Thank you to every one of you who voted for us in the Open Web Awards for Best Social News Site . We’re delighted to say that out of a list of websites which included giants such as Digg.com and Mixx.com, we came in second, with first prize going to the lovely Peter Shankman at Help a Reporter Out .

I know that many Hubdubbers put a lot of effort into voting for us and we want you to know how much we appreciate your support. THANK YOU!

(p.s. I’m secretly very relieved Nigel doesn’t have to climb Arthur’s Seat after all!)

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Image via WikipediaMashable have just announced the finalists for the 2nd Open Web Awards. Mashable have picked the three start-ups in each category that have received the most votes. Hubdub was entered in the social news category and thanks to you it has now made the final!

The big surprise is that Digg got pushed out of the top three. I wonder whether part of the reason is due to their mass account closures they conducted over the past couple of months. Additionally, a key component of getting to the final is the ability to get out the vote. Maybe Digg just didn’t want it enough?

Anyway, we are very excited to be in the final and we would love even more to win. Therefore please vote for us using the widget above. Remember you can vote once every 24 hours between now and midnight PST on December 14th. If we win I promised to carry the Open Web Awards sculpture to the top of Arthur’s Seat and share a photo with you all.

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Image via CrunchBase, source unknown OK, excuse the pun in the title, but I’m a little bemused by what happened to me today. I’ve had an account with Digg for about 6 weeks now, and have been thoroughly enjoying trying to get my submissions onto the front page of the site, working out who the Digg audience is (hey, newsflash, it’s NOT 15 year old tech nerds!), optimizing my list of “friends”, working out the shout system. And when a submission hits FP, WOO HOO, after a quick run around the kitchen, I have to IM everyone I know to tell them to take a look at how cool I am (sad?). It has been a surprisingly huge amount of fun.

Imagine my dismay then when I went to check my latest submissions this morning (with a bad hangover) only to find that instead of my beautiful profile picture, the page said “Your Account is Invalid – please contact Digg support if you have any questions”. Dumpf. The hangover just got worse.

So now I’m paranoid. What did I do wrong? Was it because I had submitted something that they didn’t like? Was it because I haven’t been selective enough in what I’ve been Digging? Have I had too many submissions buried? Have I not been looking at the home page often enough……the mysteries of Digg are well known and discussed to death. I fretted over my cornflakes. How could I survive without my daily dose of Digg?

Then it dawned on me. My submission yesterday was to an article in a national UK newspaper of a semi-nude picture of Kate Moss in a classical pose. And the Digg gods didn’t like it. Not one bit. Coming from a country where the biggest selling national daily newspaper has a picture of a topless model on page 3 every day, I was astounded that this article was enough for them to suspend my account.

The picture of Kate Moss is beautiful, classical, tasteful and quite breath-taking. There is absolutely nothing pornographic about it in my mind, and she is certainly not known for being a porn model – she’s one of the highest paid supermodels of all time. In fact, they are about to unveil a solid gold sculpture of her in the British Museum in London.

Digg has a history of being anal about sex. Who can forget the FoxNewsPorn debacle for example? Perhaps it’s because they’re American. And perhaps it’s the pilgrims fault that Americans are taught that the female form and anything to do with sex is dirty, naughty and should at all times be hidden away from sight. Sex is something to be conducted in secret and never mentioned. Perhaps it’s their history of religious right-wing politicians, tutoring the masses in upstanding moral behaviour. Whatever. It comes down to the fact that Americans miss out on a lot of wonderful things because of their anal rectitude. Here’s my next submission (SFW. Safe for Digg? Who knows!). Let’s see what they think about that one.

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Recent analysis conducted for ReadWriteWeb has shown that the presence of Tech stories on Digg has halved every year for the past 3 years. They found the percentage of most popular stories that are Tech on the front page were:

1st Week in March 2006: 75.72%

1st Week in March 2007: 37.89%

1st Week in March 2008: 19.78%

Get over it, we’re mainstream now

The reason for the drop is pretty clear as Digg tries to make itself more mainstream, potentially in preparation for a sale. In last night’s town hall event Kevin and Jay pretty much seemed to be say “Get over it, we’re mainstream now”. So what will the percentage of tech stories in most popular be in March 2009 compared with March 2008? If the current rate of halving continues it will be around 9%. However, I don’t often see tech on the front page of Yahoo News so if that is the aspiration it could be even less.

Currently the forecast is around 12-18%, although some are forecasting a even steeper drop. What do you think, is there a future for tech stories in Digg?

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By Nigel (Technology Editor)

There are tons of rumours that Digg is going to get sold, then Yahoo Buzz launches and now the market is forecasting Google is going to buy them. Do we think Digg will stay independent?

Who will buy Digg by end of June?

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