[Graham Maddison]

I recieved this news email earlier from web pro news and thought it might be of interest.

I have taken out all but the relevant links.

graham
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Digg.com Suffers Under Regime Change
Jason Lee Miller | Staff Writer

Powerdiggers Stealing Stories, Promoting Them

It seems all good things are corrupted or abused eventually. For Digg.com, habitually might be a better choice than eventually. SEOs, thanks to aggressive blackballing by the Digg "bury-brigade," were perhaps the earliest and most blatantly ostracized group muscled out of the prevailing purist community there-no salesmen allowed. Marketers and PR flaks effectively excommunicated, internal drama is free is to ensue as "powerdiggers" are accused of setting up a Digg.com good ole boy network.

Exhibit A is a submission ironically making the front page with screen-grab side-by-side comparisons of, as the title suggests, how the average Digg user is. . .cheated. The image shows two Digg submissions with identical titles and thumbnails. The original submission, posted an hour before its duplicate, received only 21 diggs. The second, made popular by a so-called powerdigger made the front page with 2752 diggs.


The comments on that insult-and-injury combo read, depending on your level of cynicism, like either a high school cafeteria conversation or a town hall meeting as complaints about how the popular kids (or political cronies) have formed a clique that now controls the local news media. They steal from the unpopular, the dejected, the weird loners, they promote each others' causes, they digg up each others' stories.

It's Mean Girls meeting the Lord of the Flies. And yes, just so we're on the same page, there are much, much bigger problems in the world. Consider this a microcosm, a micro-study in human behavior and power structures, then, extrapolate and apply as necessary to larger theaters, like the current one staging in Gaza, or the ongoing consolidation of media, or the ongoing struggle of various proletariats. If that's too heavy, think of it as marketing strategy-how to game Digg.com for personal gain.

The coalition of outcasts has primarily blamed two Digg.com features pretty standard on Internet social networks: the ability to form friends lists and "shout" to those friends about news stories a user wants promoted.

"This is why many Digg users have stopped submitting," says one commentator, "they know it is highly unlikely their submissions will make the front page no matter how good their content is, but a power Digg user can submit something dumb like a photoshopped picture of pac-man at a graveyard and it will rise to the top, not because it is all that good, but because of the submitter's connections."

"Its not just the stealing of stories, its also the lack of our stories even being heard in the first place," says another commentator.



Users have suggested switching to rival site Reddit.com, where submissions are anonymous. Others have proposed an algorithmic penalty system such as the one in use at Flickr that seems to devalue group submissions and add value to unconnected simultaneity. Still others, over 1,100 of them, have signed an iPetition about the situation.


For all that is good and likeable about Digg.com-this idea of democratized, collective-wisdom controlled news discovery process-it has never lived up to the ideals behind its inception. From the outset one mob or another has ruled the roost. (Ah, there's your fundamental human truth, right?) The current mob will likely be replaced with another, perhaps by teams of marketers investing the time to befriend and shout out to one another, or some other like-minded mob.

What's founder Kevin doing about what one commentator described as priority number one? Well, maybe he'll get to it once he's finished meditating about his tea website and the lost art of writing letters on paper.

What do you think about digg and how people are using it?
Voice Your Opinion Here

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[indyonline]

Thanks for the post! A+++

[KT52]

Hi Graham,
I signed up Digg last few weeks but I don't have a chance to use it yet.
Good to know

Thanks
Kha

[Malcolm Tindle]

Hi Graham,

That's a very interesting post, I am a subscriber but not on a regular basis, thanks for sharing.

Mal.

[Charles Boustany]

Hi Graham
Thanks for sharing This is an example of Jargon taken to extreme what does it all mean The funny side is that I have just signed up for Digg and the first thing I got is that my review was duplicate Mmmm
ON THE FLIP SIDE it is like wanting to democratize a country but not agreeing the results as it does not suit you

Cheers
Charles

[Jeff Casmer]

Hi Graham,

Thanks for the information....

Take care
Jeff Casmer

[yaji]

I may use reddit too.

[ltdraper]

If you're a marketer, don't get caught up in chasing the front page of Digg. Sure, the traffic is a nice ego boost, but very few Diggers purchase anything. You'll see a flood of traffic and then nada.

Digg has far more important uses. From an SEO perspective, it's tough to beat. Those are dofollow links you're getting. But there's a secret. You can't just submit an article that gets only a few votes. Google will actually penalize you if your submission doesn't get many diggs. The internal link structure of the site is such that if you have just a few votes it shows as a weak link. But if you can get to around 50 votes from people with strong profiles, you'll get a very strong link.

So the key to Digg isn't just to get to the front page. The key is to build a network of people that can get you 50-100 votes on a story so that you can maximize the link power. You have to know which people to get to vote your stories.

Do a google search on [digg analytics powerful profiles] and you'll see some interesting articles.

[David]

Originally Posted by ltdraper

If you're a marketer, don't get caught up in chasing the front page of Digg. Sure, the traffic is a nice ego boost, but very few Diggers purchase anything. You'll see a flood of traffic and then nada.

Digg has far more important uses. From an SEO perspective, it's tough to beat. Those are dofollow links you're getting. But there's a secret. You can't just submit an article that gets only a few votes. Google will actually penalize you if your submission doesn't get many diggs. The internal link structure of the site is such that if you have just a few votes it shows as a weak link. But if you can get to around 50 votes from people with strong profiles, you'll get a very strong link.

So the key to Digg isn't just to get to the front page. The key is to build a network of people that can get you 50-100 votes on a story so that you can maximize the link power. You have to know which people to get to vote your stories.

Do a google search on [digg analytics powerful profiles] and you'll see some interesting articles.

Thanks for the insightful posts and replies...
It's been a few years since I had a PPS page, I 'stumbled onto' this thead while searching for a thread I started in the Recip Link section of WF

To all looking to use Digg for SEO and I'm talking about those of us that submit our blog posts but only have 4 or 5 diggs (if that) I've started a Yahoo Groups list for recip social bookmarking

it's free
it's an experiment I'm trying
You gotta have a yahoo email addy to join (because the list is hosted on yahoo) It is NOT a public list

bookmarkmarketing : bookmarkmarketing

For more info see an earlier WF post where I got the idea:

http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...g-friends.html

[tplahav]

Hi Graham,
Thanks posting this, I also received this email.
This is a known issue with digg, and there are replacements reddit is one another one is mixx.

But no matter which one you choose, the big guys always set the tone.
If you want a new website idex quickly you should contact the big guys and ask them to submit the page for you.

Tanny

[Alan Mater]

If you're planning on using Reddit, the key is to have someone else submit your post and then you need a large number of "Ups" within the first 20 minutes or so. Comments for that submission help a lot as well.

I currently help someone who submits to Reddit on a regular basis. So far he is getting good results from it.

Thanks for this post, Graham. I'm a member of Digg, but I don't really do anything with it.

Alan

[jacquesgroen]

If you're a marketer, don't get caught up in chasing the front page of Digg. Sure, the traffic is a nice ego boost, but very few Diggers purchase anything. You'll see a flood of traffic and then nada.

Digg has far more important uses. From an SEO perspective, it's tough to beat. Those are dofollow links you're getting. But there's a secret. You can't just submit an article that gets only a few votes. Google will actually penalize you if your submission doesn't get many diggs. The internal link structure of the site is such that if you have just a few votes it shows as a weak link. But if you can get to around 50 votes from people with strong profiles, you'll get a very strong link.

So the key to Digg isn't just to get to the front page. The key is to build a network of people that can get you 50-100 votes on a story so that you can maximize the link power. You have to know which people to get to vote your stories.

Do a google search on [digg analytics powerful profiles] and you'll see some interesting articles.

Digg sends semi-targeted traffic and this should be kept in mind. If you dont convert a couple of products while getting a rush of over the 20,000 people then there is a problem with your page. One single Digg rush made me $10000 and this is no lie. Let me explain the logic behind this:

You have an affiliate product on your page. Lets say due to the traffic from Digg you only convert 1%(Extremely bad) . 20,000 people and only 1% buy still gives you 200 sales. You have a product that you get paid for $50 per sale. 200 times 50 = $10,000

I am a power user now for nearly 6 months and have been rolling in the money so all I can say is: thanks Digg!

I agree that people misuse this benefit but I have never went against the terms of service. I only directed traffic to sites that really had some excellent content but a banner or one text link towards my affiliate product never appeared to be spammy. It was always good content. You can check out my sig and pm me if your interested