A tall weed on digg
Recently I've started linking my stories with digg. It seemed like a fair way to spread my stories farther. The Deb Frisch story was the first to break through the "popular" wall, and the experience was interesting.
For those who don't know yet, digg.com is a self-regulating content aggregator:
Digg is a user driven social content website. Ok, so what the heck does that mean? Well, everything on digg is submitted by the digg user community (that would be you). After you submit content, other digg users read your submission and digg what they like best. If your story rocks and receives enough diggs, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of digg visitors to see.
At the bottom of each of my post is a button with which you can submit the post to digg, or vote for those stories that have already been submitted. I'll submit the ones that I think are worthy myself. With the added traffic yesterday because of the Deb Frisch incident, I started accumulating diggs. By the evening I was at over 30 diggs, and near the top of the Upcoming list. Coming back to the computer after a few hours, the digg count was at 90, and growing at two or three every 10 minutes. The traffic was spiking dramatically as well.
I had been bumped to the Popular page.
When I turned in a few minutes later, hits were at 400 and climbing. What would the morning show?
It showed that accumulating hits in the Upcoming arena is not too hard, but when you hit the big time, everyone is a Simon Crowell.
The user community on the Popular page is far more demanding. Though I was getting hits and getting diggs, I was also accumulating votes to "bury" the story. Many voters were of the opinion that the story was too too narrow in interest to belong on digg. After anough bury votes, the story was dumped, and my traffic crashed to regular levels.
The speed at which it happened was remarkable too. The story didn't even survive an hour.
Still, digg operated as advertised. My story was presented to far wider cross-section of readers, the significant number liking the story. A critical level of digg users did not however. Though the algorithm is not described, I expect it is a matter of ratios. The more people who digg the story means more people have to vote to bury the story to get it removed. Clearly I was accumulating bury votes faster than I was getting digg votes, and hit that deadly ratio before the first hour was out.
Interestingly, my story did not get dumped from the Upcoming list. It suggest that either the readership is different, or the criteria people use to evaluated stories is different. I think it is the latter. I think the critics stay out of the Upcoming list, or are not nearly as demanding, allowing the digg mechanism to bubble up popular stories. But all bets are off once the story becomes Popular. Like a tall weed, my story got cut down very quickly.
Still, a lot of readers did like the story, and I hope they come back to the blog on their own to read more.
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Comments
Well, if it does you some good, great. As a reader, even on a highspeed link, its a nuisance, waiting for the screen refresh after the comments thread is accessed. Ya wanna think about whether a Deb Frisch story should be a benchmark... LOL!
Posted by: Skip at August 12, 2006 10:47 AM
Oh you sneaky blogger you. As I suspect you know, stories about DIGG get dug more often. There, your evil plan laid bare!
Posted by: at August 12, 2006 10:51 AM
Steve, I have been trying to find the code on Digg or the page that explains how you embed the "digg this" link into each story on a blog to start using it as well but I have not been able to find it anywhere.
Any insight you can provide?
Posted by: TrustOnlyMulder at August 12, 2006 11:49 AM
It might have been bumped because it was listed on Digg.com as political opinion, which it clearly was not. Likely, Digg readers saw it for what it was -- blog policy debate? right-wing roast? petty squabbling? -- and voted accordingly of it.
Posted by: A at August 12, 2006 03:17 PM
The reason you got removed from the front page so quickly is the liberal digg nazi's burying you. Check out how long it takes any post by Michelle Malkin to get removed from the front page. It takes me longer to blink.
Posted by: Elebrio at August 12, 2006 06:16 PM
A "right-wing roast", A? Interesting that you view the dissemination of a deranged fake suicide note as a "right-wing roast". I'm looking at it right now and there's nothing right-wing (or roasting) about it, save for the links to other conservative bloggers.
I'm sure the burying had *nothing* to do with the fact that almost every link on the front page is a link to Lew Rockwell's trash, or the Huffington Post, or a Michael Moore clip, and that every single Conservative link (especially those relating to Islamofascism) are being tagged as "potentially inaccurate" (sort of like Wikipedia).
LGF has enough active readership to withstand the liberal hegemony on Digg, but few others even have a chance. Even the LGF readers only digg the stories they really think are worth digging, unlike Lew Rockwell's readers who simply spam everything on his site.
The dynamic is changing, though. Conservative bloggers just got into the game late. In an unrigged marketplace of ideas, Conservatives almost always win.
Posted by: Aaron G at August 13, 2006 01:05 AM
"In an unrigged marketplace of ideas, Conservatives almost always win."
And when they don't, it's because of a conspiracy of leftists. Hear that sound in the distance? It's the McCarthy era calling.
Posted by: Ade at August 13, 2006 08:25 PM
Aaron, I believe my original suggestion was simply that the discussion had nothing to do with "political opinion," and so was tossed from the "political opinion" section of Digg.
In an unrigged marketplace of ideas, Conservatives almost always win.
So does that mean that 23 of the total 39 federal elections in Canadian history were rigged?
Posted by: A at August 13, 2006 11:23 PM
 
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