Digg is the real deal for web 2.0, in the sense that, for all the hype, it does absolutely nothing new but is about to render obsolete, geek central itself, Slashdot.
Zawodny goes through the usual ideas as to why digg is successful – and then hits it on the nail – ‘Lets face it. The slashdot guys are getting old’.
Sure there are some improvements over Slashdot in the way the Digg does things, but this is not the product shakeup of Google Maps vs. Mapquest. Digg wins because the community has more vitality.
Digg is about fashion, it makes Slashdot look like a bunch of ageing rockers. We are seeing the first generational switch in web applications – and that is really web 2.0.
If this is natural churn, then someday someone else will beat Digg, and if this is a precedent then the lifespan of an otherwise very successful site could be less than 10 years. This is more than a nightclub or a teenage fad, but much less than offline companies.