Home > ramiro's blog > Yigg Sucks Donkey Balls

Yigg Sucks Donkey Balls

Posted: Wed 11/28/2007 by ramiro

Cloning 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.


yigg layer ad
Submitted by Zappes (not verified) on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 09:56.
Hi Ramiro,

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.

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Submitted by Andy (not verified) on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 10:42.
An German SMO Guru :-) I've also listened to that podcast and didn't know if I should laugh or cry.
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Submitted by Baynado (not verified) on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 10:50.
I only can confirm the opinions of Lawrence and Zappes. One Question. You also go out on the street and call Toyota is a clone of Mercedes? Yigg is a great place for discussing political and social issues. If you are a registered member, you will not be disturbed by advertising.
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Submitted by ramiro on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 12:21.

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.

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Submitted by Simon (not verified) on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 12:36.
I think yigg has it's own niche, it may have a similar name but it is a far more substantial site and with better quality content which is more relevant to it's users, because it stemmed from roots which are not related to just another "rip off site" of Digg. I completely agree with Lawrence and Zappes.. You must have noticed the content on Digg deteriorating , the subject of which is a hot topic of debate. Also digg is censoring certain topics which isn't very user friendly. http://www.meganmcdermott.com/2006/11/29/digg-has-turned-to-total-crap/ http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/digg-is-censoring-content-by-b... I for one have stopped using Digg because the userbase has become one sided, or just crap. The quality of digg referers was also of hot debate. People actually started banning referrers from digg because the click through were terrible. http://tomayko.com/weblog/2006/12/30/digg-scares-me From this article, "The funny thing about Digg is that it changes the way people read. The average Digger seems to assume that people write stuff solely for the purpose of making it to the Digg front page." I for one believe Yigg is good enough and with relevant enough news to justify it's own niche market, despite it sharing a "similar" name. I also think you have to try using a site before you can smugly slag it off in this nature. This sort of thing is very journalistic and not professional - Especially not for a SEO "Expert blog".
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Submitted by simon (not verified) on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 12:41.
Ack, sorry for the spaces... didn't realise you could put p tags in it.
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Submitted by ramiro on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 12:58.

No problem for me

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Submitted by ramiro on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 12:57.

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.

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Submitted by Simon (not verified) on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 13:32.

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.

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Submitted by ramiro on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 13:54.

The only constructive criticism I could give here is turn off the layer ads, but nobody would have cared about that.

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Submitted by Ben (not verified) on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 14:33.
Digg is full of tards - yigg isn't. Big cool difference in my book. Dunno about the layered ads though - I haven't seen any. Social news ftw! :D
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Submitted by MyT (not verified) on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 14:42.
SEO sucks it all. I use yigg to read some new stuff when I am curious about what other people come to read. You desperately seek to gain fcukin page rage. You misuse a service and rant about it. You suck man. Makes me sick.
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Submitted by ramiro on Thu, 11/29/2007 - 14:47.

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.

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Submitted by SeonDesign (not verified) on Mon, 01/28/2008 - 18:59.
Don't you think that cloning web applications is a crime?
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Submitted by ramiro on Mon, 01/28/2008 - 20:43.

No, cloning is okay, but simply not originally. Cloning and pretending not to clone is poor.

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Submitted by sbs (not verified) on Thu, 02/05/2009 - 21:45.
what a impressive article. last days I didn' t read post like that. I am now your blog' s follower thanks for this useful blog. you are now in my bookmarks.
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