What is Digg?

January 30th, 2009

by Amy Stevens Adams

Digg is a social networking website that allows users to post content (blog articles, etc). Once a story has been posted, it can be voted on by the community of readers.
diggicon
digghome Anyone can submit a story to Digg (even your readers, if you haven’t done so already). That being said, most bloggers will submit their own content to Digg. A Blog that has registered an account with Digg will have an archive of their posts, and you can read and vote on them. As you make your way through the Blogosphere, look for the Digg icon on your favorite blogs and vote! Everyone loves to know there thoughts are valued.

How Digg works? Diggs = Popularity. The more diggs a story receives, the more chances it has of appearing on the Digg homepage (a coveted spot). Many bloggers will see a huge influx of traffic when their post is featured on the homepage, known as the “Digg Effect”. As with most community-run sites, Digg is not without it’s faults. According to Wikipedia, about 56% of the Digg Homepage featured articles are posted by the same 100 people, and 25% of the Homepage stories come from a small group of about 20 people.

Conversely, an article can be ‘buried’. The Bury featured was initially installed to allow users to Bury stories that were inaccurate, or spam. However, it has widely been used to get rid of articles covering controversial and hotbed topics.
diggbury
It has been announced that a new algorithm is on it’s way to correct these critical issues.

In the meantime, Digg is a great way to share your story with the world, and (hopefully) get some votes. Most of the blogging software out there offers applications that allow a Digg icon to be placed on your blog. There are two schools of thought about the Digg icons. First, you can place a ‘digg it!’ icon on every one of your blog posts, thereby allowing your readers to continue to vote on their favorite stories (even if substantial time has passed). This allows you to keep an eye on what your readers like (and don’t like), and allows you to taylor your articles more to what is popular.

The second philosophy is that a Voting Icon should only be placed on your most recent article. This allows you to push your current content, and possibly land a spot on the Digg Homepage. It steers your readers to one course of action, and helps to focus your energies. It can also be said that your readers will ignore the Digg Icon if they see it on every one of your pages.

John and I are still undecided as to which direction we will take. As of this writing, we have the icons on every post. As with most things, we will most likely try it for a week or two, then switch to the other method and determine which works best for us.

How to register with Digg? Easy! Click ‘Join Digg” at the top of the Homepage, and follow the registration form on the next page. One tip, use your ‘real’ email address. Digg is tough on accounts that may be viewed as spam.
digg diggregistration
Now that you have an account, start submitting your blogs to be Digged. Click ‘Submit New’ in the top right of the page.

submitnew

You’ll be walked through a two-page submission process. Make sure to spend a couple minutes filling in the title and the description of your content. Remember that you are trying to compel people to click on your story. Look at the example below, that is all potential readers will see of your article, until they click to open it. Grab their attention, make them WANT to read your stuff!
digg-story