Spying on Digg
One of the most commonly used feature on Digg is Digg Spy, most people are using it as a way to see what stories people are submitting, digging, burying and commenting on. Digg Spy is great for all of those things, but it can do a lot more for you.
Building relationships
One of your goals maybe to get stories promoted to the Digg homepage. Digg has a friends feature where you can befriend people in hopes that they will friend you back and also digg all of your submissions. If you are looking for active members who are compulsive diggers and digg tons of stories within minutes, Digg Spy is a great way to find them. Every once in a while you may see a user just digg 10 stories within a few minutes which means he/she usually diggs based on the title and description and does not read the story. If your goal is to get stories you submit promoted to the homepage, the Digg user you just spied on might be a good friend to have.
Spotting the crap
With Digg Spy you can see which stories are being buried in real time. If you leave Digg Spy open for 30 or so minutes you can spot a pattern of which stories users feel are crap. This is a great way to learn what not to submit.
Hot topics
With hundreds of stories hitting the homepage on a weekly basis sometimes it is hard to figure out what Digg users like. Yes, we all know Digg users like Google and hate Microsoft, but what about the other less common topics that they love such as Ubuntu. Digg Spy can help you notice more patterns like this which can help improve your odds of success when you submit a story.
There are many other ways to get this information from Digg, but Digg Spy is a quick and easy way. Give it a try and dig deep into it, you might be surprised at the kind of information you can learn by spying.
Enjoy the post? Here are some more that may interest you.
Trackbacks (0)
There are no trackbacks for this post yet.
Reader Comments (6)
- Friedbeef, December 11, 2006
-
Yeah - I love Digg Spy myself. The dynamic display of new more than anything else... it's better than CNN at times :)
- Super Des, December 12, 2006
-
With Digg Spy v2 you can spy (in real-time) on all site-wide activity.
You choose what you want to spy on ?جø¬? In the upper right corner of Spy are four checkboxes. These checkboxes represent the type of activities you can spy on:
- The new page icon spies on newly submitted or promoted stories.
- The thumbs up icon spies on newly dugg stories.
- The thumbs down icon spies on stories as they are being buried/reported.
- The message icon spies on new comments posted to a story.
- GreenLantern, December 12, 2006
-
Where can I get Digg Spy V2? Is it out yet?
- Neil Patel, December 12, 2006
- Andy Beard, December 13, 2006
-
I honestly still find Digg useless, even when submitting stories which in theory are the kind of content Digg users would like. Unless you have an established network of friends, or nudge a few people directly to take a look at a story you submitted, the chances of it going anywhere are slim.
As an example one story I submitted recently.
"Mac User "Drop Microsoft From My Life" New Year Resolution"
I submitted it because I thought it was good.
No Diggs
It seems the only thing that really matters on Digg are friends and influence, not the story content until it is already making waves.
- Neil Patel, December 13, 2006
