Entries Tagged 'Digg' ↓
January 3rd, 2007 — Digg, Internet Marketing, Social Media, acts, articles, original, results, searchers, serps
A discussion going on on several blogs about whether Digg should be included in Google’s search results has got me thinking about the value that Digg provides to internet users outside of the Digg community. To my understanding the basic argument against Digg being listed in Google’s search results is that Digg provides no new content (except for discussion) and therefore should not be listed above the original articles that are linked to on Digg.
First of all, I don’t think Digg’s prevalence in search engine results will change, but the question still remains as to whether Digg really deserves to rank higher than some of the articles it links to. After all Digg is just acting as a middleman to the actual content that searchers are looking for. Shouldn’t the original articles be the ones to be listed instead of a Digg page that just provides a brief summary of the article and requires users to click once more to actually read the article? Digg provides a valuable service to its users by pointing users to quality content ranked by their voting system, but Does Digg provide any real value to outsiders who stumble across Digg while searching on Google or to publishers whose articles may receive less Quality Traffic Supply because Digg may have “stolen” their spot in the SERPs?
I actually do believe that Digg provides value to both Google searchers and publishers when Digg acts as a middleman when it is listed in the SERPs. If it weren’t for Digg many good articles would go unnoticed to search engine users because the articles come from sites with a relatively low authority in Google’s eyes. Such good articles could be submitted to Digg, reach the homepage if it were interesting enough, and receive several links to both the Digg story page and the original article. It is likely that the Digg story page would rank higher in the SERPs even when the original article does not rank at all. So all the traffic from Google that goes first to that Digg page then to the article is traffic that the publisher would not have received otherwise. At the same time users who click through to the Digg page can see a brief summary of the article as well as a some discussion of the article which can help them better judge whether it is worth their time to read the actual article. So in a way Digg acts as a voice of authority which vouches for the quality of less authoritative sites.
December 21st, 2006 — Digg, Google, Internet, count, default, headlines, microsoft, million, predictions, windows
What lies ahead in the Internet World in 2007? Below are my three predictions of Headlines we will see during the coming year along with my justification for such predictions.
Google Buys Digg for $200 Million
Despite much criticism recently, Digg continues to grow. Google does not currently own a site like Digg, so Digg would fit nicely into their portfolio. Digg doesn’t receive quite the amount of traffic as YouTube, which Google paid $1.65 billion for earlier this year, so it doesn’t merit such a large price tag, but I think that within the next year Google will be willing to pay at least as much as Digg is asking for.
Wikipedia article count reaches 6 million
With a count currently just above 4 million and growing steadily, Wikipedia’s article count should reach 6 million by years end.
Firefox Surpasses Internet Explorer’s Market Share
Okay, I don’t really think this will happen especially considering IE will be the default browser on many computers which will operate on Microsoft’s new Windows Vista, but I think it would be cool. Even though it is not likely, it is possible. The browser wars in 2007 will be interesting either way.
December 19th, 2006 — Digg, Links, Social Media, alaz, diggs, economy, experts, spying, votes
While keeping informed and up to date about what is being written about Digg over the past several months I have come across a lot of information that really isn’t that insightful or in some cases is even just plain wrong. So to help anyone interested in learning more about Digg sort through the jungle of information out there I have created the following list of bloggers who in my eyes have proved through their writings on the subject that they really know what they are talking about. These guys have established themselves as authorities on the subject of Digg. So here is the list of the Digg experts along with a few links to what they have written about Digg. I am sure there are others experts out there but these are the ones that I have found to be the most insightful. If you know of anyone else who deserves to be on this list please list them in the comments.
December 16th, 2006 — Digg, Social Media, article, contributions, fact, game, gaming, improves, quality
I just wrote an article at my marketing blog, about the gaming element of Digg, and my take on the fact that a select group of top Digg users have a disproportionate amount of power on the site. In brief I believe that the fact that Digg provides a ranked public record of user’s contributions creates a sort of game out of Digg. This game environment actually improves the quality of content on Digg because users are given an incentive to contribute quality content. If you want to read more please check out the article. Please let me know what you think and share the article if you like it.
December 13th, 2006 — Digg, article, cnet, reality, spammer, story, wrong
I recently read an article on CNet about Rigging Digg.
The article was an interesting read but contained many inaccuracies. I was going to blog about it in detail today but this morning I read these three posts that already explain what is wrong with the article and mirror my sentiments
Elinor Mills Embarasses Self, C|Net with Digg Article
CNet’s story about Digg needs a reality check
CNET Gets it Wrong about Digg Optimization
On a related note I was recently accused of being a Digg spammer.
December 5th, 2006 — Digg, Social Media, buried, dnight, haltingpoint, hobbsy, spammer, stories, story
I am a Digg Spammer, at least according to Digg users HaltingPoint, dnight, and hobbsy, who left the following comments on the Digg Story of my last post about the $100 dollar business.
The story was buried soon after it made it to the home page, which is too bad because in my opinion it was pretty interesting. In my own defense I would like to say that I didn’t even submit either of the two stories that I have had make it to the homepage, and in neither case did I have the intention of profiting from the Digg exposure. I did have adsense on each post at one time or another but removed it as soon as I saw the stories had been dugg, for the very reason of not appearing like a spammer.
November 15th, 2006 — 2524, Digg, elite, percent, popularity, score, views
I recently wrote about the Digg Elite and the 80-19-1 rule. In that post I mentioned that I had made it into Digg’s top 1 percent but didn’t mention specifics about where the 1 percent cutoff is. So out of curiosity I have calculated what it takes to barely move into the top 1 percent of Digg users based on Popularity (rank of amount of stories submitted that made it to the homepage) Since there are currently 361,584 registered users on Digg one would need to be one of the top 3,615 users for a given metric to be in the top 1 percent. Looking at the top Digg users section we can see the the current user that is ranked 3615 has had two stories make it to the homepage. Digg apparently uses profile views as the secondary measure when there is a tie and since there are hundreds of users with a popularity score of 2 we would have to have at least 2524 profile views to guarantee our spot in the top 1 percent if we only have a popularity score of 2. However, we could also just pass up all those users with a popularity score of 2 and get oursoulves a score of 3 to get in the top 1 percent. So in order to become a top 1 percent user one must obtain a popularity score of 2 and receive at least 2524 profile views or just obtain a popularity score of 3.
November 14th, 2006 — Digg, Social Media, community, elite, influence, participate, percent, power, users
It has been said that on social media sites such as Digg the rule of 80-19-1 describes what percentage of users consume, participate, and contribute actively to the community. Eighty percent of the users are just passive consumers, they just visit the site to get the latest news or links. Nineteen percent of users actually participate in the community. However, it is just one percent of users that do most of the contribution of the content that gets consumed.
Rand at SEOmoz wrote a little while back about the phenomena of top users having a disproportionate amount of influence. I believe the influence and power that these top users have is merited. It takes a lot of work to become one of these top users and they deserve to have the power they have. I speak from experience. Although I am not a top 20 or even top 100 user on Digg (at least not yet) I have recently made into the elite group of the top 1,000 users (number 711 as of this writing to be exact), and with a few stories near the homepage right now I should be in the 300 to 400 range by weeks end. So if we assume that there are at least 71,100 users at Digg, which I think is very likely, I am one of the top 1 percent.
