In July 2012, Digg — once the most powerful social bookmarking site on the internet — was sold off in pieces at a fire sale. It was a moment that should have been a wake-up call for every online entrepreneur. A platform that had been the center of the blogging universe just a few years earlier was suddenly worthless. If it could happen to Digg, it could happen to anything.
The Rise and Fall of Social Bookmarking
For those who were not around for it, Digg was the Facebook Like button before Facebook existed. Getting your content to the front page of Digg could crash your server with traffic. Bloggers spent enormous amounts of time and energy cultivating Digg votes. Entire link building strategies revolved around social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, and StumbleUpon.
Then it all collapsed. Digg made a series of bad redesign decisions, users fled, and the platform that had seemed permanent turned out to be temporary. Slashdot, another traffic giant, faded into irrelevance around the same time. The lesson was brutal and clear: no platform is forever.
What Zig Ziglar Taught Me About Internet Business
Back in high school in the 1980s, I discovered Zig Ziglar through a girlfriend's father who was in sales. Zig's core principle changed the trajectory of my life: “You can get almost anything you want in life if you will just help enough people get what they want.” That idea is the foundation of everything I teach about internet marketing.
It applies directly to the Digg story. The marketers who built their businesses around gaming Digg's algorithm lost everything when the platform died. The marketers who focused on creating genuine value — helping real people solve real problems — survived because their value existed independent of any single platform.
The Google Question: Is Any Platform Truly Safe?
When Digg collapsed, I started asking a question that seemed radical at the time: Is Google forever? I had already watched Yahoo go from dominant to irrelevant. MySpace went from essential to abandoned. Every platform that seemed permanent turned out to be temporary.
Google has obviously proven more durable than Digg or MySpace. But the principle still holds. Google changes its algorithm more than once per day on average. Every algorithm update can wipe out traffic to sites that were dependent on specific ranking strategies. The businesses that survive these changes are the ones that are not dependent on Google alone.
Lessons from the Death of Social Bookmarking
Here is what the social bookmarking era teaches us about building businesses that last:
- Never build your entire business on a platform you do not control. Whether it is Digg, Facebook, Google, TikTok, or whatever comes next, depending entirely on someone else's platform is a recipe for disaster.
- Own your website and your email list. These are the only two assets you fully control. Everything else is rented.
- Diversify your traffic sources. If more than 50 percent of your traffic comes from a single source, you are one algorithm change away from losing your business.
- Focus on creating genuine value. Platforms come and go, but the ability to help people solve problems never goes out of style.
- Keep your head down when others are panicking. Every time a platform dies or an algorithm changes, there is mass panic. The smart move is to keep creating value and adapt calmly.
The Yes Virus and Staying Focused
One of the traps that the constantly shifting platform landscape creates is what Gary Vaynerchuk calls the Yes Virus. Every time a new platform emerges, there is pressure to jump on it immediately. Every time someone pitches you an opportunity, the temptation is to say yes. But saying yes to everything means you never go deep on anything.
Gary grew his company by learning to say no to things. That discipline freed him to focus on the things that actually mattered. For part-time internet marketers especially, focus is everything. You do not have unlimited hours. Every yes to something new is a no to something you are already working on.
The Bottom Line
Social bookmarking died. Digg is a footnote in internet history. MySpace is a punchline. Yahoo search is a memory. And yet, the entrepreneurs who focused on building real value, owning their audience, and diversifying their traffic are still here, still thriving. The platforms are just tools. Your business has to be bigger than any single tool.
