I have to admit I don't think a lot about Digg.  I subscribe to the tech feed but the site itself has almost become a utility to me.  Like the phone or electric company it just isn't something I'm really conscious of anymore.

But the news that Google might acquire Digg really put the site back in the forefront of my mind and had me thinking back to when Digg was the hot topic in the blogoshpere.  Remembering back to that time I couldn't help but ask...

"What ever happened to all the Digg vs. Slashdot debates?"

For those who don't remember, Digg vs. Slashdot was the topic to discuss a couple years ago.  At the time Digg, the young upstart, was just about to overtake Slashdot on the traffic front.  Here's a quote from January 2006 (courtesy of kottke.org)...

There's been lots of talk on the web lately about Digg being the new Slashdot. Two months ago, a Digg reader noted that according to Alexa, Digg's traffic was catching up to that of Slashdot, even though Slashdot has been around for several years and Digg is just over a year old. The brash newcomer vs. the reigning champ, an intriguing matchup.

A Techcrunch article from the same period provides this Alexa chart (Digg is the blue line). 

Now in the back of my mind I assumed Digg had overtaken Slashdot but that was the extent that I'd thought of it.  Now that I was thinking about it again I decided to look into the current numbers.  The results were pretty shocking to me (which is probably an understatement).  Here's the Alexa chart (based on reach) over the last verifiable 6 month period...

If you're missing it the Slashdot line is the one very close to the bottom.  Here's the chart from Compete.com for the last year...

Again showing that Slashdot has been decimated. 

I'm amazed the tables have turned this dramatically in just the last couple years.  Again, I think we all knew Digg had overtaken Slashdot but what's amazing is how Digg has utterly usurped the need for Slashdot in the first place. 

This article from the Guardian quotes Slashdot as having around 5.5 million users as of August 2006 while the Compete numbers put their 2008 user count at around 785,000.  Even accounting for the inaccuracies of sites like Alexa and Compete this is pretty damning.  They'd both have to be WAY off for it to make much difference. 

It would seem like the Internet as a whole has chosen the wisdom of the crowd over the wisdom of the Slashdot editors and there's little Slashdot can now do about it.  I can't say the outcome isn't deserved (Slashdot never really responded to the Digg threat) but I also can't help being a little saddened by how diminished Slashdot has become.

Beyond that I can't help but wonder if this is an indictment of experts in general or of just the Slashdot editors in particular.  I'll admit to thinking they were a bit out of touch by the beginning of 2006 and I think that might have a lot to do with Digg's quick ascension.  But has our society really reached the point where we simply have no interest in expert opinions anymore? 

I love Digg but I'm not sure following the crowd exclusively is a philosophy that's very wise...