Yigg Sucks Donkey Balls
Posted: Wed 11/28/2007 by ramiroCloning web applications that are popular in America is en vogue in Germany. One example is yigg.de, which apparently is a Digg clone. The similar name is embarrassing enough, but originally they owned the domain digg.de. Digg was probably not very happy about that and forced them to change their name, but not the concept.
I tried yigg in the beginning of 2007 to check out how much traffic a yigg front page story generates. At that time it was about 100 referrers on the day the story was shown on the front page, which is nothing compared to Digg.
In a podcast, I listened to yesterday, a self-proclaimed German SMO guru stated that a front page story now brings about 500 visitors. I was surprised and checked out what may have changed on yigg. The only obvious change I noticed are layer ads, that pop up when accessing yigg with a JavaScript enabled browser. Layer ads do suck donkey balls, and so does yigg.
while I certainly agree that layer ads have an incredible suck factor, I don't think it's fair to extend the suckage perception to the whole site. I didn't even know that the yiggers have those ads in place before I read your post... Well, being a registered user seems to be an advantage here. ;)
I can also substantiate Lawrence's claim regarding the parallel development of Yigg and Digg. I was a long-time user of thinknerd, Yigg's predecessor, and I happened to witness the process during which the tech-blog Thinknerd became Yigg as we have it today. There was a lot of discussion about the project on Yigg's IRC channel in those days, and it really wasn't about cloning. Actually the founders where talking about community features that could be added to Thinknerd without having Digg in mind at all. The ideas that came from different people just turned out to be quite similar to those the Digg founders seem to have had. After all ideas had been collected and sorted, the Yiggers noticed that they had actually created a concept very similar to that of Digg and they thought it would be funny to use the same name... Well, it seemed like a hilarious idea at the time, even though it obviously wasn't. ;)
I don't challenge your right to think that Yigg sucks. Many people think the same for quite a lot of different reasons. I just don't think that it's fair to accuse Yigg.de of brainless cloning, because that's simply not what happened there.
I don't care about cars, and I don't see lots of similarities between Mercedes and Toyota, except for most of their cars having 4 wheels and a motor.
But, I can see lots of similarities between yigg and Digg. The names only differ in the first letter and way more important, the most outstanding feature is the same: users can submit stories, which can be voted by other users. If a story gets enough positive votes, it will be displayed on the front page.
Calling yigg a Digg clone is not an offense, but stating a fact. The reason why I think yigg sucks are the layer ads hiding stories submitted by their community. This is no statement against the yigg community. I Hope even someone, as smart as you, gets the point now.
No problem for me
I have used yigg, which I stated in the first sentence of the second paragraph. I am neither a journalist nor a professional writer, I just write my opinion here.
To make things clear: I do not think that yigg has no right to exist and I did not write anything about the quality of the stories submitted to yigg. Moreover I did not write anything positive about Digg, and I agree with you on your criticism against Digg.
Yeah, I just think the best way to get an opinion across without discrediting yourself is to use constructive criticism instead of blatant slagging off.
The only constructive criticism I could give here is turn off the layer ads, but nobody would have cared about that.
How do you think - provided you are able to - I misuse the service? I haven't used it for many months.
Btw what does MyT stand for? Doesn't look like an abbreviation for coward.
No, cloning is okay, but simply not originally. Cloning and pretending not to clone is poor.
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