I’ve written several times over the past month about the new Digg. First I wondered if the new Digg was just a faster version of Twitter and I also explained why Digg won’t (and shouldn’t) change.

Last week the big Digg news was around a few images of Digg’s stats published by Hitwise. Many bloggers posted the graphics in hope of hitting the Digg frontpage and many said that the drop in traffic was because the Digg users left the site after the recent changes. My belief is that the traffic is down because of issues with Digg’s inbound SEO traffic. Andy Beard has a good look at the SEO changes that may have resulted in Digg’s lower traffic. I still believe aggregators like Digg don’t belong in Google – just the source content should be in Google.

How much do you think it costs to get a story to the Digg frontpage? I’m not talking about the blogs that have big enough Digg loyalty (or a default slot) that can get their content to the Digg frontpage on their own. I am talking about the sites and brands that have to pay a “consultant” for a push on Digg.

Earlier this month I received the email below from a pretty high ranking Digg user.  For a fee of $150, the firm guarantees they will get my content to the Digg frontpage. If they can’t get it to the frontpage, I don’t pay. I wonder with this most recent traffic hit, will the cost drop to say $100?

It’s good to know they will make sure the content is “Digg-worthy” and not just promote anyone who pays the fee. I have removed the contact info because it’s not important for this discussion.

Its every bloggers dream to get his post featured on Digg’s front page, but its sad to see that most of them get less than one digg on their submissions. The top 100 Diggers were lucky as they started early, but today its not a wise strategy to go about building a powerful Digg profile organically with the help of influence. Firstly its very time consuming and if Digg ever gets to know that your self promoting, you’ll risk loosing all your hard work.

My solution for this was to swap diggs with other diggers looking to promote their submissions, I started to build my network by investing hours everyday and within just two weeks I had a network big enough to take my blog viral in almost every platform, at that moment I felt that this was possible by everyone and anyone, but I realized my mistake in a few days, when I had to spend hours doing social votes for others.

The success with this doesn’t only depend on the number of Digg’s but the type of content you deliver, no matter how much you pay us, the content is what we consider first.

You can send us your link to this mail and we’ll review it, it must not be old and the content must be solid to make it work out, if we fail to take it to the front page then we’ll surely give you a refund.

If we fail to take it to the front page then we’ll surely give you a refund.

Payment: $150

Find more stories about: Digg, Social News

Yesterday I posted some of my comments about the new Digg site along with a video from several of the top digg users (aka power diggers).  I took some time out of my coding session to take a deeper look at the new Digg. What I found is that many of the elements of the new Digg mirror those on Twitter (and to a lesser extent Facebook). I can say that Digg loads much faster than Twitter and is a lot more polished on the user interface side (something Twitter really needs to fix).

Interestingly, when I visit both Mashable and NextWeb today, both are pushing huge banners to get their readers to follow them on Digg. This follows the same pattern as with the launches of Google Buzz and, earlier, Twitter. Both publishers are defaults on the new Digg and my guess is that we will see continued pumpage (from a good number of publishers) as long as Digg provides the same traffic burst as they did previously. Since these publishers are defaults for new users, they should see an even larger increase in traffic as more of their stories reach (and dominate) the home page (see below for more on this topic).

Let’s take a look at some of the core concepts on Twitter and the new Digg to see where the similarities exist.

Following/Followers

This is the core concept of Twiter – after you setup an account, you can choose to follow people/brands/bots and other people/brands/bots can choose to follow you as well. Digg is using the same verbiage in their newly-released service.

Suggested User Lists (what I call “Default Users”)

When someone writes the book about how Twitter rose to fame, the book can be written in two words (way less than 140 characters). Those two words are Default Users. It was a brilliant move by Twitter (I’m serious). By pimping a select group of users on the new service, it allowed new users to start with content on their page. It also allowed a group of people and blogs to generate massive numbers of followers which resulted in huge traffic and big cash money deals. (we can argue about whether the number of followers equals influence another day) And those traffic numbers helped get the media conversation about Twitter going.

When Twitter launched their default user list, many of the users who helped build the service and were heavy users of the service were left off the list. The same elements make up the Digg suggested user list.

Some fun and interesting notes about the suggested user list on Digg:

• Being active on Digg means nothing as nearly every default user is just auto-publishing with no comments or non-site diggs
• Mashable has 7 feeds as defaults
• Techcrunch isn’t listed as a top default but writer MG Sigler is (might actually be better this way for potential traffic) – Techcrunch is listed as a default in the Tech category. They did add the Digg widget to the blog today so perhaps that might help get them to the top default page?
• iJustine gets a top slot without any community participation – guess she brought Kevin Rose some cupcakes?
• Leo Laporte is listed 3rd – right behind founder Kevin Rose and the Telegraph newspaper. I thought Leo quit social media last week?

Update: within 10 hours of my posting, Techcrunch is now listed as a top default user – that didn’t take long!

This afternoon CEO Kevin Rose has addressed several issues regarding the new site. Regarding the default list, he notes, “Our directory of recommended users will eventually open to the entire world. We will sort users, not on popularity (followers), but based on how good you are at finding/digging content (similar to wefollow.com). This will remove the popularity contest and put the focus on quality diggers.” If he follows the Twitter pattern, he will keep the current list long enough to allow the publishers and friends to get enough followers that changing the list will have no effect whatsoever (just like on Twitter). I am afraid his plan may backfire and hope he considers this issue before it gets too big to fix.

Scraped Feeds

No, no, I’m not talking about the Scraper® here. I am talking about how 99.9% of publishers post links to all of their stories on Twitter. And now Digg allows publishers to do the same thing. On Digg this is called the, “RSS-Fed Autosubmit”. My guess is Digg wasn’t seeing enough content published per day so this option should increase the traffic on Digg. On the top digger podcast, the publishing of entire feeds was probably the biggest topic of discussion. Everyone on the call said they were against this and I agree. I think it’s fine on Twitter but not on Digg. But don’t look for any of the default sites to remove their feeds anytime soon as the traffic burst will be too great to even consider removing the auto submissions (I can’t blame them).

Here’s an example of the auto-submissions on both Twitter and Facebook using the blog Mashable (a default user on both services):

One of the gripes top digger Muhammed Saleem was concerned about is the ability to get “non-mainstream” news any visibility on the new Digg. If we take a look at the popular top news technology section, here’s the breakdown of the 15 top stories by publisher (I left out the in-stream ad):

• Wired – 3
• Mashable – 3
• Ars Technica – 3
• Engadget – 3
• Twit – 2
• Nextweb – 1

For reference, all of these sites are default/suggested publishers. And all of these publishers are auto-publishing all stories to Digg. As these publishers add more followers from their Digg freebies, the percentage of their stories that hit the homepage will go up while any other publishers and/or users will be drowned out. I wonder if CEO Kevin Rose considered this issue. Maybe Muhammed is right…

Diggs vs. Retweets

Digg allows you to vote for stories you like — Twitter lets you retweet stories you like. If a story gets enough votes on Digg, it moves to the homepage. If a story gets enough retweets it moves to a “Top Tweet” and could become a trending topic.

Ads

Digg runs banner ads and instream ads. Twitter runs sponsored topics and third-party services put ads in streams.

Conclusion

I can’t blame Digg for many of the changes they’ve made in this new version of the service. It has a much more “mainstream” feel to it and while a lot of heavy users will be mad, as long as Digg gets traffic inbound from Google (though Andy says they need to fix the SEO) and can send traffic to publishers, Digg should come out ahead. I’m not sure a less group of less radical changes would have potentially helped Digg as much as the current set of changes can.

So, is the new Digg really just Twitter plus comments? If I already grab the feeds of the default users on Digg in my Twitter stream, why would I need to visit Digg at all? What am I missing here? I sure hope I am missing something in my analysis as I used to spend a good deal of time on the site and would be open to spending time there again.

Find more stories about: Digg, social media, Social Networking, Social News, Twitter

Earlier this week, I took a look at the social news service Propeller and wondered if the service was coming in for a landing. Since that post, one of Propeller’s users submitted the CN story to Propeller and I thought it might be interesting to see what we got from the submission.

The story was posted on Propeller 27 hours ago as of the time of this blog post. The story (as seen below) has received:

• 45 props (these are the up votes)
• 2 drops (I guess these are like down votes)
• 60 views listed on Propeller (not sure if this is how many people visited the page on Propeller or something else?)
• 247 comments!

I count 16 total pageviews in my analytics software using the propeller.com referral domain. This means that nearly none of the people who commented on the story actually read the story. This is an issue for most social news sites – and I think will be an issue for Buzz as well. Outbound traffic is the only real measure for a social news site – the more traffic that the service sends out, the more people want to invest in it.

Interestingly the story became the top listing for best of day and now is listed in the first position for “most popular stories this week” as seen below.

Member “nottooneedy” noted that Tom Drapeau is no longer in charge of Propeller (I haven’t confirmed this). The member also noted, “This place has become nothing more than a cess pool, your bloggy article verifys that fact.. Not much is based on fact here anymore and just as well to read about acid reflux as to read fresh conservatives or liberal heretics racist rants.”

User TimALoftis notes, “Clearly one of the biggest blows to the site was the loss of its Editor, James Marcus who was reassigned by AOL to its AOL News team last Summer. A replacement for Mr. James was not made leaving many to look upon the change as merely a cost cutting move to help compensate for drop in Propellers traffic. Last Fall, the Director for Propeller, Tom Drapeau was also reassigned to other duties within AOL leaving Propeller without leader. No formal announcement was ever made, only a brief reference to it on Tom’s profile page.”

As I noted in my post, the majority of stories I see on Propeller are political (not including the spam). Perhaps Propeller should drop all other content categories and only focus on political content? I can’t picture AOL turning off the service – as long as it generates ad-driven pageviews, and it’s no longer linked from the main AOL properties, it can stay around and just keep generating income.

Find more stories about: AOL, Netscape, Propeller, social media, Social News

Can you believe it’s been nearly two-and-a-half years since the social news site Propeller went live? It’s even more amazing that the “new” Netsape launched almost four years ago! In case you aren’t familiar with the story of Netscape and Propeller, here’s a brief history lesson. When now Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis sold his blogs to AOL, he became the product manager for a new social news site within the AOL network named Netscape. Yes, the same Netscape that in the early Internet was a Web browser. Soon thereafter Calacanis left AOL and Tom Drapeau took over as Netscape Director. We interviewed Tom shortly after he accepted his new role.

Tom noted that Netscape had a crew of “scouts” who were paid for, “several activities, including posting stories, engaging in thoughtful conversations in comment threads, and keeping an eye out for spam.” This made Netscape a bit different than Digg although Netscape was called a clone of Digg since day 1.

In September 2007, Propeller took flight and the social news site took the place of the Netscape site. Many wondered if the new location might hurt the overall ability to brand the social news service. While lots of people called Propeller a Digg clone, many (including myself) had high hopes for the service.

I haven’t spent much time on Propeller in a long time. About two weeks ago I received a referral from Propeller and decided to take a look at the site and see what was up at the social news aggregator.  It looks like content on Propeller falls mainly into two categories: political and spam. Each morning since that referral, I’ve looked at Propeller to see what type of content is making their “main page”. Most of the stories seem to be political in nature and those stories appear to come from some of the larger blogs and news outlets. The other stories listed on the home page seem to be self-promotional, many are spammy and loads of blogspot blogs that are basically scrapers.

Here’s an example of what was listed on the home page this morning:

As you can see, it only takes a tiny number of “props” to make the front page. I have no idea what type of traffic Propeller drives these days and/or if there are any SEO benefits to a front page listing. Additionally, here are some of the stories on the health & fitness home page:

It’s almost like no one is tending to the house anymore. Compete shows traffic continues to decline each month over the past year with a 20% drop in January and a total of 250,000 U.S. visitors.

So what will happen now with Propeller? Will they upgrade the engine and get the ship moving upwards or is Propeller coming in for its final landing? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Find more stories about: Netscape, Propeller, social media, Social News

We initially reviewed blog directory Blogged earlier this year. It’s a human curated blog directory that provides a (somewhat bogus) score for each blog. Today Blogged is back with their launch of a news portal site. Blogged editors will pull breaking news and the most compelling stories from their content categories (technology, entertainment, sports, etc.) and then displays the stories on the frontpage.

Here is how Blogged compares itself to the other news sites like Google News and Yahoo News along with the “meme trackers” like TechMeme:

Google News and Yahoo News feature top stories from traditional news sources using a combination of technology and human editors. Memetrackers such as Techmeme and Blogrunner use algorithms to identify and present related stories as told by cliques of bloggers related to a particular industry. User-generated news communities such as Mixx, Digg, and Reddit showcase popular stories daily from across the Web as saved and voted on by individuals. Blogged.com is the only community that features the top qualified stories, representing all popular topics, organized by categories from around the blogosphere, combined with a full informational directory that includes rankings, reviews and recommended reading for each blog.

Today’s launch by Blogged seems very similar to what Blogrunner offers except that it’s human curated versus machine-driven. From a gathering the news standpoint, it’s basically like Mahalo. Both Mahalo and Blogrunner create tag pages, Mahalo uses their staff and volunteers to find links, Blogrunner uses computers to find the links. Blogged seems to be more in the Mahalo style but without the tag pages.

I don’t know how large the Blogged team is, but my only question is whether they be able to stay on top of all of the breaking news across so many categories and be able to bubble up the news in (near) real-time? If so, awesome. Also, I hope they will provide diversity in the blogs that they pimp.

They should add a social layer on top of the news – since they know a lot about each blog, there’s a wealth of information they could layer on top of the news and create a community effect on top of the news.

Everyone consumes news in different ways and the one-page category portal-style overveiew should work well for a mainstream audience.

Find more stories about: Blogged, Blogrunner, Mahalo, Quick News, Social News, TechMeme

Last night during the first Digg Townhall, we learned that there are an average of 10,000 stories submitted to Digg daily. I pulled out a scratchpad today and while my numbers might vary a bit from you home gamers, the data is very interesting indeed.

Based on the math in my original article about which categories hit Digg the most along with Richard MacManus’ post about which sites hit Digg the most in the tech category along with additional research outside of the tech category, here are my findings. Approximately 150 stories make Digg’s frontpage per day, not including stories that make it but are subsquently buried.

On an average weekday, you have a 150 in 10,000 chance that your submission will hit the frontpage. However we need to remove a piece of your chance because we know that some sites (in Tech for example: Gizmodo, Engadget, NYT, Techcrunch, Lifehacker, Ars Technica) will get more than one a day on average. Using the completed research and MacManus’ figures, I peg these special sites at 25% of the daily average which leaves the rest of us with the balance 112 out of 10,000 chance. I am being very conservative here with the power sites, the number is probably a bit higher.

When we pull out the HP 10B with these revised figures, your chance is now 1.12%; or in other words, a 98% chance you won’t make the Digg frontpage today.

If these percentages continue to get worse for the average site or average Digg user to see a benefit, will there be a slow exit out of the service? Why should a Digg’er push and push if the chances are slim to none that a story will make it? Would it make more sense to target Reddit or Mixx where there are more chances to get at least some bit of traffic?

My suggestion for Digg is to create separate verticals which would allow 150 stories in each category to hit the frontpage of that vertical each day. For example, I have no interest in Politics so why do I need to see it? I know that I can turn it off but it still counts into the stories that make the frontpage. These verticals (subdomains perhaps) could allow Digg to once again embrace the community and actually grow their userbase.

For all of the startups who bank on Digg for growth (you know who you are), this should be yet another wakeup call that no blog or social news site alone can make or break your product or service.

note: not all categories have the same weighting for frontpage status and power digg submitters can up your chance by a small percentage.

Find more stories about: Digg, Insights, mixx, Reddit, Social News