Time for a fun Friday post. Digg has really been coming out with some
strange stuff recently. Last week, you probably saw the David at the
Dentist video, but you might not have seen that the Digg community burst into song off of Bukowsky‘s, “IS THIS REAL LIFE?!!?!?!” comment:

download dvd films

And then we have the Digg count error from yesterday. A story had a
Digg comment count of almost 4.3 billion Diggs and did not frontpage:

[image credit]

Looks like the bug has been fixed, and the story now is holding at 138 diggs.

You’ve got to have a good sense of humor if you want to work and play in social media. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Related posts:

• David After Dentist – Mahalo (tsurch.com)
• UK Sites Dominate Digg (blogstorm.co.uk)
• How Did We Get Zero Diggs? (holytaco.com)

I have seen sites with great content and api tools get buried when digg realizes the webmaster is a digg user, even after amassing more diggs than a landscaper – hundreds of diggs, literally. Some sites will not make the front page no matter how many diggs they generate. Even if they reach what would be typically deemed as a front page threshold – e.g. 300, 400, 1000 diggs.

Do you believe that autoburies or administrative buries exist on digg.com? I want to know your opinion. Hit me on Twitter.

Digg is to Dugg as ____ is to Del.icio.us? Don’t worry. We aren’t about to make you take the SAT’s over again But remember the days (if you’re outside the USA, bear with us) when you took the SAT verbal and you had word association questions like this?

Do you Digg, Tweet or Stumble? If so, how exactly would you tell me that? Perhaps you’re busy submitting and commenting at Reddit and Newsvine. But there has to be a word you use to announce that. Are you Redditing or are you Redding? Did you Mixx it or was it simply Mixxed? These days there are many popular social media sites, each with their individual style or niche. But what really distinguishes a website is the name – with that, an action. Breaking it down let’s say you announce on Twitter (you would be Tweeting by the way) that your Digg submission was Dugg 1200 times. That’s a pretty simple example right? Now if that Photoshop tutorial you wrote hit the front page of Del.icio.us because 150 people saved it, was it Delicioused 150 times? Maybe Delished? Some people would say their submission was Ate and I’ve even used Licked a couple of times, myself.

At Now Sourcing, we went to the people of Twitter and asked: How do you put Social Media in the past tense? The results were interesting and amusing! On Digg If you thought that XKCD comic was creative you Dugg it. On Reddit you either Reddited or simply Upvoted that article on Ron Paul supporters voting against McCain. You Propelled or Propellered the one about the Muslim Gunman and you just Wonged the Powerful CSS Techniques submission over at Mister-Wong.

That fascinating website titled Photos Of Lost Cites was Stumbled, Liked, SU’ed and Tagged by your friends but you Thumbed it! Here is where you get to have some fun.

The king of organizing your bookmarks online is definitely Del.icio.us. The available tools, minimalism and ease of use make it very non-threatening to completely move the bookmarks native to your browser to an online service and begin tagging. When you’re saving art website My Schizophrenic Brain you would obviously think the act would be referred to as either Delicious’d, Tagged or B’marked, Right? Well they don’t stop there! That link could be considered Eaten, Ate, Dellied, Digested, Consumed, Licked, Ripened or just D’ed. Del.icio.us users have a nimiety of choices.

So now we ask what the readers of NowSourcing would classify the action of saving a link at Del.icio.us as. As always your input is graciously appreciated.

Today at 9 PM EST started the first Digg Town Hall Webcast, which could be seen by using Ustream. Everyone had the opportunity of watching and listening to Kevin Rose (Digg’s Founder) and Jay Adelson (Digg’s CEO) answer questions and tell us about the new Digg features. What they actually did is took the top 20 questions from here sorted by most number of Diggs and answer them.

In case you missed what they said, here you have a summary of everything:

New Gadgets for:

• IGoogle
• Myspace
• Netvibes

Some New Features:

• New comments system: they are still working on it, but they will roll out on April (they are targeting to get it out on April). You can see the new features it will have over here.
• Recommendation Engine: new way to explore stories and find cool stories before they become popular by checking what you have Dugg and what might be of interest to you, so that you don’t have to browse thousands of stories

Statistics:

• 26 Million Unique Visitors per month.
• 10,000 submissions per day.
• More than 200 Million Diggs since launch.
• 180 new frontpage stories per day before algo change. 120 new frontpage stories per day after algo change.

Information given on the answers:

• There are not any moderators in the site, the moderators are really the users.
• 1 Admin that is on 24 hours a day permanently checking the site.
• There is a system that detects, find spam and removes it (that is what people call autobury).
• Lots of time and effort put to find spam.
• The system is designed so that you need diversity to succeed. They made this change so that Digg is not controlled by a small group, they don’t want super users to have ALL the power. This is the reason why some stories need more Diggs to make it to the frontpage, diversity is the key.
• Transparency: stories stay there, doesn’t matter if they are buried or incorrect.
• Users spamming get contacted, not just deleted or banned, they have chances before getting removed.
• Black List: spammers get in a kind of black list so that they don’t spam anymore.
• Dupe detection and search are broken, they are working on solutions to that.
• Support Forum Creation: they think it is a great idea and they are working on that.
• Diversity is not just same people Digging.
• Stories with enough diversity are the ones that go to the frontpage.
• Transparent Buries: they are not doing it because they don’t want people to stop burying because others may feel angry with them. They don’t want a bury competition (you bury me, so i bury you).
• They will start showing number of buries and positive votes on comments.
• Comments can be deleted during the edit period.
• They still don’t comment if they are selling Digg.
• Daniel, the creative director, doesn’t want a button to delete all shouts to prevent people delete them accidentally.
• They are working on a way so that users can have more private communication.
• They suggest that if you find someone (a top user for example) submitting something that was already submitted, to post the link to the original submission as a comment.
• They will probably remove podcasting and use the standard digg process to let people just submit their favorite episodes.
• The system is always getting tweaked so that it improves stale stories getting frontpaged.
• There will be a recommended stories section on upcoming (recommendation engine).
• Diversity is about who, where and questions like that, they check all your history to see that you are not gaming the system.
• Bloggers that submit every post to digg (spam) get some chances before getting banned.
• People is trying to game Digg by: creating lots of accounts and digging a story, paying for Diggs, hiring a pool of people to Digg a story, and lots of other ways.

The next Digg Town Hall Webcast will be May 28th and there will be a meetup in Chicago on July 23rd.

Here are some reactions from some of tonight’s attendees:

Digidave – well: I’m glad they opened up a line of communication. That’s the biggest complaint I’ve ever had about the site – I feel like I’m engaging with a brick wall. I hope they can figure out a way to make the communication more regular and open – not just every 2-3 months during a town hall, but with a real active forum. I always gave it to them on faith that the algorithm changes were for the better. What I want is somebody to respond to emails, answer questions, etc. Still – this is a step in that direction. I think they answered most of the questions very well – with the exception of one or two that they started to answer, but left me wanting a little more.

cgt2099: Screw Digg. Come over and join me at Mixx.

silentjay74: Still seems like riot control to me. Appease the masses and disarm the pitchforks. Feed the peasants.

oboy – JD Rucker: I like the fact that they are trying to communicate. I’m hugely disappointed that they were running out of time after 1 hour. Give me a break. Surely they got a ton of questions (I sent one in myself) and they got to 4 of them before having something more important to do. For a first one, it wasn’t terrible.

Danzarrella: It was good to hear them get into the idea of diversity of diggers, and how number of votes is only one part of the picture. I’m also excited for the collaborative filtering, personalization features they mentioned.

Scott Clark: From an SEO/SEM perspective, it would be good to see who’s doing the buries….because the bury-brigade attacks SEO/SEM postings IMO. They sounded a bit closer to bury transparency.

We’d also like to give a shout out to Mark Dykeman for live Twittering the beginning of the webcast.

(image credit: Jinx)

Ok, this is a true story that happened to me 2 days ago. I was in a bank parking lot and saw a random guy wearing a Digg hoodie. Soon after, I found myself walking over to him, thinking I’d start talking about about digg, but then I thought …wtf am i doing? I don’t even know this guy (he didn’t appear to be Muhammad Saleem or any other notable diggers, but you never know)!

He was talking to a friend and I was kind of standing around and then he went into his car so I left. This was such a weird feeling. Would you go up to a random stranger on the street? What do you say – “hey nice Digg Hoodie?” “what’s your username?”

Sometimes it is hard to make social media offline translate into a meaningful experience. Naturally a coordinated even like SMX will bring things together, but random encounters walking up to people might give people the wrong idea about you…

Here’s a what if for you. What if the infamous Digg algorithm just one day up and went open source?!

It is the intangible looming force that keeps every Digg users from burying all submissions above and below their own. It keeps us from installing crazy Greasemonkey scripts and going down the list of our friends submissions – Digging forty posts a minute. The algorithm (or as some call it – Diggbrother) stops me from burying every possible duplicate every time I submit an article. I want to ask the algorithm exactly why the last three news stories I posted made it to the front page – but were submitted by some other users.

If that presence were open source I could put it under the monitorscope and give the answers to all the other paranoid users out there. Questions like, what exactly is my karma at? Does constantly hitting F5 on my own submission lower its chances of becoming popular? Does my vote actually count? The algorithm has been discussed by its creators and deconstructed by the experts, yet I’m still impressed by it all the time.

Lately I find myself frantic, trying to sleep, thinking about my most recent submission. Questioning why I didn’t submit that article on The Ultimate Leopard Tweaking Guide? It was promoted in less than ten hours! Maybe my submission on Composting the Dead didn’t go front page because it’s Saturday. Maybe I pissed off some users in the past and they automatically have me on bury! The algorithm could tell me, if it were open source.

Of course that is never happening. The verb gaming (meaning to cheat) would replace digging in this world of social media if we knew how Digg ticked. The walls would come down and the Viagra-deal pushers would finally know how to bypass that spam prevention shield that every honest Digger wears so proudly. This secretive program is the impalpable energy that keeps the highest rated content flowing organically and it is what so many try to conquer. Few have it down to a simple science. Others, like myself are still puzzled and nervous. Many are ignorant of its power and are just passing by – unaware of what is forcing us to submit what they read.

Oh well. Let the mystery and bureaucracy continue. One day I’ll crack it.

Thanks for spending the time to interview with us.

You’re welcome my pleasure.

1 – We had a chance to catch up with Greg and talk to him about life after Digg. Greg, do you think that you’ve been given a fair shake? Especially considering the content that got you banned was front page on Reddit?

That’s a loaded question. Digg has terms of service, which I, like everyone else agrees to when you sign up. I had been banned a couple of times before, for stupid mistakes, and so the guys behind Digg must have believed, “enough is enough”. It’s their playground, and they set the rules; so I’m fine with that.

On the other hand, there didn’t seem to be any consideration into the fact that I was an extremely active submitter at Digg. I’d posted 1800+ stories since June 2006; and they didn’t seem to consider that I was observing the TOS a majority of the time. Consider also, that some diggers have been banned in the past numerous times also – some of them banned for infractions such as accepting payment for submits/Diggs – the consequences I faced at Digg just didn’t seem to be consistent with the repercussions that had been dealt out in the past.

2 – Digg has really done its fair share of changing the way people look at news. Social media can now deliver the news faster than a lot of traditional media. What did you think of the whole Blu-ray controversy where Digg banned several users and the whole community revolted?

The HD-DVD Riots of May 2007 started out as a valiant effort by some users – but turned into a joke. It caused a huge influx of users to join up just so they could act like Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass crew. So, while I could understand and see the initial point of standing up for yourself and your friends; it turned into something ridiculous. Many regular users were glad once the issue was resolved.

But the key thing about the revolt is that the power of Digg doesn’t truly lie in the hands of Kevin Rose, Jay Adelson et al… the power is in the hands of the users. THEY decide what makes the front page. They’re in control. So while the greatest aspect of Digg becomes raising awareness about certain issues the mainstream media isn’t covering; it’s also it’s greatest dictator: don’t be surprised if another riot happens there one day.

Yes, that’s very true. The power of social media is in the hands of the users. I recall hearing about the Virginia Tech shooting through social media, so it is a very real and powerful force.

3 – You’ve had over 1,800 Diggs submitted and over 30,000 stories Dugg in your Digg career. about how much time would you set aside a day for such activity? Also, how do you view Digg changed over time as it grew in popularity and underwent more social networking changes with the new profile and shout options?

It’s never really been a case where I would “set aside time” to submit stories and Digg stuff. I would just take it all on a “take it as it comes along” basis. So, it would be too hard for me to put a number on it. I would just somewhat integrate Digg into my regular internet surfing and online work. The new profiles at Digg were fabulous, and I really enjoyed the change. It took a little getting used to, but I found it a very valuable tool in being able to connect with others easier. All of a sudden; more diggers were accessible – and with something like Digg, the more networking you have with others, the better.

The shouts, on the other hand, are another story altogether. It seemed that from the get-go, shouts were perceived very differently among different users. Some saw them as great opportunities to share stories; others saw them as just a reprehensible method of spamming others. I honestly did my best to give a chance for the shout feature. If someone shouted me; I’d shout ‘em back. But it just became overwhelming and way too time consuming. I ended up having to turn them off on my profile – it was just too much.

4 – What advice do you have for Diggers just starting out? What do you view as compelling content, and where do you think people should go to be on the lookout for good content?

If you’re starting out, don’t dive into the submissions straight away. Seriously. Take the time to just lurk, Digg, read, and even comment. Get a feel for the place first. That’s usually a good method of learning what kind of material has the tendency to become popular. Also, if you only just registered recently; don’t set yourself an unrealistic goal like becoming the number one Digger.

Getting to the top takes time and patience. A LOT of time and patience. When looking for content to post to Digg; I found that the best place is usually with what you are already doing online. In other words, take a look at your regular surfing patterns. Are there any good sites you’re visiting that you don’t often see on Digg? Submit the content from them – others may enjoy it.

One example I can give you is the heavy metal site Blabbermouth.net. When I started submitting content to Digg, I NEVER saw that site there. So I started posting content there. I was surprised to find out how many Digg geeks were also metalheads such as myself. Also, get into RSS feeds, and check out what other social news / social bookmarking sites are making popular. There’s a good chance that if it’s popular at Reddit or del.icio.us or StumbleUpon, then there’s a good chance it might become popular at Digg too.

A handy resource for that is popurls.com. Also, don’t just submit any old thing just for the sake of submitting something. Submit something that grabs your attention. If it grabs your attention, then it’s possible it’ll grab the attention of others too.

On a side note, if anyone is just starting out on Digg and is curious as to how to get on Digg’s front page, you might find this article I wrote about it of some help.

5 – I can’t imagine that you would want to be done using social media just because of what happened with Digg. There has been lots of activity on Digg surrounding your ban, and many are wanting you back. What communities do you think you will explore?

I’ve always bounced around different social sites, be it social networking (MySpace/Facebook) or social news/bookmarking (Reddit, etc). At the moment I’ve crashed the party over at Mixx.com. It’s similar to Digg, but it’s new, fresh and just starting out. And since starting out over at Mixx, I’ve been posting quite a lot. I’m hoping the community grows over there because it has a lot of potential.

On a related note, I’d like to thank those who’ve been sticking up for me with the whole “permanent ban” issue. Your support is very much appreciated.

6 – Have you closed the book in your mind about Digg? Or would you get right back into it given the opportunity?

If my account is ever reinstated, or if I’m ever allowed to re-register (they permanently banned via IP also, so I haven’t bothered even trying to set up a new account), I would probably submit content to Digg still. But I’m very comfortable with Mixx at the moment, and would love to be more proactive in that community to help it grow.

7 – Any closing comments?

I’d like to say cheers and thanks to all my friends and fans I networked with over at Digg. It was awesome, and the interaction made it all worthwhile. Also, take heed to what you are posting on Digg. Just because it hits the front page on other sites, doesn’t mean that it will fly at Digg – the admins have itchy trigger fingers…. but if you do fall into the ban clan like myself, come on over and help me shake up Mixx.com a little bit.

[Editors Note: If you're wondering what got Greg banned for the 4th and final time, he speaks about it at length in his personal blog here (h/t: Lyndon)]

Update: looks like support for Greg has really been taking off – check out this parody video of Chris Crocke’s leave Brittney alone:

Here is a list of some good lessons learned the next time you find your blog in a similar predicament:

1 – Install and configure the WP-Cache plugin (For WordPress Blogs). WP-Cache is a brilliant plugin that keeps most of your stuff that will load in a static file rather than loading and compiling the PHP on every page request. For the more tech savvy, feel free to tweak to your heart’s content:

h/t to Lyndon for making me think about WP-Cache.
2 – If your site does go down, check out data on all the mirror sites. One such site is Duggtrends. For those of you not familiar with Duggtrends, it’s a great service that people can link to so that the story can still stay alive, and also has some pretty nifty traffic graphs showing before and after your site went hot:

Another great site is Duggback. They aggregate all of the places that your site would have been cached such as Google, Dotcache, and the WaybackMachine. Here is what my story looked like on Duggback. Something else pretty cool that I did was put up a mirror on my wordpress hosted blog. This at least saved some RSS readers, which went up over 60% in one day, an impressive showing.

3 – Tweak your server. This runs on a Linux box, and I did some performance tuning. Won’t bore you with tech details, but there are fewer services running and I also added more RAM to the box. You might want to just go ahead and get a reliable dedicated server if you’re serious about traffic.

4 – Didn’t make the Digg homepage this time? Don’t feel bad. Most sites never do. Something that may help push you over the top next time around is use of the new shout feature (here’s some helpful info on how to use, also an overview on the new Digg features). But please, be kind and only use sparingly: it may cause Diggers to want to reach through the computer screen and strangle you

I’ve found that StumbleUpon has some interesting folks that expand quite a bit on their negative opinions. Take my recent post about the 16 personality types of StumbleUpon users. It was generally very well liked (23 reviews, 20 of which were positive), but if you take a look at the thumbs down reviews, you’ll find things like this one from TravisKab:

It’s nice to be able to sit back and laugh about this. Just so you all know, I really don’t feel compelled to pigeonhole myself as a personality type and frolic (spelling?) in traffic. But, I do like to take notice of interesting patterns in social media and spread the word about them. And strong opinions one way or the other make life far more interesting than zombies saying “nice post,” “lame,” or “I don’t like it”. By all means, keep the discussion going.

And hey, people that post positive reviews are also pretty verbose. Take this one from TheNanny612 for instance:

I do see the point of the couple of thumbs down reviews on the 16 personalities post. People were expecting a more thorough analysis of StumbleUpon users and felt that the Myers Briggs test was not substantial / accurate enough to be based upon. To this, I respond that this is a social media blog, not a psychology lab

Hey, if you want to do some grant writing, we put some stumblers in a sensory deprivation chamber for a while and see how they do. It’s still pretty good that StumbleUpon even has a spot for personality type unlike most social media stuff that is out there.

Digg Just Became the Best Social News Site.

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know that I’m a big Netscape (well ok, Propeller) fan, and I’m usually quick to point out the flaws in Digg. With one major update last night, Digg just became second to none in social news. Seriously, even if you hated Digg before, these new updates will change your perspective. What are these great options I speak of? Let’s take a look.

1. True sociability. Imagine the ease of use of Facebook to find friends in Digg, notorious for having an awful profile / friend options. You can also easily add your im accounts, multiple websites, blogs, Facebook links, and the like.

2. Friends. You can now search for your friends that you might just recognize by name, avatar, or on someone else’s friend list – you’d be surprised on how many people you already know that have Digg accounts that are not yet your Digg friends. Adding friends in Digg used to be the slowest, most painful part of the whole site. No more stupid “hey, you’re adding too many friends” annoyance messages. You’re free to keep adding friends, so have at it.

Once in your profile, click the Add Friends link. You’ll be taken to a much improved page that gives you options to see what Digg friends you already have in your Gmai, AOL, and other popular email account. It also shows you who has befriended you, something that was a lengthy process to get to in the past.

3. Shouts.
There are some things in the new Digg that could easily become abused, though. One such feature is shouting. Still, there are many positive qualities about Shouting. Let’s say you find a friend and you want to let them know about a story you think is great. Before, you would have to hope that they were watching their friend activity and Digg you, but now you are top billing in their profile when they login, depending on their settings. Shouting is also a great thing when you’re just adding someone that you know from somewhere else that’s now on Digg:

You can also shout to your friends by sharing a story (something Digg actually got from Netscape/Propeller!). Just click share on a story and select the friends you want to shout it to (you can also select all of them).

By the default settings, whenever people shout at you, you’ll be emailed. This is similar to Facebook, and will fill up your inbox quickly. If you don’t mind it and want emails all day long, have at it. Otherwise, you can control your email settings pretty easily on the email settings page:

Don’t take my word for it, check it all out for yourself! (Hey, it worked for Reading Rainbow).