Who really visits Digg and/or StumbleUpon? What kind of people???

9 replies
Hello Warriors,

Do people really type Digg - The Latest News Headlines, Videos and Images or StumbleUpon.com: Personalized Recommendations to Help You Discover the Best of the Web in the address bars of their web browsers?

What I'm trying to get at is understanding who actually visits these sites - what kind of people?

My understanding of webmasters using social bookmarking is for backlink building purpose. I must be missing something here. Do you type Digg - The Latest News Headlines, Videos and Images and go to the BUSINESS section to see the most happening news in the business world? Do you know of your friends and family members who do the same?

Or are sites like Digg and StumbleUpon just bookmarking sites that get traffic when they show up (sometimes) on search results for some search terms?
#and or or #digg #kind #people #stumbleupon #visits
  • Profile picture of the author RegalWeb
    It's a mixture of everything. People are hooked with Digg and StumbleUpon to build backlinks and some for information and entertainment purposes.

    That's why I'm a big fan of the two sites. it does not only help me with my SEO by targeting specific niches, I also get to bump interesting sites worth bookmarking.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[2723532].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Fraggler
    They are genuine web surfers. They are interested in 'cool' articles in their interested niches. Stumbleupon has a huge community but it is only suitable for promoting genuinely interesting articles. Sales pitches just won't work. You need to hook them in with your 'style' and hope they check out the rest of your site or return later, or better yet - tell their friends about it.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[2723599].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Matt MacPherson
    I use both. I type digg.com into my browser and I use the stumbleupon toolbar with FireFox (when I use it). I'm not currently using Digg any longer however.

    Digg/Stumble are great if you have a genuinely interesting website/idea/infographic/etc

    Blatant advertising won't work on either. In fact, as a user I'll tell you straight up not to use either for direct response purposes. Unless you're a fortune 500 company using it for branding, you'll lose money.

    Matt
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[2723639].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Louise Green
    Stumbleupon is awesome!

    I don't use it myself but they send me around 20,000 visitors a month, so they get a big thumbs up from me.

    Haven't had as much luck from Digg users though.
    Signature
    IMPORTANT MESSAGE: I'm currently on vacation & will answer all messages when I return - Happy Holidays!!
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[2723667].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Matt MacPherson
      Originally Posted by Louise Evans View Post

      Stumbleupon is awesome!

      I don't use it myself but they send me around 20,000 visitors a month, so they get a big thumbs up from me.

      Haven't had as much luck from Digg users though.
      Are you getting traffic to a sales pitch or to a website that directly offers value?

      Matt
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[2723681].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author George Phillip
    Personally when I use digg and pay for results, I know I am getting on the first page and it can result in about 60k hits to your site in 24 hours (as first page diggs stay up for 12-24 hrs) depending on niche.
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[2723694].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    I can't answer for Digg ... I feel that site is on the decline. Too much politics in getting your stuff in Digg.

    As for SU, it's always had a loyal base of users who just like to visit sites via SU. When I submit really interesting content to SU, I can get a SU spike of traffic that can last for days ... big traffic. It's traffic that does not convert well, but the pages that they like the most are not sales pages .... they are interesting pages. I bookmark my posts using SU frequently.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[2723703].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Chris Munch
    I'm a user of both sites, although not a big user. Spending some time on the site and getting involved in the community and you'll learn very quickly the sort of people involved in the community.

    StumbleUpon is the most varied in audience type since its nature makes it very specific to your own interests.

    Both sites have the ability to send you thousands of visitors in a short space of time if enough people like your content and vote it up.
    Signature
    I rarely check my PMs here, if you need support, help or have a question please go to our support desk.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[2723880].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author aandersen
    When Digg first started, Kevin Rose used his position as co-host of The Screen Savers to push the site into the spotlight. By that time he also had a pretty loyal group of blog followers. Soon after, a lot of the Slashdot crowd started frequenting Digg as well. So I feel like most of Digg's initial users were the geek and pseudo-geek type.

    Over the last 10 years, the combination of the internet and G4tv has created quite a (fake) subculture out of the "I think it's cool to call myself a geek" crowd. So much so, that there are many people out there who would have otherwise despised the geek title, walking around being proud of how geeky they are. The G4-TechTv acquisition played a very special part in all of this, painting the picture that the terms Geek and Gammer are synonymous. So nowadays, anyone willing to brag about playing video games, even worse "retro-video games", watching star wars, transformers, or thundercats feel that, they fit in the same crowd as the kids that spent their childhood taking computers apart, doing science experiments (for fun), playing with electricity, building small networks, math, etc.

    OK my point is this : Digg (and some other SB platforms) started off as a place for the geek crowd to share sites that they thought were cool. In my opinion, a big chunk of their users still come from that crowd. The only difference is that the line separating that crowd from others has turned transparent.
    Signature

    signature goes here

    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[2725615].message }}

Trending Topics