DIGG Effect

Eric Enge has wrote very good article about succes on digg. Some of details he presents my be not true at the moment, because DIGG evolves and changes internal algorithms. However some facts are really interesting.

As he says, stories that where able to reach the digg home page receive an average of 129 links, and more than 10,000 visitors in an hour. Some stories have brought even more than 1,000 links and 100,000 visitors. This shows how important DIGG is and why there are so many legend and so much attention from SEOs. So it has happened many times that stories which have made the home page, have brought the server of the story site can’t handle the traffic load. This is well known phenomena is known as the “Digg Effect”.

Of cause the quality of this kind of visitors is “bad”. Don’t expect that they will by your products and click Ads. Do not expect big growth in comments, DIGG users often comment regarding a site on digg itself instead of on the dugg website. Digg users comes to see only that what they would inspect in the story description on DIGG itself.

I don’t wanna be a Digger

So after reading several articles about how to success on DIGG i realized that it would take very very very much time. So as every body know time is money, but moreover time is life! In my opinion the truly success on DIGG starting from null will deserve much to much time in comparison to the revenue.
Personally I don’t have much time and will not spend it to fullish site like DIGG, voting for silly topics of US tanagers So at the moment and I think also in the future will not spend much time on DIGG or other communities.

I mean isn’t it better to spend time to create wonderful content? It would give you personal much more satisfaction than any DIGG effect. But however good content have in any case good chance to achieve one DIGG effect after another!
So by by DIGG, may others vote for my content, I will not spend my life for Digging

P.S. It doesn’t mean i will not continue submitting my articles to it

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Currently I’m the number 49 of top users of the Russian DIGG sister called news2.ru, therefore I think to have some experience and some kind of instinctive feeling for mechanisms we have on that page. News2.ru is a typical example of social news-driven page and is quite similar to DIGG. Therefore my experience can be useful also for DIGG users and other similar Web2.0 sites.

Success factors of digging

As I think there a only two main factors your success (success of your submissions) depends on. That are the quality of your stories and friendship. Yes only them two and some sub issues its quite simple. Such an statement my appear as vague for you, therefore I’ll try to be more concrete.

High quality stories

High quality stories are known as:

• unique
• unusual
• very actual
• interesting for everybody

That are primary properties on successful story. Now you may think that the appreciation of these attributes is highly subjective, that is partly true. However everyone can achieve good objectivity by analysing the actuality of post. E.g. U.S. President election is quite actual at the moment, Cold War maybe not. However with some experience thee appraisal of these properties will get better and better. I can say I began to feel what kind of stories can reach the TOP.

To be actual and have many stories to choose, it is recommended to subscribe to RSS feeds of news portal of your wish or several of them. If your social-community portal presents websites statistic , you are well advised to study it and chose some with the best success rate.

So what to do? How to begin? The answer is clear too, you just have to star and play a bit around. If you are non completely new in the field of social news community, then you just can’t leave this step out. However as already mentioned the success factor of your news will grow with experience.

It is difficult to provide some examples of good or bad news, because it’s highly depends on the time context and also other things like presentation! Presentation is one of the sub factors I wanna say some words about:

• Always use pictures! Choose them with care.
• Use headlines that magnify attention (Compare: “Microsoft considers to by some Yahoo shares” vs. “Microsoft takes over Yahoo!”)
• But use headlines that are precisely express what is in the content behind them. Otherwise your messages can be considered as spam or inaccurate.
• Be aware of duplicates
• The content at it self should be good presented and layout carefully. Don’t write to much, but try to make your link sexy. Don’t lie.
• Use the right category!

Doing so you will create solid and high potential submissions, and you has learned this, the second factor comes to a play which helps enormously to use the potential of your submissions.

Friendship

If in the beginning of your “career” maybe non of your messages reach the top, at a master level the rate of your positive submissions can rise up to 50-99 percent (depending on social service and other factors). But this success is only possible with a active circle of friends!

How to get friends on social communities? You should be able to answer this question at your-self, because it is not much different as in the real life. Friendship grounds on mutuality and deserve much time. Decide for yourself whether you are ready for it. However gaining new friends is in any case new experience and enrichment for everyone.

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At first look on Yahoo Buzz we see several categories of news and voting buttons aside of them with the ability to voting up. Digg principle so far. The difference of the new Yahoo service is that Yahoo Buzz seemed to be intended to work closely with Yahoo’s already existing news providers and services. I don’t see a way appear in for users to interact with the Yahoo Buzz content other than voting it up.

That principle is complete different to to Digg.com concept, where every user can submit the content. So I don’t know whether this can compete to the digg.com popularity. My fear is that people will find it boring to vote up only (except they believe to change the world)!

I think the main advantage of digg.com lies not in the possibility to vote up somebody’s content, but in the ability to share own content! That is maybe not so clear for you, when you are not experienced digger. However web masters and bloggers are highly interested to promote their content, digg.com provide them a good possibility for it. That is natural to vote up other content if you wish that somebody votes for your content too. Therefore the concept of friendship is so important on digg like sites. I don’t know which percentage of digg users has own website? But it think it will be over 80%. Does Yahoo don’t target this auditory???

I think that the Yahoo Buzz in the current version is only first step in this direction. Of cause Yahoo Buzz can’t be a competitor to digg.com at this stage, consequently next step of Yahoo people should be a some concept of allowing every user to submit their favorite content!

But we will see how it comes.

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