Pronet Advertising

Digg's Unknown Social Networking Functionality

Thanks to a tip from Digg top user Karim, I learned that Digg has some social networking capabilities that most users are unaware of. Here's a first look at Digg's referral feature.

I simply surfed to my friends page and clicked the link to invite more friends. Here's what I see:

Send this link to your friends to tell them about Digg. You could stick it on your blog, instant message it, or email it to people. We've even got a handy form below to help you email it.

http://www.digg.com/invitefrom/msaleem

After you send the link your friends will be able to easily register on Digg and they'll automatically have you as a friend. Your name will appear also briefly on the homepage as a recognition that you've added someone and so other people can see what you did. We count someone as added after they've completed registration and they've Dugg at least three stories.

Once your friends have been added you can also see them added in your profile in your stats. Thanks a lot for helping us spread the word about Digg!

The text is accompanied by the following form:

And all the friends that you get to register, will show up as a statistic in your profile, right underneath the number of profile views:

Were you aware of this feature, and have you been using it? If so, what do you think of it?

wesley, March 29, 2007

this is a pretty standard feature.

Stan Schroeder, March 29, 2007

Nice find. It might be, as Wesley says, a standard feature, but I rarely use the 'invite friends' feature in any service, so I've never used it on Digg either. However, the Friend referrals field is cool to have, so I guess it's worth it.

Miles, March 29, 2007

The funny thing is the only time I've used this feature to invite non-Digg users (of course) they were instanly slammed, called names and I'm sure will never use the site again.

We had a cool post about our small company that was starting to move up so I invited a few friends to check it out. They of course dugg the story and left comments but were slammed for being too happy in their comments. It was downhill from there with stuff like 'spammers', 'you paid for this' etc. being thrown out.

We didn't even know the person who wrote the blog post or the person who originally posted the story but the negative impact of having 'new' Digg users vote & comment was really crazy and not very 'social' in nature.

fastlane, March 29, 2007

Hey Muhammad,

It's one of those things you see when you're logged in, but never really pay much attanetion to. At least I hadn't until now. Thanks for the tip...I've already invited 6 of my friends now!

Muhammad Saleem, March 29, 2007

Only if Digg were to make it more obvious, I think most people would take advantage of it. What is most striking for me is the following clause:

"Your name will appear also briefly on the homepage as a recognition that you've added someone and so other people can see what you did."

MG Siegler, March 29, 2007

You mean obvious like this:

http://blog.digg.com/?p=70

ha ha. maybe someone was reading...

Muhammad Saleem, March 29, 2007

What I find ultimately shameful is that I blogged about it a good 3-4 hours before the Digg post, and while the submission linking to the Pronet post was buried, the Digg blog post made it to the front page in less than an hour.

That's democracy for you.

Ken Savage, March 30, 2007

May I say this in the name of Muhammad... NOT!

Chris Spinchange, March 30, 2007

The real question is this, "For how long will it be a 'good thing' to recommend friends to digg.com, before someone or "the crowd" decides it's a 'bad thing?'"

(I'm reminded of the ridiculous "gaming" accusations leveled at the top users last fall -- Evidentially, that straw man's day has now passed...)

allsux, March 31, 2007

I had actually looked forward to posting a neat little discovery of mine on Digg. However, 24 hours later I found myself amazed at how Digg allowed another user to steal content from my site and promote it despite my objections and their own policies: http://digg.com/offbeatnews/DiggcomViolatesDiggcomsTermsof_Service

For the original story, and full sequence of events, you can see my posts at: http://www.allsux.com

As a newish blogger i have to admit that seeing my story get 15 Diggs while a stolen duplicate got over 5,000 was incredibly disheartening. Not that it matters much at this point but this was my original Digg post: http://digg.com/environment/GoogledirectionsfromWashingtonDCtoLondonEnglandBushmeetBlair

It may not have been as flashy as the one that stole my content, but really, should that matter? I posted a story, Digg has rules against plagiarism, these were violated, and I was banned for complaining. How does does any of this make any sense?

A Disheartened Blogger,

http://www.allsux.com

allsux, March 31, 2007

Well darn, I guess I am a n00b after all. Half of those links don't work, at least not on IE (which is what I use). Anyway, all of the relevant links concerning my original post, the copied version, my complaint to Digg and my subsequent unwarranted ban are accessible from http://www.allsux.com ... I would really like to hear some feedback and/or comments on both this and/or my own page.

Thanks for tuning in :)

Sreejith, April 1, 2007

Hey, I knew this feature all along. Its not "unknown"> I remember using this feature to invite my next door buddy to Digg. :)