Būndu I must admit, I’m not a very big Digg user. By the time most stuff gets to the Digg homepage I’ve already read it from it’s original source. It’s part of my job to monitor social media, and as such I see a lot of articles every day.
I’m starting to notice an interesting trend in Digg though. Most articles on the front page are from sites that have a Digg widget on the site. How much is this little Digg widget (I have one) actually helping the articles though? My guess is that it’s a major factor in a website getting on Digg.
Here’s why:
The other day I submitted an article to Digg and then monitored what happened to it.
After 27 seconds, that article was near the bottom of page 2 of upcoming articles.
After 1 minute it was at the bottom of page 4.
After 2 minutes, page 13.
Call me crazy, but I have a hard time believing that people search through 13 pages of articles deciding what ones to “digg.” There’s no way in hell more than a handful of people saw this article.
Does this mean that the best way to get on Digg is to have a large following of people clicking your “Digg this” button?
I know that the creme always rises to the top, but I’m not talking about the viral articles here, or the Scobles or Arringtons. These people have followers who not only click their “digg this” links, but also try to submit their article. I’m talking about a normal unknown blogger who just happens to write something good. (yes, it can happen) It seems to me like nobody will see their articles.
Don’t take this as me being bitter that none of my stuff gets on Digg – I’ve gotten on Digg and Fark and everything else before and I’m not really obsessed with it. Other than SEO there’s really no benefit to it (certainly not in people clicking ads) and I don’t care about SEOing my blog. I just find it interesting to examine what makes it and what doesn’t.
It seems to me that there’s a bias toward sites that already have pre-existing communities. That’s well and good, but there’s lots of good stuff out there from unknown people too. How can that stuff get noticed? Social media and news aggregators are still in an infancy, and whoever can solve this problem will certainly have room to succeed. Maybe that’s why sites like stumbleupon are doing so well.
I digg your article so I dugg it. What you said is so true, most of the stories on the cover have been gotten so much traffic that it’s all too often old news. Personally, I prefer stumbleupon to digg
Comment by line dance girl — August 26, 2008 @ 12:27 pm