The path from 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0 to Revoltnation

Last time the Digg users revolted - in May07 - it was over the alleged "illegal number" and ended with Digg famously surrendering to the mob. Last week's algorithm tweak and subsequent Revoltnation kerfuffle looks like the latest, and probably final, move in the power struggle that emerged that day between Digg management and the sites most active and influential users. The outcome on the two occasions couldn't be more different.

Mathew Ingram describes this as a popular revolt - "the villagers made it all the way to the castle with pitchforks and lighted torches in their hands, only to relent and make peace with the lords of the manor". And yet...the latest turn of events in the Digg-vs-its-own-superusers saga is something rather less democratic than a struggle between villagers and lords, more a palace revolution in which - on this occasion - Digg's rulers wrested back the power they lost last May from a disproportionately influential "nobility".

As far back as June 2006 Jason Martinez calculated - in a blog post that has since, alas, vanished but amusingly can still be found on Digg - that 60% of Digg's top stories were voted there by 0.03% of users. (This, incidentally, is consistent with Jakob Nielsen's observations on Participation Inequality and the 90-9-1 rule.) Digg has never been a democracy, and when Digg CEO Jay Adelson protested to Wired that there weren't enough people behind the latest backlash to qualify as a "mass movement" he was quite right, but entirely disingenuous. Digg isn't an open democracy and as Scott Karp points out it couldn't possibly work if it was. The latest algorithm tweak is therefore the end of the story that began with Digg's backdown over the illegal number that refused to stay off the site - the decision by Digg's management team that the superusers would not have the final say in what appeared or did not appear on the front page. In this context, Revoltnation makes a lot more sense: power is never voluntarily relinquished and the handful of superusers who make up the Revoltnation constituency are understandably doing what little they can to prevent it being taken from them.