Submitted to Digg by SirPopper, vigilante1, RedIbisMocks and many many others 11/7/2008 and every other day.
The Astronomy Picture of the Day has been an amazing and anticipated thing for some time now. NASA posts 1 image at 9:00 PM pst every night, give or take 5 minutes. The images are normally stunning and are absolutely unique to the post in almost every circumstance.
It is one of the most Diggable pieces of regular content on the Internet. There are a couple of problems, though, that make it miss sometimes. First, the timing - dozens of top users know exactly when it will be posted. Second, the place - the URL string is date-stamped, so it can be anticipated when it will be posted.
Submitted 3 times
Read more…
With all the power that social media has to drive traffic, doesn’t it make sense that they should put more emphasis on driving traffic to stories that inform about issues and offer ways for people to help? On the surface, the question seems like a no-brainer, but as we explored the subject further and discussed it with other users, challenges started popping up.
Charity has never been a strong point of social media. The concept that drives most of these sites is that they display current events and the opinions surrounding them submitted by users and voted to the front page by the community. With politics and technology issues dominating the popular sections of most social news sites, it makes sense that philanthropic stories get very little play.
When I wrote an article about Social Media Power and how sites like Digg, Reddit, Slashdot, StumbleUpon, Newsvine, NowPublic, and Yahoo! Buzz could do more for the world, I placed too much emphasis on how these sites themselves could contribute to society. My mistake: it’s the users who are better positioned to help. They just need a little push in the right direction and incentives from the sites themselves. Read more…
When looking at the last 500 front page stories on Digg, the top 10 submitters controlled a mind-boggling 31.4% (157 out of 500). Some of the names on the list are regulars on the front page. A few have found new success using the new Digg Recommendation Engine.
This is not an accusation placed on anyone on the list. It is unlikely that anyone is intentionally gaming the new system in any way. Several have started submitting a higher volume of content, but this is definitely nothing that can be considered “gaming the system”.
The system, it appears, games itself.
Using the Neoformix Digg Explorer, we sorted by Users and looked at the results of the top submitters.
As of the time of this posting, here are the top submitters for the last 500 front page stories as well as their total front page submissions during that time: (UPDATE: The names have been removed, as these users have done nothing wrong)
- 42
- 23
- 15
- 14
- 12
- 12
- 11
- 10
- 8
- 8
The recommendation engine is new and will have flaws. Still, one of the goals of the Digg algorithm is to promote diversity. With such an infinitesimal number of submitters controlling the front page, is there any room for the rest of the users?
* * *
Read more Analysis of Digg on this blog or visit one of our benefactors at Automotive SEO.
