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2008: The Demise of Digg’s Power Users
This week saw calls for the most powerful user on social content site Digg.com to be banned. Is this just a teething problem? Or has it accidentally spelled the end of quality content on Digg?How Digg is Perceived to Work
For those who are unfamiliar with how Digg works, broadly speaking, users vote up or “Digg” a story that they find interesting. If the story then receives enough Diggs, it reaches the front page, where it will be seen by between 25,000 to 100,000 unique users.This is all very well and good, but how does quality content get found when there are over 10,000 story submissions a day?
Enter the Power Users and Problems
The average Digg user will Digg a couple of stories a week and maybe submits one or two a month. Power users on the other hand eat, sleep, drink and breathe Digg. Not only do they spend the time submitting dozens of high quality stories a day, but they also make sure that they invest the time in their friends by Digging all of their stories. A report on SEOmoz.org claimed that the top 100 Digg users (power users) posted 56 per cent of Digg's front-page content, and that the top 20 members had submitted up to a quarter of the front-page content.Effectively, power users are the unofficial editors of the front page. They are constantly scouring the vast realms of the internet for the next big story that will get thousands of Diggs and it’s in their best interests: high quality content boosts their profile.
One problem Digg has faced however has been the huge user backlash with the power users. Users who discover an interesting story and then submit it, usually tend to reap limited success compared to a small group of users, who appear to be able to get anything on the front page.
Digg’s Drastic Response
Just yesterday, Digg introduced a measure to combat “blind Digging”, a method that power users use to get enough Diggs for their submissions to reach the front page. In essence blind Digging is the practice of voting all of your friends’ stories, so that they return the favor.The user diggboss has submitted a screengrab to the site showing how he was rudely interrupted after too much too soon. Now, blind Digging brings up an error message, such as:
"Whoa there cowboy! Itchy trigger finger? Digging to fast is lame. How about reading some stories instead?"
What does this mean?
Digg’s most loyal usergroup, which has a vested interest in sourcing and submitting the highest quality content now has a huge barrier to garnering the amount of exposure or Diggs necessary in order to reach the front page.What will happen to those 56 per cent of stories that are front-paged by the power users?
Does it signal the end of quality content or will it mean that the power users will retreat to email groups, instant messaging and networking outside of the website?
Most likely it will signal both, but more importantly, the majority of popular stories will come from mainstream media outlets, which the bulk of the Digg user base is already familiar with.
Digg’s Achilles’ heel
Unlike Reddit, Digg operates a rolling front page, which means that when one story goes “popular” it pushes the next story down. That original story is pushed onto the second page by roughly 15 stories. Reddit, on the other hand operates completely differently: each story is like a helium balloon that rises to the top, the more attention it gets.Therefore, Reddit’s promotes stories that are the most active. This system would easily get round the power user issue, because content is easier to find and submissions that “go popular” are actually the most active.
Unfortunately, part of Digg’s strength lies in the difficulty of reaching the front page. Digg realizes that the power users create more traffic by Digging multiple pages and referring friends to stories.
However, by listening to the community and limiting the amount of Diggs a submission gets within a minute, are the technicians behind Digg’s complex algorithm accidentally alienating their core users, or is this one of Digg’s best innovations for levelling the playing field?
If that is the case, will there be anything for aspiring Digg users to look up to or to work towards?
Or will the system replicate communism where the disinterested will be rewarded as equally as the thrifty?
In the words of the Kaiser Chiefs: “I predict a riot!”
Case Study: MrBabyMan (aka Andrew Sorcini)
Two days ago a controversial submission became so popular that it made the front page of Digg. Submitted by the aptly named hyperkill, it provoked much debate simply by asking, “9 submissions dugg in less than a minute?”In the comments accompanying his submission, hyperkill went on to add, "After reviewing his profile further I noticed that he dugg about 115 articles in a half hour. Why is this guy allowed to play the system in such a way?" This comment alone went on to attract over 1,800 further Diggs as users swarmed to stack up accusations against such an active power user.
Many Digg users appear to have made their mind up already, showing their indignation by asking that MrBabyMan be banned.
The management of the website seems to have implemented their drastic response as some kind of safeguard against the actions that saw the user known as BCuban banned last week for using scripts to Digg stories without even having to be at his computer.
On his blog, Brian Cuban said, “I first heard about Digg in September of 2007. I had just started my blog The Cuban Revolution. I heard that Digg could drive traffic to my site so I signed up. My motives were selfish. I had no desire to share news. I wanted traffic. Self-promotion at its worst.”
“I then hooked up with fellow digger and now good friend LewP. He explained how Digg worked. That is when I began to add friends. Several diggers and I started an email group. In this group we submitted and shouted each other’s submissions. Front page postings from my blog skyrocketed. This meant tens of thousands of hits to my blog. I was gaming the system for all it was worth. This went on for a while. Then the roof fell in. Digg changed the way its algorithm worked.”
They may just find a way around any blocks to their progress by coordinating their efforts through email, instant messaging, telephone or possibly even going to extremes - like meeting in real life.
In the words of punaninja:
"MrBabyMan, you should at least put a comment on this subject and explain."
So, how does MrBabyMan crawl so fast?
Andrew Sorcini attempted to answer most of the accusations against him in an interview captured in a podcast on website, The Drill Down, a site hosted by himself and other power users Muhammad Saleem and Reg Saddler (aka Zaibatsu).
According to the website Pulse2.com, when questioned about his time on Digg, he said that other users may have been envious of his success and had never been aware of having “gamed the system”.
“I don’t shout stories for two reasons… if you shout a story, you’re artificially enhancing the number of Diggs that story gets.”
“It’s easier to bury a sto
Online Advertising news posted on 10 September 2008
