator. In other words, they need to listen to just one person.
However, Arrington is wrong about Apple and Facebook. They have stepped over a line somewhere and alienated themselves. Both of these companies have gotten mainstream media attention for their recent dictatorship activities. They are going to be paying the price for it. Don't forget how Microsoft got dragged into court in 1997. Arrogance.