The reason was the so called “power users”: a select group of users who had disproportionate influence on votes because they were “popular”. Every time a power user would submit a link to Digg, all its followers would up-vote the link.

Generating profit as a digital platform is hard. Taking shortcuts to get there is a losing strategy! Digg should have focused on its users rather than on its P&L.

any new entrant can replicate your website overnight. What it can’t replicate is the user base and the community, and this is what Digg should have protected above all (instead of changing the UI to make it mainstream)