Failure™ Magazine

Digg’s Fail Ox Wagon

Written by Jason Zasky as part of Failure Analysis

The Digg Fail Ox Wagon, with a snarky tweak by a frustrated user.

August 28, 2010—If you’ve accessed Digg.com in the past few days you’ve probably encountered Digg’s Fail Ox Wagon. The site has been plagued by technical glitches since V4 was released earlier this week, and it seems Kevin Rose & Co. anticipated a rocky transition, having readied their answer to Twitter’s Fail Whale—the Fail Ox Wagon, which announces: “Digg has broken an axle…. We might have to sell some oxen but we’ll be back on the trail soon.” (The image was created by Digg designer Tyson Rosage, who claims to be obsessed with the old-school computer game The Oregon Trail.)

Whether or not this image and message comforts frustrated Digg users remains to be seen. From what I can tell, hardcore Digg users don’t like the new Digg, which perhaps explains one user’s tweak of the Fail Ox message [pictured above], which reads:  “We might have to sell your soul … but we’ll be back on the trail soon.”

I myself attempted to access Digg this afternoon, and despite repeated encounters with the Fail Ox Wagon, was ultimately able to create a Failure Magazine publisher page. I encourage you to ‘Follow’ failuremag via that page. Meanwhile, you can also support our efforts by following us on Twitter, and friending us on Facebook.

As always, thank you for your support.