• Comments:2 Comments
• Category:FAIL, Social Media

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

Many of the top diggers have avoided it altogether recently, as the APOD-race can get brutal.  If someone pushes the submit button the second it is live, copies and pasts the title and description, hits the category, and gets the captcha on the first try, then scrolls down past the potential duplicates, there will still be one or two other people who are able to post the picture.  As long as they push submit before the first person is done, they are in.

Submitted 3 times too

There is another flaw.  The LAST person to submit it gets their submission listed on the “Digg This” button, not the first.  It would almost be wisest to click submit, wait a couple of minutes, change the headline a little bit, and post last instead of first.

It’s an easy fix.  In a scenario where multiple people are submitting the same URL, Digg could lock it out after the final step by the first submitter.  In other words, when the subsequent submitters are on the “check for duplicates” page, if they story is posted even a second before, when they push the last button to submit it, it takes them to the “Cool, this story has already been submitted” page.

Submitted 2 Times

1 URL should equal 1 submission.  Period.

Read more Digg analysis on this blog.