Digging Out

When I started this blog I did not realize that I was painting myself into a corner by focusing on Digg. I had many plans for the Digg Coach but have now decided to take a different path.

I will no longer be updating this blog but will, instead, be opening up another one of my blogs as a TV/Social Networking blog.

Within the next week I will be changing my blog, Arabelle's Alley, into focusing on TV as well as Social Networking. I invite you to join me there.

Thank you.

Top Diggers

The Digg world was in disarray this week.

As you may be aware, Digg recently tweaked the algorithm it uses to determine which stories make the front page. This might not seem like a big deal to most, but some of the top Diggers were up in arms and staged what they referred to as a near “revolt”. Several of the top Diggers expressed concerns that the new algorithm makes it more difficult for their submitted stories to make it to the front page, amounting to what they construe as punishment for their success.

Its been estimated that approximately 30-50% of the top stories on Digg are submitted by top Diggers. As such, many of the top diggers feel that they have “built this site from the ground up” and are mulling a move over to other social news networks such as reddit and mixx.com"

Digg Submissions

"A while ago people would submit every story they wrote to Digg. Not just to get it voted up, but because "just being on Digg" was apparently good for SEO. I wasn't always convinced of this but I heard it so much I started to believe there might be something in it. Still, I didn't follow the practice.

Fast forward a little while and Digg reorganizes the way pages are generated, particularly where member profiles are concerned. One of the effects of this was that fewer pages per story were created, and the knock on effect was fewer links just for being on the site.

Now today I get a question from a reader who has been following commentary about a social media marketing video that is doing the rounds that recommends you submit stories to Digg just because Digg has great pagerank."

For All Diggers

"The issue has been building up for a few weeks now. It’s taboo, of course, to discuss Digg.com in a negative light, but there have been “closed-door” secret meetings amongst diggers recently. Via GTalk, it’s a hot topic among active diggers. A couple of weeks ago, Tamar Weinberg posted Why Nobody Should Buy Digg. It details some of the circumstances behind recent bannings and the apparent turnaround in how Digg handles them. In short, they don’t. If you’re banned, Digg won’t talk to you. They won’t talk to anyone else about you.

Regardless of how many hours (days?) you put into Digg or how many great stories you contributed over that time, if you get banned, you no longer exist. The question is, why?"

Top Digg Words

"Digg,a social networking Top 40 of what people are reading, can make a campaign or idea go viral. Want some advice on how to wire your Digg posts for tippability. An analysis below of the top 25 words of Digg from Corporate Rants (overall hint -it it's new or you have an exclusive , it will hunt)."

Digg Comments

"Although the general opinion ofl Digg faithful can't be judged based on comments on one story, can it be said that there is a Digg revolt in the works that is led by a group of individuals who are fed up with Ron Paul stories, crazy videos and a broken comment system?

If the comments on that story are to be believed, a revolt could happen.

As one commenter put, "I think Digg has been the social site that went downhill the most in 2007." Is it true? Did Digg really go downhill in 2007? Obviously, I tend to disagree with this sentiment and I truly believe that Digg was the best social destination of the year. But why have so many disagreed?

Consider these comments on the Digg page (all of them highly dugg by fellow members)"

Digging Ajaxonomy

"If you have been using the popular service Digg you know that it is very easy to submit a story and to see it start to gain traction just to be buried into the dark abyss. What I find particularly frustrating is that you don't know how many people buried the story and the reason for the bury. If you have seen Digg Spy you have noticed that the application does show buries, but you can't just track data for a particular story.

After much frustration Ajaxonomy is now releasing a Bury Recorder application. How the application works is you take the story's URL (This is the URL of the page that the "more" link on the Digg upcoming/popular pages takes you or the page that clicking on the story title takes from your profile i.e. http://digg.com/[story]) and put it into the application and once you click "Watch for Buries" the application will start recording any buries that the story receives."