Nevertheless, what I got out of it was a few things:

1. Catching spam is a big priority: Digg is putting a lot of cash and resources into hiring people who can find algorithmic ways to tackle this stuff. And Kevin and Jay are keenly aware that the integrity of their site hinges on being able to catch spam — so much so that they self-censored themselves when trying to describe exactly how Digg promotes stuff, because they don’t want spammers using that information against Digg. One of the more interesting stories I heard was how one blog would pay a top Digger to submit stories — often good stories, quality stuff — have it promoted to the front page, and then weeks later, have that URL re-direct to another URL (or another page), thereby increasing traffic to that other page. Pretty crafty / black-hat stuff! Anyway, that’s just one example of the stuff they’re trying to fight off. Another one that they described was one enterprising guy hiring dozens (hundreds?) of people in eastern Europe (Romania?), and they caught the spamming as they were all from the same region (caught by IP address) which looked pretty suspicious.

2. They will never disclose their exit strategy: People ask them “all the time” whether Digg is going to get sold. They never talk about it, and probably never will talk about it. Rather, they want to invest their time into improving features with the site, such as the comments section and searching, and duplicate checking, which they readily admit, is something that they’re trying to fix.

3. Their emphasis is on improving Digg’s features — not its customer support: Ok, that’s not entirely true, because one of the things that’s coming in the pipeline (or so we’re told) is a forum of some kind for people to ask questions and have their questions answered; apparently there’s going to be two broad categories … one for general user type questions, and another for technical questions (how to get the Digg badge to work, and so on). What I actually mean is that there are a small but vocal (and important) group of Digg users, some of whom are considered the Digg elite (top Diggers, etc etc), who are pining for a way to get their emails answered in a personal, timely manner, about questions that probably have nothing to do with not understanding the FAQ. Questions around why people were banned, how they can get re-instated, blacklisting of URLs and the rationale for why that might be happening. These are all legitimate concerns, but it seems like Digg’s big focus is on features, and in spite of Jay’s reassurances (“we don’t just ban anyone; there’s a back and forth … a dialogue, before someone gets banned” for example), unconfirmed reports suggest that for many Diggers, that just hasn’t been their experience.

Other miscellania that I remember:

• There is no auto-bury function, rather just a sophisticated algorithm for judging which stories get promoted
• there is probably *as* a sophisticated function for burying just as their is for promoting
• “diversity” of people digging clearly has some importance (and weights each Digg differently, is what I got out of it). What diversity means exactly, they didn’t want to reveal.
• Kevin gets together with the guy from Delicious, and the other guy from Reddit (don’t know their names) to regularly commiserate over the never-ending battle between spammers, trying to game these social sites, and the kind of solutions they have to come up with to detect it, and then end it.
• There is only one guy “moderating” at any one time
• They don’t like to call him a moderator (they used another name, like “sys admin”, or something)
• They rely quite heavily on focus groups to help them decide which features suck, which ones they introduce, and to test new features.  There is a way to get into these groups, but by that time, either my own connection conked out, or they merely decided to pull the plug on the presentation.

The bottom line that I got out of it was they gave the appearance that they were trying to make Digg better — and that it takes time, and that they actually get most of the feedback that comes to them, positive and no.

Lastly, for the vocal Digger / social media crowd who are keen to get some better answers to their questions, unfortunately, while the mechanism that currently exists to get in touch with them is probably lacking (and sorely, from the sounds of some Diggers), its clear that this aspect of Digg isn’t something that’s a priority for them to fix — improving and adding new features to Digg is.

It’ll be interesting to see how that part of the debate evolves from townhall meeting, to townhall meeting.

More:

• Mat Ingram’s wrap up
• Social News Watch’s thoughts on the auto bury denial
• Mashable’s embeded Ustream of the entire Digg Town Hall
• CNet who thinks there was too much navel gazing

Jeez, over the course of the year there’s been about 9-12 different times that I read Digg was going that direction.  Whoops — that’s probably only three — but it *felt* like a dozen times.  Yes, its going to make a good fit for someone.  Or at least that’s the current thinking.  Rather, unless its new overlords don’t muck up the geeky left-minded gen-x’er consumerist universe that it panders to.  I mean, its possible that they might, but if they’ve got more than a lentil-for-a-brain, they wouldn’t.

Oh, and also a given: the new Digg overlords, whomever they might be, will also be paying by the goldbrick in truckloads — and that’s saying something, as the price of gold (like the Canadian dollar) has gone way up as of late.  Yes, yes, Kevin Rose and Jay whas-is-name will be as rich as kings, congratulations and all that.

No, I think there are more interesting and un-predictable issues when Digg gets scooped up, such as:

• If it gets snapped up by some mainstream media giant with deep pockets, how might it get integrated into current properties, if it all?
• Will Digg lose any of its geeky cachet-cred once it — literally — sells out, and furthermore, will it even matter?
• Would the parent company, if its a media company, stealthily start pushing its own stories — and affiliated company’s stories — to the top?
• Could the top Diggers find themselves actual employment by the parent company — *finally*?

I’m sure there are other interesting questions that no one’s even thought of.  But come on, everyone, Digg will be sold at some point.  The question is to whom and for how many sacks of gold.