Digg normally rolls out new features poorly. The debacle that was the “new and improved” dupe detector has yet to show signs of improvement. The Diggbar changes are still a sore spot for many, especially in the way that it was rolled out, changed, and re-rolled out.

Digg Trends is, for now (crossing fingers), a new feature that seems to be doing what it’s supposed to do.

I was terrified when I saw the story below listed as a Trending Topic and held this blog post until it had finished it’s 10-minute trial. Thankfully, Digg Trends (and the Digg community) kept this story off of the front page. “Failed!  Just like nu metal, this trend failed. It won’t be promoted.”

While it hasn’t yielded the true “trending topics” as often as would be expected, there have been some significant victories that shine a glimmer of hope on the concept that Digg can finally enter the breaking-news arena.  The idea behind Digg Trends is that if a story is important enough to garner a large number of Diggs in a short period of time, then that story will be given a 10-minute opportunity to be deemed worthy or not for the front page.

In theory, if a big story such as Michael Jackson’s death were to get submitted and start skyrocketing up with upcoming Diggs, it will be given an opportunity to make it to the front page more quickly than before. In theory, this is a brilliant move, as it allows truly important stories to be “vetted” to the front page.

One may ask, “Why would it need to be ‘vetted’? Why not just see the story getting a lot of Diggs and promote it without using this feature?”

The problem that Digg has had to face for nearly 5 years now is that they are often the targets of gaming. Because of the tremendous traffic opportunities that a Digg front page story presents, many attempt to artificially inflate Digg counts. They are forced to put spam-countermeasures into their algorithm to prevent the wrong stories from hitting.

These countermeasures are what prevent stories such as Michael Jackson’s death from hitting the front page despite hundreds of Diggs in the first hour.  With Digg Trends, a story like that would trigger the “vetting” and allow it to hit the front page as the breaking news story that it was.

So, how is it doing? Here are some stats from the first 30 stories to go through the Digg Trends ringer:

• Digg Trend Stories: 30

• Promoted to the Front Page: 25

• Promoted Stories Buried from the Front Page: 1 (the first 1)

• Total Digg Trend Stories Buried: 3

• Promoted Stories were Actual “Breaking News”: 4

• Stories Receiving over 800 Diggs: 5

• Stories About Health Care: 3

• Stories About Michele Bachmann: 2 (1 promoted, 1 buried)

• Stories About Animals: 3 (pigs, goats, and crabs)

• Stories About Aliens/Space Travel: 2

• Domains that Hit Twice: 4 (CNN, NYTimes, Techcrunch, YouTube)

• Stories About Glenn Beck, Megan Fox, or Bacon: 1 (but it was buried)

While the goal of focusing more on “trending topics”, whether it’s breaking news or highly supported topics, hasn’t come through as expected, it’s still a tremendously successful beta launch considering the complexity of the Digg algorithm and the implementation of this type of structure.  The two biggest news stories since Digg Trends launched (Health Care Passing and Orlando Shooting) both hit and were promoted through Digg Trends, so that aspect is strong.

As long as it isn’t too easy to game, this new feature appears to be heading in the right direction.

* * *

Read more Social Media Analysis on this blog.

No more looking for spades, street signs, or red faces. Digg has gone to text links rather than thumbnails of the avatars on submissions.  A few days ago, they raised the limit from 200 to approximately300, then apparently back up to “unlimited” (even though there is one report of a user banned because of Digging too much).

Server performance aside, is this an effort to reduce the rate of “blind digging” while not hurting their page views? Blind digging has always been an issue and will continue to be even if this change sticks, but it does make it less convenient to run through the front page or recommended upcoming pages looking for friends’ icons.

Speculation has been that the decrease in activity, ie number of Diggs, to a story was a result of the limits placed on Digging.  People were having to be more frugal with what they dugg and the total Digg counts have decreased as a result.

This combination of moves is most likely a trade-off: raise the limits to allow people to Digg more but make it harder to “blind Digg”. Will it work? Probably, to some extent, but it will slow the process down more than solve the problem. Either way, unless they completely eliminate names altogether and make submissions completely anonymous, there will be friends digging friends without reading the stories.

Of course, if they went anonymous (even if only through upcoming) they would open up a whole new can of worms. We’ll monitor to see what comes of this.

* * *

Read more on this Social News Blog.

That didn’t take long.

Looks suspicious, but sex sells, right? Maybe there was nothing against TOU. Maybe it was all just language and innuendo which are perfectly fine for Digg.

Nope.

If you can imagine that image without the purple strip, you’ll get the picture.

To Digg’s credit, they either pulled the ad altogether quickly or stopped serving it to me. Either way, they did the right thing. Let’s hope that future Digg ads will be screened more closely.

* * *

Read more on this social news blog.

I have had a lot of good comments about the article “How to not get Banned on Stumblupon“, and I appreciate all of them. One issue that has received a lot of attention is the “ghost banning”.

I want to clear something up for those of you who are now afraid to thumb up your friends stuff, or who think they can no longer thumb or review their favorite sites. I am going to explain how the process works from my knowledge in hopes of putting your mind at ease.

First of all, when you go to check one of your recent discoveries and find that it says “discovered by someone” rather than yourself, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are ghost banned. You may be experiencing:

• A glitch. They happen all the time on most sites and SU is no exception.
• You are sandboxed, which I will explain below.

I got a lot of my information for the term “sandboxed” from a post Jeff Quipp made a couple of years ago.  Where ever you are buddy, thank you! I wasn’t sure how to explain it until I found his post.

There’s no way I can predict the algorithm of SU, however there is a process SU uses to combat spam.  They found the best way is to not inform these suspected people that they are watching them.  They want to watch their usual activities versus giving them a warning, because they will eventually return to their usual spammy ways after a while and the process would start all over again.  Why not build up enough evidence that can’t be disputed?

If you have been reviewed or flagged before, there is a chance that your discoveries or certain discoveries are getting sandboxed. And if you haven’t been reviewed before, but are receiving a lot of flags, then this would apply to you as well.  What this means is that they take your discoveries and make it appear as though they are active, until it’s determined that tags are fitting etc (there’s more to it, but you get the idea). People you share with see your discovery, they can review and thumb it.  Everything goes on as usual, or so it seems to the submitter and the friends it was shared with, except one thing — the discovery is being reviewed.  Once it’s cleared (usually very soon after the discovery), then you get listed as the person who discovered it, and it becomes a normal discovery which can then be viewed by more people. This is obviously a very loose interpretation of the term “sandboxed.” In all actuality, it’s more complicated. However, it works very well.

Ghost banned means that basically all your discoveries are under review, and usually for a longer period of time. This usually means they have reason to believe that you are spamming based on their reviews, or a lot of flags on multiple posts. At this point, they are looking very closely at your patterns, friends, etc. That does not mean that they review all your friends however, just certain friends who have been thumbing all your discoveries, especially if they are leaving reviews.  Those particular friends will either be sandboxed or ghost banned as well.  This is necessary to eliminate the spam rings or circles. At this stage, you will lose all or most of the work you have put into SU in regard to your discoveries.

The next step is usually an email to let you know that you are under review, usually you cannot access your account during this period of time. There is a possibility of being permanently banned if they find evidence that you are spamming.

SU is not necessarily wanting to target the people who thumb up these sites in question, but the people who are actually discovering them. You will not know who these people are that are being watched, and that’s the reason you need to be careful/mindful of your friends.  It’s not being deceptive on SU’s part because it’s giving their users the benefit of the doubt. It may also appear that the other obvious spammers are getting away with it because there is no indication those people are even being watched.  But, the fact is, they are just building up the ammunition they need to ban them completely, if they are indeed a real spammer or a spammer ring.  I have only seen this with the real spammers guys, not an innocent user, so don’t think they are out there watching your every move just waiting to swing the ban hammer.

One of the reasons the actual user is not aware they are being sandboxed is because SU is basically giving the user time to prove they are or are not a spammer.  SU does not randomly chose these users.  They have only been brought to their attention because there have been multiple people thumbing their disoveries down, marking them as spam or un-useful, and if they have been flagged for nudity/porn when they are not listed as an x-rated site. And if you have gotten in trouble before, and you are still being flagged.

SU also understands that there are people who do this on purpose to get rid of a top user because they are haters, or they are tired of seeing their stuff etc. Basically SU is giving these flagged users the benefit of the doubt as I said before (I am being very redundant, I know). And keep in mind that SU doesn’t usually ban someone unless there’s a lot evidence, not just flags.

I can name a user off hand (in my mind) who is a top stumbler.  He is good, and I don’t consider him a spammer simply because he has quality stuff from a lot of good sources.  He has been reviewed at least twice that I know of, but he hasn’t been banned, and probably won’t be unless he changes his pattern. The reason it seems he is being targeted is because of some haters out there that feel he is spamming certain sites, there seems to be a large group of them who’s intentions are to “clean up” SU. However, sometimes their intentions may be a little misguided by their own jealousy, but that’s just my opinion, and it is only a few. SU can’t ignore it’s users, however, and they will do their best to weed out the good users from the bad ones.

You may see your good friend get temporarily suspended who you feel doesn’t deserve it, and then see some crappy user spam their health blogs or whatever, it doesn’t mean they (the obvious spammer) is not being watched while your friend gets picked on. Chances are that these obvious spammers are being watched, so their days are short.  SU tries to make their users happy, and like I said before, it’s a big accomplishment for a social media site these days.

Please don’t be afraid of thumbing your friend’s stuff.  Just make sure you take a look at what they are submitting, if it’s from the same source each time, or if it is obviously very low quality.  If it is, then just remove them, or don’t thumb it.  And if you feel it truly is spam, report it.  This will make it a lot easier for the rest of us who are on SU for the right reasons.  You have to be accountable for who you chose to be your friends, so getting upset that you are under review because you kept thumbing up joebob’s (hopefully that’s not an actual user) health blog that sells vitaimins over and over again, seems a little silly.  Common sense is the best advice I can give you.

I am in no way affiliated with SU, nor do I know anyone who is.  I am only a long-time user who loves SU, and write what I have learned from my own experiences and research.

* * *

Read more about StumbleUpon on this Social News Blog.
Image courtesy of Pandemic Labs.

Bots on twitter are getting more clever. Accounts can be automated to seem as real as you or me.

Believe it or not, there’s actually a place for bots on Twitter.  For many, they can be effective for certain things such as RSS feeds for blogs, tag retweeting, etc.  The problem is with the automated accounts that are nothing other than ways to accumulate followers to spread whatever spammy message the botmaster wants spread either now or in the future.

We will be tracking the hashtag #notabot going forward and listing accounts that claim to be, well, not a bot. Accounts that tweet it will be verified for authenticity and listed here weekly.

If you’re not a bot, tweet it. Tweet it loud. Tweet it proud.

Pass it on. First “verification period will be 8-15 so get your tweets in before then to be on the initial list.

* * *

Read more on this social news blog.

Image courtesy of Dave Tong.

For me, StumbleUpon is a great place to make connections, see great pictures, and find articles or sites that I would otherwise not be exposed to. The whole idea of SU is to share great finds with your friends and for great content to get exposure.

This concept has evolved, to say the least. Now you may be exposed to sites that are not relevant to your preferences just because it has been thumbed up many times by your friends, and their friends, and so on. These sites have been “pushed” through the system, for the sake of traffic/views. Recently SU has been trying to combat this situation by adding the share feature, and even offering advertisement etc. In addition, they are banning “circles” of mutuals that seem to be sharing, thumbing, and reviewing the same sites.

If you happen to be in one of these “circles,” you run the risk of getting “ghost” banned or completely banned.

Ghost Banned on StumbleUpon: You can thumb up, thumb down, discover… pretty much anything a regular user can do. The only thing is, your efforts don’t count. You can tell if you’re “ghost banned” by discovering a page, opening up a different browser, and visiting the review page of the site you just discovered. If it says “Discovered by someone” and not you, you’re a ghost. No word yet on how to reverse this.

Here are some things to avoid:

As you know the share feature can be pretty annoying. I usually have around 50 pages waiting for me a day, and it’s very hard to keep up with. Most of the pages sent to me are from my social media friends who are also on Digg, Reddit, etc. They are sending me things they like or want to promote. Now, this is actually not against TOS as long as it isn’t their personal site, however, it’s usually a site that is beneficial to them in some way, and that is against TOS.

SU has caught on to this particular “gaming” of the system, and therfore they are banning not only the people who own the site who are “pushing” it, but the people who actually thumb these sites up often. This may seem a little unfair because you are just trying to be nice and a good social media friend.  Just giving it a thumb shouldn’t be that harmful to you. However, it is necessary on their part if you think about it. I have been very weary of discovering my friend’s sites since the banning initially began several months ago. I personally will discover what I truly like, and what I feel is relevant to my basic theme or what I believe in, but I can no longer do this for some of my favorites, and this to me is the unfortunate part.

Unfortunately, the friends who have good content will have to understand that you cannot keep thumbing up their stuff all the time. If you continue to do this for anyone, you will be flagged eventually. Remember, you don’t have to review it, you just have to thumb it and it becomes a red flag when you do this often for the same source. Once you get banned or ghost banned, you could lose all the hard work you have put into your discoveries.

The whole point is for diversity. SU wants different sources.  They want content from around the Internet – good content/pictures that deserve exposure based on what people like to see/read. In order to assure this, they must not encourage the same sites getting pushed through the preference pages simply because your friends shared it with a ton of other friends who all thumb it just because they asked them to through the share feature. You would not be exposed to anything other than a handful of sites if this continued.

In conclusion, your best bet is to just say NO. You are not obligated to thumb every page sent to you. If you are wanting to have reciprocated thumbs or reviews when you have a good site etc..then they will thumb it without you asking if it’s good. If you are discovering spammy sites whose content isn’t really any good, then SU is not the place to go. One thing to keep in mind is the timing. Make sure that some of your top friends are online before you make a discovery if you are wanting it to get exposure immediately.  In theory, they will see the page even if you don’t sent it if they’re subscribed to you. If the content is good enough, it will get thumbs and reviews.

The only way to get loyal subscribers however, is to make sure you are discovering worthy material. They will follow you.

Many serious users on SU are picky about what they are looking at, and if they notice they are being forced to view things that are not their preference or the same sources day after day, they will flag you or just stop looking all together.

Another tip is if you mistag a discovery, you might as well just pack it up. There was a time when marketers/spammers were tagging their content with “viewable” or popular tags in order for it to be seen more often. However, their tags were not relevant and were misleading. These people were banned pretty quickly. Just be mindful of your tags – make certain it fits.

Send stuff to different friends each time, not just everyone all the time if you plan on doing the share feature often. Make sure the content you are sending them is at the very least pretty good and from different sources. Chances are, if it’s not interesting enough for you to read it or look at it yourself, then they won’t either and you will get a “blind” thumb. Eventually this will lead to you and them getting banned.  If you have a good post, and most of your friends thumb it or give it a review without you asking, don’t be fearful of it being flagged just because most of your friends thumbed it up because chances are that if they did this without you asking, others who are not your friends will as well (this is how you get new subscribers and friends in the first place). This is very good for you simply because it shows that you are reaching a more diverse audience based on a good post/discovery, rather than a forced one, and SU will see that.  You will be more rewarded on SU for having good content more than most places. SU also loves good pictures, and it’s a great place to find some never-seen-before photography etc.

For those of you who are planning on using it as a traffic generator, your time will be short if you are posting trash or asking the same people to thumb the same stuff all the time. That is the difference I have noticed on SU versus any of the other social media sites, and that is why it’s my favorite place to be on the Internet.

* * *

Read more StumbleUpon Tips right here.

UPDATE: As predicted, they did not revert. They are going forward with their plan. Two nice “concessions” – a blog post explaining it (I didn’t expect that) and a reverse on older URLs already in use prior to today (good move – don’t change what we’ve already tweeted).

* * *

I hope I’m wrong, but…

Patience. It’s a virtue.  It’s also one that is hard to channel when issues concern social media. The “real-time web” is not real when it comes to decisions and changes (or lack of changes) on large websites, especially when something goes wrong on social news websites. Such is the situation with Digg and their recent Diggbar fiasco.

Kevin Rose, founder and CTO at Digg, was apparently not happy with the rollout of the recent change to the Digg URL shortener. It received quite a bit of negative buzz once the story broke, but the fervor of complaints have dwindled to whispers.  Rose was just returning from a 2 week trip when the changes were made to push clicks from Twitter and other sources to the Digg story page rather than a framed source as other URL shorteners do.

The tweet you see above was a reference to “catching up” from this trip with the negative buzz as one of the top points of discussion. While many (including me) are hoping that the new code will be pulled, a lack of response at this stage is not a good sign.  Here are the possibilities:

1. The old version will be implemented soon and a “we listen to our users” post will appear on the Digg blog.
2. The current version will stay in place and a properly-worded explanation will appear on the Digg blog.
3. The current version will stay in place and nothing further will be said about it.

Our hope is for #1. If more negative buzz comes out, #2 has an outside chance of happening.  As Digg has made the decision, plugged in the code, and emerged from the initial storm unscathed (for the most part), chances are strong that #3 was the winner in today’s meeting. They will most likely monitor the situation and assess the traffic numbers. The negative press will blow over and since the vast majority of those using Twitter to Tweet their stories through the shortened Digg URL aren’t even aware of the change, the positives will outweigh the negatives.

Traffic to Digg will increase, though not by as much as they initially hoped. Users “in the know” will revert to using bit.ly and hope that their submissions have a Digg button on them.  The majority of users will Tweet away with their shortened Digg URLs, completely unaware that most of their followers are going to the Digg.com story page rather than the source.

As bad of a move as it appears to avid Digg users and tech blogs, the reality of the situation is that this makes good business sense (in the short term).  One of the main reasons for dropping shouts and engaging through Twitter and Facebook was to pull from their massive and growing user-base.  Since the curiosity factor hasn’t kicked in as expected on these sites, Digg is forced to pull in non-users any way they can.  This change was not planned when the shortener service was first initiated, but desperate economic times call for desperate measures.

It was a calculated risk. Leaving the crowded URL shortening market ends 3 potential revenue streams that they haven’t even tried, but it’s not their core product.  They have made the decision to focus on improving on-site revenue.

Still, I can’t say that it’s a good business move because they are sacrificing potentially large future revenue streams for a constant bump of non-user visitors and a slight increase in registrations.  The click-thru totals on links through social networks are not increasing as quickly as the number of links flooding these sites.  Returns are going to diminish and the visitor burst will plateau.

Digg is passing on a handful of future revenue streams that would likely surpass on-site advertising revenues (even with the innovations they are testing currently) because of the way the Internet is evolving.  They have the tools, presence, and potential to grow beyond themselves. It seems they just can’t get away from business as usual.

Patience. It’s a virtue.

* * *

Read more about how social media sites can become profitable on Social News Watch.

UPDATE: This image speaks for itself:

UPDATE: Leo Laporte had Digg co-founder Kevin Rose on his show and asked him about this. You can see it on Twit Live – the Diggbar discussion starts at the 11:26 mark.  Here is an excerpt:

• (Laporte gives Rose the background from an article on Techcrunch)
• Laporte: Is that true?
• Rose: That’s a good question.
• Laporte: You don’t know?
• Rose: I’ve been gone for 2 weeks so I don’t know what got pushed, what code got pushed and how it functions but my last understanding is that what we wanted to do is have it so that if you click on a Digg URL it takes you to the Digg stories so you can Digg it. Rather than providing a short URL service that just forwards and does redirection we would just do a URL service just for Digg articles. Just like the same way that Techcrunch does “techcrunch slash 85374″ – if you go to that you’re not going to go to some other site you’re going to go to techcrunch. That’s the story.
• Laporte: So you’re backing off on the original idea which is a general URL shortening service…
• Rose: Correct.

UPDATE: Digg has confirmed via email that this is not a mistake and the shortener is working as intended.

UPDATE: Let Digg know how you feel through Twitter. Send an @digg via @socialnews reply and your tweets will be posted here as well.

Either there’s an error happening with Diggbar or Digg just made a big mistake.  Before, those who clicked on the links when not logged into Digg would be taken to the source image, article, or video.

Recently, the links have been switched to point to a Digg landing page if you aren’t logged in – the pages where the story is posted on Digg, not the original source.

No word from Digg regarding this. No blog post. No onsite message. No reply to a recent email. They dropped it in and now it appears that they’re seeing if it sticks.

I’m still holding onto hope that it’s a mistake and not a conscious choice.

Joel Mackey, a top user on Twitter, editor of Open Press Wire, and former Digg user, first noticed the change on Wednesday.

“I supported Digg and my buddies and willingly retweeted their stuff when Digg forwarded to the content because I knew it benefited BOTH parties,” he said. “Digg users got Diggs from my Digg followers and Twitter users and zombies got content.”

Here is the thread as he tested the change through his 75k+ followers. It’s in reverse chronological order.

Andrew Sorcini, the most prolific Digg user as MrBabyMan, said, “Sending someone who visits a site via a Digg URL automatically to the submission page on Digg will seriously hamper the functionality of Diggbar as a URL shortening service.”

When Digg removed the internal “Shout” feature and integrated with Twitter and Facebook, users flocked to these sites as a way to spread their content. The Diggbar URL shortener attached to the these new share options allowed users to Tweet content they found on or submitted to Digg. Sending unauthenticated clicks to the landing page has forced many to abandon using Diggbar altogether.

“I won’t be tweeting Digg links anymore. The majority of my followers on twitter are not diggers,” said Matthew Rogers, a Digg user with a 55% front page percentage.  “When they click a link to read something I’ve tweeted, they expect to be taken to the page I’ve described, not Digg.”

Private chat rooms have been buzzing about this since Mackey’s find.  Dozens of top users have been looking for an alternative URL shortener.

There seems to be three possible explanations for this move:

1. It’s an error. I emailed Digg to bring it to their attention, just in case.
2. It’s a test. Digg is known to make potential features live for a period of time to collect data. This would explain the lack of a blog post regarding the change.
3. It’s a “bait and switch”. They see the popularity of the Diggbar shortener as an opportunity to get non-users to visit the site, most notably from Twitter.

If it turns out to be #3 and this is made permanent, it will be the end of Diggbar’s usefulness on Twitter. Self-respecting users will not spam their followers with links to a landing page.

Diggbar as a shortener has been successful up until now. It has nice features including traffic counts and an ability to shorten a URL from the navigation bar by simply typing “digg.com/” before the target URL.  The convenience of a Twitter button on the story page has helped it to grow.

If this sticks, the growth is over. Digg’s URL shortener will no longer be a player in the crowded field.

* * *

Read more news about Digg at Social News Watch.

Imgur.com understands social media better than any other image-storage service on the Internet.

“How the hell did flickr get through our defenses?”

They started by posting high-quality, original humorous images. They then got the attention of Reddit but being the “go to pic place”. Digg and other social news sites are starting to get it.

How did they get so strong so quickly? They kept it simple.

1. Shortened URL instantly
2. Two clicks to post
3. Link straight to the image without ads
4. ???????
5. Profit

They are everything that tinypic isn’t. You don’t need an account. You don’t need an email. You find an image, post it, and score.  It owns the Pics subreddit, a huge one with over 130K subscribers.  It’s the most common image source on Digg now with more front pages every day. In short, Imgur understands how to appeal to social media users.  If alexa is to be trusted, it’s worked.  Their reach has increased by 392% in 3 months and they are closing in on being a top 2000 site in the world.

While they aren’t nearly as big as imageshack, tinypic, or flickr, it should only be a matter of time for them to build up the site-bulk required to compete with other image services.  Either way, we give them mega-kudos to really understanding Web 2.0.

* * *

Read more about social news on this blog.

Most who give advice about Digg say that the fastest way to get to the front page is by being active, picking out the right friends, digging all of their submissions, and waiting until they add you back. Once you have enough friends, look for strong content to submit and VOILA! you hit.

For most, this is the most valid plan. It can take time and effort, but it’s possible to take an account that isn’t very old and get it to the front page within a couple of weeks.  There is another tactic that’s faster but requires Instant Messaging in bulk (ie, semi-spamming) to get to the front page. This is a valid way as well and an entire post can be written about the proper use of IM as a Digg front page strategy.

Today, we’re going to bypass the work and make it simple. There are a few sites that have a tremendous chance of hitting the front page – so good in fact that they are always posted to Digg within seconds of the content going live. This is the strategy that we’re going to discuss because someone who is brand new (or at least a couple of days old) on Digg can make their first submission hit the front page regardless of their current number of friends.

The first question that always comes up when I discuss this strategy with people is, “What’s the point? I don’t care about those sites, so why would I submit them?” The answer is based around credibility. Once you have broken your “front page cherry” it becomes much easier to build the account by getting more friends. Some Digg users will look at your account to see how many stories you Digg, how many you submit, and whether or not you’ve hit the front page. If you don’t fit the right “structure” on your profile, they won’t add you back. With this strategy, make your appearance on the front page first, then start to build your account the right way.

Getting Your Digg Account Ready

As strong as the sites below are when it comes to hitting on Digg, it is still a good idea to have your account slightly built up before submitting. Whether it’s new or old, regardless of whether you have friends yet or not, if you’re not getting 20+ natural Diggs when you submit from just about any source, it’s good to start here:

1. Find users who are active and Digging a lot more than they are submitting. You can find them on the front page – users who are hitting the front page will most likely have a stats similar to the one pictured here.  Notice that the user is relatively active with hundreds of Diggs in the last 30 days. They’ve dugg a lot more stories than they’ve submitted and they’ve hit the front page with a good amount of success.
2. Digg this user’s most recent submissions, at least 5 and as many as 10.
3. Add them as a friend.
4. Repeat.
5. Continue doing this until you’ve Dugg around 200 stories for the day, then rest until tomorrow.
6. When you’re ready the next day, Digg all of your friends’ recent submissions until you catch up with what you Dugg yesterday.
7. Go back to step 1 and continue to add more quality Digg friends. Don’t worry if they haven’t added you back after a few days – some only add new friends once in a while.  Hopefully they will notice that you’ve been Digging their submissions and they will add you back.
8. Do this for a week. Longer is better, but since this blog post suggests that you can get your first front page in a week, we’ll go with that.  By the end of the week, you should have 30-50 friends who have added you back and will be looking for your wonderful first submission.

The Digg-Super-Whitelisted Sites

Now that you’ve build up a week’s worth of friends, it’s time to submit something. With Digg, it’s not a matter of submitting just anything. Certain sites are able to hit over 50% of the time. A few hit over 90% of the time.

XKCD – this site is the epitome of clockwork on Digg. While it doesn’t hit every single time, it’s extremely reliable and has a set time for its posts: Midnight EST Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So, Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights, several users sit and wait for XKCD to drop in hopes of being the lucky recipient of its high-percentage front page success.

The key to being the lucky one is in speed. XKCD uses a numbered URL structure. Find out the URL of the previous post and add 1.  The URL for the image to the right is http://xkcd.com/607 so we know that the following post will be http://xkcd.com/608 – not hard.

The hard part is in submitting it quickly. There is no time to look at it, read it, or chuckle at it. Some don’t even open it. They have the URL ready and as midnight EST approaches  they start pasting it in the submission, select image, and submit. It will say that the URL is invalid until it is actually posted.  Keep pasting and hitting submit until it “sticks”.

Once the submission process starts, you’ll know that the newest comic is live. The race is on. While it’s Digging through your submission on your computer, it’s doing the same thing on other computers across the world.  Several people are racing for it so you have to be fast. Skip past the dupe checker as quickly as possible (it’s never a dupe).  Once you’re on the page, it should populate the title. You don’t need a description as long as you submitted it as an image. Select “Comics and Animation” as the category, nail the captcha, and press go.

A few seconds later, you’ll see the result. Either your name will be listed or it will show someone else submitted it seconds earlier. That’s it. It’s challenging, but someone has to get it. With a little luck and some quick fingers, it may be you. Chances are very strong that you just got your first Digg front page.

TorrentFreak – For less competition but more of a challenge, Torrent Freak is another high-percentage front page site. The difference between Torrent Freak and XKCD is that the posts are much more frequent on TF, the URLs aren’t numbered, and the chances of hitting the front page are lower. Still there are more opportunities and less competition, so it’s still a valid submit for the first front page.

You’ll need a page-refresher. There are plugins available and programs that you can buy – not going to list them here. You’ll want something that refreshes the page every second or two and pings you when a new story is added.

Once you hear the ping, the submission process is pretty much the same as with XKCD. I would at least scan the dupe checker very, very quickly to make sure that it hasn’t been submitted from another site before.  Otherwise, the race is still on as there will surely be plenty of people submitting it while you are.

Don’t submit “The Most Downloaded” stories that normally post on weekends. They won’t hit. Otherwise, if you can get that as your first submission, you have an excellent chance of hitting the front page with it.

Other Digg-Whitelisted Sites

XKCD and Torrent Freak are the best for new submitters as they give you an incredible chance of hitting, but getting them is extremely difficult.  For a little less challenge while still submitting from over-50% front page sites, you can also try:

APOD – The Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA posts once a day, every day, just after midnight EST. The URL is date-based, so you can know what to submit just like with XKCD. Treat it just the same, only submit under “Space” rather than “Comics”.

Cracked – While APOD is the poor-man’s XKCD, Cracked is the poor-man’s Torrent Freak. Different URLs, different times posting (though they will go through spurts where they post everything at 8:00 am EST), and usually 3 posts a day, it has a better than average chance of hitting if you can grab it.

SixRevisions and SmashingMagazine – For those who can grab these design powerhouses when they drop, the chances of hitting the front page are exceptional. Getting them submitted is a bit tougher as there always seems to be people “ready” to submit once they are made live.

Why Not Do it Forever?

These sites and a handful of others are crutches. They give new users a chance to get their name on the front page.  The problem with users who submit these sites continuously is that it becomes more and more challenging for these users to get other sites on the front page. When a “power user” starts getting addicted to getting these sites to the front page, they soon find that nothing else seems to hit for them.

Use these sites to get on. Build you account well. Find strong content and make friends. Hitting the front page with sites that you like is just a few blog posts away… (to be continued)

* * *

Read more about social news on this blog.