Yesterday Digg announced that due to publisher backlash they will be making changes to their beloved frame based toolbar known as the DiggBar. I for one will not remove my frame breaking scripts on ToMuse and hope other publisher’s do not remove remove their’s either. Regardless of Digg’s latest line of bull, this move changes nothing as the DiggBar still frames the publisher’s content and encourages others to create their own framebars to clutter the Web. So as a publisher, I continue to assert that if you’re not blocking the DiggBar and other spambars from appearing on your website, you’re part of the problem.
History is again repeating itself; the strategy of framing began in the late 90’s and was stopped because it did nothing but spam the user and nullify the Web’s content. This will happen again despite the efforts of Digg and others (HootSuite, Krumlr, BurnURL) to repackage frames as services and tempt publishers with empty promises of greater traffic returns for not blocking their spambars. On the contrary, publishers can improve their visitor statistics by actually blocking the DiggBar. There are several reasons by the practice of framing another publisher’s content isn’t well accepted and why the DiggBar and other frame based toolbars won’t survive.
1. Publishers See Through The Scam – They know that frames hijack their content essentially stealing traffic and potential revenue from them.
2. Frames Confuse And Spam Users – Frames are displayed without the user’s consent most of the time and visitors especially don’t want to see more ads popping up on their screen. Moreover, visitors that are new to the publisher’s site may mistakenly believe that the toolbar is provided by the website owner and may not know what site they are viewing.
3. Frames Are Obnoxious – Frames block the content the user is attempting to view or at least reduce the viewable area of the content within the user’s browser.
4. Frames Provide Opportunity For Corruption – When frames are allowed to exist, there’s always going to be someone to take advantage of the opportunity to steal traffic and gain income via frame spamming or loading pop-up ads on someone else’s website.
5. Frames Negatively Impact Visitor Loyalty – Visitors are less likely to return if they see such annoying spambars on your website.
Despite all this, I’m sure Digg will continue to make adjustments to their frame based toolbar in hopes that they can appease their critics. I’m 100% certain, however, that the majority of Web publishers and users will not support it. It’s going to be a long road to recovery for Kevin Rose of Digg that’s filled with criticism and a loss of integrity for both himself and the Digg community which may have lasting effects.
Until Digg kills the DiggBar all together or transforms it into a browser based toolbar with the same functionality, it’s doomed to fail. Unfortunately, and the primary reason as to why they didn’t do it in the first place, the browser based toolbar doesn’t provide an opportunity for Digg to artificially inflate its traffic statistics unlike the frame based solution that’s used now. Hence, Kevin Rose may not be able to secure the amount of funding from investors he originally wanted nor may he be able to garner buyer interest in hopes of obtaining the sorely desired purchase of Digg given its further tarnished reputation.
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