I disagree. They have millions of users and their growth is flat-- but they've raised enough money that they really can't afford to be flat.

They need to see if they're being attacked my a vocal minority or a true majority. If it's the latter, a revert should happen. If the former, they should consider standing their ground.

See every major change Facebook has ever done. When people exploded about the privacy implications of having a news feed (Oh no!), should Facebook have punted?

I think there's a very strong difference between Facebook's changes and Digg's. The changes to Facebook were most definitely what the company thought was best for the user. Lots of people don't like change, but Facebook stood their ground and said "we did this for you, you will like it in time." Which the users did. Can you imagine Facebook without the News Feed?

The changes to Digg are very questionably for the benefit of the end-user. I'm not sure what Kevin and Digg hoped to achieve by having publishers directly spamming the Digg front page with content. It's a very rudimentary, very poor, RSS reader, and the anti-thesis of what Digg was about, user-selected stories from all over the web. I can only think Digg are getting an affiliate kickback from the larger publishers.

I'm not a disgruntled Digg user; I abandoned it for Reddit about 3 months ago, and I haven't looked back. It seems to me the small Reddit team know their users pretty well (see the way they handled Prop 14 without the need for a user revolt). I honestly wonder exactly who Digg think they are serving with v4.

Isn't it just a matter of time until Digg is in the same monetization conundrum? They're limping along right now, but at some point you have to think Conde Nast is going to say "alright.. make some damn money already." Reddit gold isn't going to do that on a large scale.

I fully expect to see a similar scenario play out on Reddit at some point.

I disagree on two points. First,the Facebook changes were IMO made in the best interest of Facebook/shareholders first, users second. Also, I can easily imagine Facebook without the News Feed, in fact it's my least favorite part of it and most of my friends's least favorite part. And to answer your question: Digg thinks they are serving Digg/their shareholders. They think the changes are in their best interest, which they may soon reconsider.

This is the problem with raising so much VC money, especially at a post-$100 million valuation (and dreams of an IPO). There's no way Digg can get the revenue necessary to repay their investors (or even be profitable with their bloated staff), without having to resort to actions like these. Having just a skyscraper ad isn't going to cut it.

By essentially allowing their sponsors to decide what's going to be on their front page, they've changed digg from a crowdsourced editorial board to a sponsored RSS feed. I can't remember the last time a .com made such a shortsighted decision....I can't see digg even being around in a few years after this.

One thing different about Facebook is that there are no real alternatives to Facebook, but there are plenty of alternatives to Digg. So it's easier for Facebook to make changes that users don't like, because where are they going to go?

When ever Facebook changed something what the site was about did not change. Facebook did not go from an open social network to a Linkedin type site where you can only post resumes.

Digg went from all about being user submitted content to an RSS reader where a lot of posts are auto submitted by blogs and ends up on the front page.

I don't think there is any coherent point that the users want. Some want V3 because they don't like change, others want unicorns, others want to have fun burning Digg to the ground. I'd love to see it succeed, but I seriously doubt it will.