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Do the Digg: Thinking like Todd Malicoat and Neil Patel on the Social Networking ServiceJan 10 2007 | Social Networks |
It’s a pretty universal truth in the industry that Todd and Neil are two very highly regarded experts on Digg. I’ve taken the liberty to write a little about what they’ve discussed in a recent WebProNews video interview about how Digg should be leveraged as a community tool with my own feedback.
Digg is a community tool — and that community is strong.
There’s an obvious trend about why a lot of Digg items are “buried” (and rightfully so in such cases): some folks submit everything on their sites to Digg for purposes of monetization. However, the Digg community will notice that — by banning domains, and in some instances, the backlash could be extremely damaging.
If you’re looking for monetization, there are ways to do so — though it’s not an immediate process of submitting all your site’s content to Digg. Instead, it’s a matter of building a trust profile. Todd estimates that if three of your stories hit the front page, you’re in the top 1% of users. This profile itself can take a few months to develop and entails more than just submitting articles that may not be of any interest to others — it entails community involvement, interaction, commenting, and Digging stories that are relevant and interesting to you. Further, it is helpful to actually focus on a particular industry. Over time, you can be considered an expert in a certain area.
It helps to network with people and become their friends, thereby having them notice you and getting your story Dugg by more users. Neil mentions that there’s also a caveat to this tactic: many people join Digg crews, but the Digg algorithm detects patterns that can negatively affect the time (and amount of Diggs) your story takes to make the front page. A story that would normally need 30 Diggs, for example, might take 50. Therefore, you shouldn’t necessarily just Digg a story because your friend on a regular basis — the algorithm can catch on and those votes will be less effective.
The algorithm is acknowledged to have been modified at a very rapid pace; Todd says this is even better than major search engines. Personally, I feel that to appease those who have been left in the cold, there’s still a long way for Digg to go. Being that it is a social community, Digg’s staff (they’re human, aren’t they?) has an obligation to address outstanding concerns.
But despite this, Digg appears to be the leader in technology. However, there are other social networks that are also popular. The main players, according to Neil, are del.icio.us and Netscape (which is more politics-centric), with Reddit coming shortly behind due to its plus-or-minus rating system.
Ultimately, it is suggested that while Digg might be the leader in tech, other social networks will slowly take away some of Digg’s traffic and evolve into different verticals, much like Deals.com has done where it focuses exclusively on deals.
So while Digg is hot right now, I suppose we should expect some changes in the upcoming months.
Posted by Tamar Weinberg at 3:45 pm
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January 10th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Tamar- this is a great read. I am glad you thought it through!
January 10th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Thanks Tamar, this was very interesting. I think I am one of the few people left who would rather read something than watch the video
January 11th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Hey Ask Guy —
I actually agree with you — there’s a lot more flexibility in reading than there is in watching a video. I blogged about desiring to read rather than watch elsewhere too.
January 13th, 2007 at 2:30 am
Interesting analysis.
While I disagree with you and Neil about the eventual demise of digg, I wanted to speculate about Digg’s creators obligation to accomodate users and address user’s concerns.
Are they really obligated, per se?
I am not sure they are… it’s their site, they are turning a significant profit; techy geek people will always be around. What do you think?
January 13th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Neil didn’t really speculate the “demise” of Digg — that was mostly me, though I don’t think I’d be using the word “demise” for it. The speculation from them was more about Digg and its competitors going into different verticals, which seems to be a natural path. If SEO articles, for example, are being disallowed on Digg, there should be an alternative site where they are welcome, don’t you think?
I would say that it is their site, but if they want to keep their users happy, the most important thing that they need to do is LISTEN. We see MyBlogLog founders commenting on this blog all the time in terms of issues and how they can be improved. Now that’s good customer service. Digg might think they’re getting better, but you can always take one step forward and two steps backwards — and that’s where I think they may end up failing.
January 13th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
I agree about SEO articles.
Perhaps digg has its niche, and as this form of media becomes more mainstream, their marketshare will decrease.
Luckily the guys behind digg are the type to listen to their users, and I’m excited to see what comes up in 2007.
January 13th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
I guess that I end up saying “to each his own” in terms of how they do “listen” to their users. A lot of folks are a little disgruntled by Digg’s stance on banning submissions from whole domains — and their staff has not fully addressed that to all users’ satisfaction.
As referenced in the above article, we’ve covered a bit of that before, and I haven’t seen any change with how this issue is handled, nor have I seen any Digg staffers reply to these particular concerns. I’m sure a few people would appreciate a more personal reaction from Digg, that’s for sure. I guess at this point the priority is money rather than user satisfaction. But perhaps I am wrong; I just haven’t been convinced otherwise.
I’ve also emailed Digg in the past and the replies I have received have left a bitter taste in my mouth. Even writing “thanks for using Digg” would make me appreciate the service more. But I don’t see that. I personally barely use it anymore. Digg allows the community to have too strong a bias (which is fine in some instances) yet it doesn’t address major flaws with this system. A staff that oversees abuse should actually do something in terms of addressing that abuse.
Then again, that’s just me. And I know I’m not alone — but I’m probably not in the majority either.