Digg, the popular link sharing site, recently removed its controversial “Shout.” The feature allowed users to share stories with one another and was Digg's only internal communication tool. Now, a year and a half later, shouts are gone, being replaced with the option to share the story on Facebook or Twitter.

The post on the Digg blog read “[we] listened to your feedback, crunched some user data, and decided to remove shouts. As some of you know, shouts have been a controversial feature since their inception and considering the ever-changing landscape of the social web, we've elected to remove them in favor of more popular options.”

Shout was supposed to make it easier for users to send a story they enjoyed directly to other people who employed Digg. It was useful on some accounts and helped some stories get more attention. But a big part of it was abused, making it a tool for spamming other users and becoming very unpopular, which prompted some to turn it off or even leave the site for good.

The problem with the tool was also that stories which received shouts were better rated than regular ones and made it hard for users to promote their stories without using this system. That pretty much forced everyone to start shouting their stories.

Digg tried to tweak the rating system by making the value of shouts smaller but in the end decided that there was nothing to be done except for removing them completely. It had a hard decision to make, as removing the shouts meant that users had to employ other sites for communicating effectively. Digg even added buttons to share the stories either on Facebook or on Twitter. The move could potentially bring more people in but it also could drive users to other sites.