According to Alexa Digg traffic is not headed in the right direction. They are down 20% in the past 3 months. This isn’t surprising considering a lot of people are all “dugg” up when it comes to Digg. Ever since the content fights with members vs. admins a few months back it seems that everything has started to slide downwards. Not to mention Digg’s new layout is (how do you say) lacking in many ways. It was fine before so why did they change it? Who knows. One thing is for sure. I’ve heard from several Digg users who have quit Digg altogether now. The site is just starting to lose it’s luster. The big thing on the web right now is user submitted videos, not news. That’s why we see sites like YouTube continuing to grow daily. YouTube traffic is up 24% in the past 3 months according to Alexa.

Is it too late for Digg to make a rebound? Personally I think so. Right now it seems that most of the news that hits the front page is put there by people who pay others to digg their posts. Why else would Digg be full of boring plugs for things that nobody would actually digg? As for the future of “social” sites and user submitted content I think the more connected people can be, the more popular a site or service will become. MySpace, for example, is holding steady right now as the #1 profile based social networking site. Social bookmarking sites however, such as Digg and Fark are both losing steam and fast. Fark is doing even worse than Digg at a 28% traffic loss in the past 3 months.

It seems to me that all this talk about a “Digg Sale” might end up being just talk. People have tried to predict a sale for years now. I think the time to sell would have been in late 2006. Everybody was predicting a sale then. Ironically Digg’s traffic and userbase was at an all time high during that time. Right now they are on a downward spiral so unless Google steps in and revives it like the YouTube deal then who knows where Digg will be in a year. 6 feet is a