Posts Tagged ‘Digg’
This Is What Will Destroy The New Digg
Adam Sherk is a Search/PR Strategist for Define Search Strategies. Adam helps news and content sites with enterprise SEO, audience development and social media programs. This post originally appeared on AdamSherk.com.
The new Digg has gotten a lot of attention for the opportunities it creates for publishers (see ReadWriteWeb and BlueGlass for details). First and foremost is the ability to create official profiles and automatically submit content, which publishers are hoping will turn Digg into a friendlier place for mainstream media. But how will users respond to the new format? Do they want to follow and interact with specific media sites? Or will publisher profiles end up full of self-submitted stories with only one digg (their own)?
Now that the alpha version has been going for a while I thought Id take a look at how news organizations are faring thus far. Using the new Find Profiles page (it is behind the alpha sign-in wall so I cant link to it) I went through the World News and Business categories to look for major news sites.
Here is the reported data on 30 media profiles, ranked by number of followers (as of 8/4/10):
The New York Times has the most followers with The Wall Street Journal and BBC News close behind. Currently only seven of the 30 sites have crossed 2,000 followers but The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and USA Today are getting close.
You have to feel for The Economist, Chicago Tribune and United Press International down at the bottom of the pack. Youd think UPI could at least attract a follower or two from its own organization. To be fair though there are quite a few other profiles in the World News category with few or no followers that did not make the table. (For example Phoenix New Times, WGNTV and Seattle Weekly all have 0 followers as of today).
I did not see a main profile for Fox News in the World News section, but they do have a profile in the Business section (foxbusiness). In cross checking against the news sites in my posts on Twitter impact and Facebook Page valuation I also did not see Digg profiles for Newsweek, ABC News, AP, NPR, PBS, The Financial Times or The Guardian. I couldnt find them through Diggs internal search either; if Ive missed one or there are other major news site profiles that you are aware of please let me know.
Some additional notes:
1) It is not clear yet how well using an RSS feed to automatically submit articles is working. In going through the various profiles I saw a lot of submissions with just one digg. It will be interesting to see if sites that auto-submit in volume will end up drowning out the select articles from their site each day that have a better chance of attracting diggs.
2) I did not include sites from the Technology category but several in that group have attracted decent followings including Engadget (24,011 followers), Gizmodo (17,546) Mashable (14,528), Wired (9,695) and Ars Technica (7,724). While it is not surprising that tech sites are doing well it is encouraging that some of the top mainstream news sites above fall within in the middle of this group.
3) Of the publisher profiles examined, only CNN and USA Today had not yet been customized with logos and/or descriptive text. Compare the CNN profile to Time:
4) Forbes has opted to create quite a few additional profiles covering various sections and topics, as shown in this partial list:
This may help to attract more followers overall since users will be able to drill down on the specific topics that they are interested in. But there is also a risk that Forbes will spread itself too thin and weaken the value of its main profile.
5) NBC is also taking a multi-profile approach to target specific markets, for example:
The market-specific logos all match so this appears to be a coordinated effort.
The Diggergate Scandal
Story broke yesterday earlier morning of a underground Digg conspiracy group that called themselves: Digg Patriots. The purpose of the group was to work together and deliberately vote down specific users story submissions and comments that appeared to be Left-Leaning politically. In essence breaking Digg rules.
Background
A writer who goes by the name oleoleolson broke the story (which I have titled, Diggergate) on AlterNets blog with great detail. I for one would like to applaud Mr. OleOleOlson for some great undercover work. You should really apply for the Chris Hansens position at Dateline when he retires. Screenshots, quotes, facts, and usernames; I havent seen one report that accuses this is a false report.
Id also have to applaud the Digg Patriots (let the negative comments start.now). Regardless of their reasons for their actions, the well thought out plan, the network, the behind the scenes actions; it kind of reminds me of the Mafia. To be honest, what they did is no different than any other party that influences news sources to censor what the public is hearing. Ultimately to hide their misfortunes or benefit from someone elses publicly displayed misfortunes. It happens ALL the time in mainstream media. They will do anything to get ahead. In the end, it doesnt make it right though.
Think Again
If you think this is the only group that is out there you are probably mistaken. I dont have any proof but I can probably bet my wifes wedding ring that their are others out there. More will pop up, and this is, more than likely, not the end for the Digg Patriots. Right now they are scheming to stay a live. Sure this is a blow to them but they will probably lay low for a couple months, wait for the dust to settle and comeback. Meanwhile, Leftist will be trying to make headway into the network and other networks to take a strong hold.
To most, this is no big news and could probably give a crap. Everybody has a motive for why they are power users on Digg or other socially media news outlets. Even MrBabyMan has his reasons. But also, my guess would be MrBabyMan didnt even bat an eye about the news of being targeted by this group. He probably even chuckled a bit.
Ugh.. Mashable
Mashable seems to think this is a major black eye for the social media giant Kevin Rose built. I was pretty shocked to find that Mashables report on Diggergate was very opinionated and forth coming about how the new Digg v4 should be released soon to prevent this type of action. Also, the damaging quote that Digg is easily gamed didnt sit well with me. After all what Digg users have given you Mashable? Tons of Diggs and tons of traffic and you want to single out Digg as the only social news site that is gamed? You see that share button on your posts? Each one of those sharing links are sites that are easily gamed and are being gamed as we speak. Please do not give the appearance that Digg is the only site that has this trouble.
How to fix it?
Digg, you have come up with a great algorithm to determine which articles go popular and which ones dont. No one has cracked it and no one should. Suggestion: make the bury action a part of the algorithm. If its an article that is getting a lot of diggs AND also a lot of buries, maybe it would be great front page topic of discussion. This would prevent a mass group from doing a mass bury because then it could actually HELP the Digg submission in some instances. Obviously, if a submission has no diggs and has an abundance of buries, then this could be determined as a spam submission and then let it be buried away off the site.
Id be curious to know what other people think; how would you fix it?
In the end
I have the overwhelming feeling that the power users involved probably dont care. I also have the feeling that the power users uninvolved dont care either.
The whole thing doesnt really mean anything. It wont change much and things will continue to go on. anonymous power user
Just like any other scandal that happens in politics, this will pass. People forget and it will still happen or they will find other ways. Who knows this could be the best thing that happened to Digg. Bad press could be turned around to their advantage.
Digg Closes New Account Registration. New Digg Is Nigh.
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*** UPDATE: Close, but not this weekend according to Digg. ***
Either Digg hates new users or were about to see the changeover to Digg v4.0.
As of this morning, new account registration has closed for Digg. Attempting to create an account yields this message:
There has been much speculation about the New Digg. Unlike most changes and rollouts, Digg has been very forthcoming with information, offering Alpha and limited pre-Alpha testing to get feedback. The only information that has been held back has been the answer to the question, When.
It is unlikely that Digg would want to keep new people from registering for longer than a week or two, so we expect to see an upcoming weekend rollout of v4.0. The traffic and load on the site is considerably lower on weekends and would be a good time for stress-testing, bug fixing, and managing feedback.
Expect to see a new version of Digg in the very near future.
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