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In what may be the first of its kind in the social media world, the little used and subscribed Football (/r/football) subreddit of Reddit.com was overthrown by the Soccer (/r/soccer) subreddit. Though things seem to have died down, yesterday’s events can only be described as a social media coup.

The argument over “Football” and “Fútbol” will go on for eternity, but I never expected it lead to this. The thuggish Redditors (we’re teasing of course) from the disgruntled Soccer subreddit began their barrage yesterday evening, submitting every link relevant to their sport they could find while simultaneously down-voting any stories relevant to Handegg. With only 143 members frequenting the Football subreddit and Soccer’s laying claim to more than 1,500, it was a quick rout. I mean, honestly, we Americans shouldn’t expect the fans of the world’s most popular sport to rename Fútbol in order maintain its distinction from our own Football. As a commenter on Reddit mentioned, perhaps we should just learn to pronounce their sport with the accent and the affronted /r/soccer subscribers should get in touch with user carlosmiguelp, the lone and inactive moderator of the Futbol subreddit.

Speaking of moderators, this never would have happened if the moderator for the Football subreddit had been around to man his post. He’s another inactive user. This brings up a serious issue: Should Reddit ultimately have some power over its user-created subreddits? An ability to pass on moderator duties in instances like these? We’ll do some investigating as there are certainly plenty of subreddits with defunct moderators, open to some form of gaming or manipulation, not just the Football subreddit. Reddit should take some moderation measures and start governing the few mishaps like these. It would give dead subreddits like Football a chance to thrive while also protecting them from manipulation and containing content unintended for inclusion by their absentee creators.

If you’ve signed into Reddit recently, you may have noticed a new feature in your sidebar. Perhaps taking a note from Mixx, Redditors are now capable of being rewarded for their contributions to the community. Reddit’s version of the reward system is much more streamlined than that of Mixx and are calculated daily, with the winners being listed on what Reddit has deemed the Honor Roll. You’ll find a screen-shot of the available rewards below.

When signing into Reddit this morning and viewing a submission’s commentary, you may notice a slight change to the site’s familiar sidebar. A percentage is now given, detailing the proportion of voters who enjoyed the post. This makes gauging the community’s reception of an article that much easier. You’ll also notice that the moderators of a given subreddit have a more prominent placing on the site. This will save you a click the next time one of your links vanishes from a category.

So, what do you think of the changes? We really like the moderators being placed in the sidebar and the percentage aspect of monitoring a post’s success. Think there is anything Reddit may have overlooked in adding to the sidebar?

With me today is a popular former Digg user, Diggboss. Thanks for joining me, Diggboss. Ok, let’s get right into it:

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. When did you start getting into social media in the first place, and which network did you like the most from the start?

My scripts used Digg APIs. Anyone can use Digg APIs. Digg data is open under Creative Commons.

Absolutely not as I said anyone with a little knowledge of CURL or WGET can make use of the APIs and do what I did.

Digg is not FaceBook, coders please stay away from Digg. Digg does not have open policies and does not support coders. Every script is a BAD script. Digg uses its TOS to its advantage.

Haha, thats an outrageous question, nope, never.

9. So what’s next for Diggboss?

I am sure Digg would restore my account, I don’t have an alternative. I am banned.

I loved Digg and will continue to love it, my love for digg is not conditional.

This is a guest post by Dan Zarrella, social and viral marketing scientist. He has put together a viral content sharing report and below is an expansion and exploration of some of the data uncovered by that report.

The research I did on viral content sharing shows that frequent users of social web technologies like Twitter, blogs, and social news and networking sites tend to share online content with more people, more often than those that do not. This means that for marketers these users can be a powerful vector for making content go viral.

While this may sound like some what of a “duh” statement, the concept of “influencers” has been much debated recently. While there is data that individuals give more attention to content passed to them from friends as opposed to A-list bloggers, the fact still remains that there are segments of users who spread content more prolifically than the rest. And by their very nature as savvy social media users, these viewers engage in online activity that makes them easy to target.

We know that people who read Digg, Reddit, Propeller and the like tend to have higher viral reach and sharing frequency than those who do not, so make sure your content appears on these sites. The same applies to those who read blogs, and use Twitter. When it comes time to seed your content, be sure to put it in the path of these extra-contagious users.

An interesting detail of this data is that while frequent users of Facebook and web forums share content with more people and more often in some aspects, generally they’re not as virulent as the users of less-mainstream technologies (with the exception of blog readers). This may be due to the fact that users of sites like Twitter and Digg tend to be early adopters, as opposed to the less-geeky Facebook audience; which seems to indicate that geeks share more content online than non-geeks.

When I segmented these high reach and frequency users, I found that they displayed useful preference trends. When compared to average web users they share more content via IM as opposed to email or Facebook messaging, and they share more news and opinion than humor. When these users share content one-to-one with their friends, they prefer blogs and social news sites to mainstream sites, but that aversion to mainstream media disapears when they share in a one-to-many fashion (broadcast sharing like submitting to Digg, blogging and Tweeting). Again as these users are important viral seeding vectors, we should listen to their preferences and give them news or opinion with short, clean links ideal for instant messaging, and lay off the “funny” email chain letters.

This is a small part of the large data presented in the full report I did on the results of my survey, if you want to know more, be sure to read the rest of my viral content sharing report.

Dan Zarrella is a social and viral marketing scientist, you can read his blog here or follow him on Twitter here.