Posts Tagged ‘new 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.
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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The New Digg: What It Means For Energy Users & Publishers
Power Users on Digg
Up till now, the definition of a “power user” on Digg has been someone with the ability to make stories popular simply by submitting content or “digging” it up. There was also a lot of back-scratching that happened behind the scenes among both power users and publishers: ‘You digg my content, I’ll digg yours.’ Digg has attracted a lot of criticism in the past for these practices inside its community.
Simply put, Digg’s power users wielded a lot of power because they dictated which publishers got pushed onto the Digg homepage. Digg is a large source of traffic for publishers, particularly tech news publications. In the past, tech sites like Ars Technica and Engadget have received a hugely disproportionate number of Digg frontpages, compared to other tech sites, since they were favored by power users.
With the new Digg, publishers may opt in to having their articles auto-submitted to Digg via RSS feed. But will this stop the gaming?
How The New Digg Affects Power Users
We spoke to Digg power user JD Rucker, a.k.a. oboy on Digg, to discuss the impact of Digg’s changes on his community.
Rucker recently wrote a post entitled The New Digg: A Shift in the Balance of Power, which argued that “the new Digg will make many current ‘power users’ impotent” but also create opportunities for new types of power users.
In an interview with ReadWriteWeb, JD Rucker explained that “rather than submit [articles], current long-time power users will be able to expose content that they like through their Diggs.”
The idea, said Rucker, is that the power users who succeed at attracting followers will become “tastemakers” – which is the term Digg founder Kevin Rose used when he announced the new Digg in May.
What Happens Behind The Scenes
Many people aren’t aware of the amount of “gaming the system” which goes on in the social Web. I consider myself fairly naive about a lot of it. But I know this much: despite the altruistic front of many successful people in the social Web, many of them have gamed their way to the top.
The following is how JD Rucker explained how Digg’s power users will (or won’t) adjust to the new Digg. It also reveals the power games that are played on the site:
“They [power users] can still network via IM and control publisher accounts to keep themselves relevant, but the vast majority will fail miserably because they won’t be able to adjust to the new algo[rithm].
They’ll spam, spam, and spam some more until they either give up and move on to other sites or abort operations altogether.
Others are already planning on leaving.
The “savvy” ones who have built-up networks not reliant on IM, [and] who will also have access to multiple and/or strong publisher accounts, will soar.”
I asked Rucker what he meant by “control publisher accounts.” He replied with this generic example: “Bob Power User, who is getting paid by RandomDiggDependentSite.com, is currently using his and his team’s power user accounts to submit.” Rucker described this as “a small cottage industry.”
That’s right, some power users control publisher Digg accounts. This practice will continue on the new Digg.
A Whole New Ballgame: Let The Games Begin…
We like to write about how wonderful the social Web is and how it has improved society and business. That’s certainly true, but the Web is also big business, and it is ruthlessly gamed by many social media ‘pundits’ and publishers alike. The new Digg is partly an attempt to clean up some of that on its site by preventing its power users from controlling the submission of content.
JD Rucker stated in his post that the new Digg showed “guts” because it is such a big change. I agree. The new Digg cleverly mimics Twitter and Facebook, becoming a place where you can ‘follow’ influencers and publishers to get your daily news fix. What’s more, power users now have the opportunity to attract large followings, which is a chance for some of them to become influential personalities.
However, the new Digg won’t stop the games of power users and the publishers who glom onto them. There’s too much (online) power and money at stake. It’s game on again!
Follow ReadWriteWeb on the new Digg