Digg Won’t Scale?

August 4, 2005 in aggregation, search, syndication

I was checking out Digg right now and reading their FAQ. This entry struck me as a bit troublesome:

How to promote stories to the homepage
Once a story is submitted by a user it is instantly posted in the digg area queue. This is a temporary holding place where stories wait to be promoted to the homepage. To help promote stories to the homepage, simply visit the digg area and digg stories you think are cool. Once a story has received enough diggs, it is instantly promoted. Should the story not receive enough diggs, or is reported, it eventually falls out of the digg area queue. Digg works because a large group of people actively promote good stories to the homepage. Since this site’s content is user-driven, it is up to YOU to contribute.

If I understand correctly with a few users Digg will work fine. Once it has too many users though the queue will be way to active and users won’t ever have a chance to promote an item before it falls off the end.

I think the Delicious model works better (which Digg could implement easy enough).