3 Common Misconceptions Regarding Digg
There are several misconceptions people have when it comes to content being promoted on Digg. The three main ones, though, pertain to the lifetime of an upcoming story, the number if Diggs required for a story to be promoted, and the number of friends you should have on the site and how you can benefit from that. Here's a look at the actual situation.
1. People generally think that a story has 24 hours of life after which it is dead and cannot be promoted to the front-page of Digg. However, I have seen stories last for much longer than that quite a few times and I have even seen a story that was promoted 5 days after being submitted. Of course this doesn't happen very frequently but it has been known to happen.
2. People think that there is a set number of Diggs you need to get, after which your story is promoted. There is absolutely no set number of Diggs. I have recently seen stories being promoted around 35 Diggs while others don't get promoted even if after 400 Diggs. Story promotion is based on a number of factors, some of which we don't know, but there are a three things that we know. First, one of the things that matters is the number of Diggs you get on a story relative to other stories on Digg and other stories in the specific category you submitted the story to. Second is the speed with which you get those Diggs. And last is the ratio of Diggs to buries that you get on a story.
3. Many people believe this and even I used to believe that the higher the number of friends you have the better your chances of having your content promoted on Digg. It doesn't quite work that way. Up until 2 weeks ago I had around 550 friends and now I have about 150. I removed 400 friends because I realize that these users had either become inactive, had their accounts banned from Digg, or where simply not interested in and not following my submissions. You should only friend people that have similar interests as you and who follow your content (and whose content you enjoy following).
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Reader Comments (11)
- Yuri, June 1, 2007
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Ok, you have 150 friends now. Does it mean your stories are easily promoted now?
Then again, I agree that the best way to add friends is by interest (whose stories you like and who share the same interests).
Cheers.
- HMTKSteve, June 1, 2007
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I removed all of my friends to make the site load faster.
Instead I just bookmark the profile pages of friends I like.
- Muhammad Saleem, June 1, 2007
- Stan Schroeder, June 1, 2007
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@Muhammad: you might remember one of my articles, called the Digg story life cycle, in which I've explained point 2) in great detail. Here's the link if anyone is interested: http://franticindustries.com/blog/2007/01/19/the-digg-story-life-cycle/
As far as your third point is concerned, I think that at this point friends' votes are only making it harder to get to the FP.
- Dharmesh Shah, June 1, 2007
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So, anyone have theories on whether diggs from those on your friends list are discounted (i.e. not weighted as highly as those that are random/non-friends)?
- Cameron Olthuis, June 1, 2007
- Muhammad Saleem, June 2, 2007
- Yuri, June 2, 2007
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Makes sense. If they devalue friend diggs, they have overdone here a tad, because I still want to digg stories, submitted by a couple of people, because they are interesting and relevant to my interests. Oh well.
- Ramzi, June 2, 2007
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Pronet has got to be the biggest advertiser for Digg I've seen... Every third or fourth post has somehting to do with Digg. "Digg this, Digg that" etc.
You like Digg, ok, we got it.
- Allen Stern, June 2, 2007
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Muhammad -- you should write a book about Digg - you clearly understand the system - because every time I visit the home page, you have at least 1 story there, or 2 at some points. Even MrBabyMan doesn't have the "Staying Power" that you do.
- Steve, June 6, 2007
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Digg can sure drive a lot of traffic to a site. It's one of the reason why a lot of sites claim large amounts of users. Almost all of the users come from digg
