King of Digg

What Is the Digg Effect?

So my last post on Digg's new recommendation engine made the front page of Digg. Most excellent. And I was thinking a good follow-up would be a discussion of the so-called Digg Effect, i.e. how many pageviews making the front page typically gets you.

I've seen the number 40,000 mentioned before, and from second-hand experience I can tell you that seems to be a decent ballpark figure. Of course, every story is going to be different, but I've got a buddy who works for a site that covers comic books and toys (two topics that are Internet gold), and some of his entries have made the front page over the past few months, and when he makes the front page he gets anywhere from 15,000 to 40,000 direct referrals from Digg.com, not to mention the bonus pageviews from sites like Gorilla Mask or Reddit, which often follow Digg's lead and can bring in another 10,000.

But we're talking about comics and toys here. In the case of my little post praising Digg's new recommendation engine, which was submitted under Tech News, I managed to get -- drum roll, please -- 2,753 referrals from Digg and another 219 from Reddit, which is far less than the 40K mentioned above.

Why so few? Well, mine was at least the second post that day that mentioned the new engine and its title ("Hooray for Digg's New Recommendation Engine") was meant more as a thumbs-up to Digg than an enticement to actually get users to click on the link.

And for anyone who's wondering: My Google AdSense earnings for the first few days were -- another drum roll, please -- eight cents.

Digg's New Recommendation Engine

I was just screwing around with Digg's recommendation engine, and I like it!

It seems an obvious nod to the functionality of Reddit, and it's a much welcome chance to see what your friends are digging without clicking on the general tab for all their submissions, then clicking on the titles to get to particular Digg entries, then clicking on the titles again to get to the actual stories.

Now all you have to do is click on the engine page and then click on the titles and -- boom -- you're sent to the story in a pop-up window, which is how I like to roll, since I don't have to hit the "back" button to return and show my approval.

Plus, if I'm understanding the system correctly, it's also straight-up 2.0 in that your previous behavior will affect what stories show up.

Attaboy, Digg. Good job.

Data on Digg Front Page Stories

The good folks at Social Blade have a handy tool that analyzes how each story makes the front page of Digg. You can see how long each story took to get there, not to mention what percentage of its diggs came from friends. Fascinating stuff.

A completely non-quantitative analysis, i.e. a quick glance down the columns, seems to show that stories make the front page more quickly when they have higher percentages of friendly diggs, which makes sense, sure, but those stories also seem to make the front page with less total diggs than is required of other stories, perhaps because of the momentum from all those friendly clicks.

Street Art 101: How to Wheatpaste

Here's a video a friend and I worked up a while back for my blog about graffiti in Houston, Austin and beyond. I'm reposting it here so I can try out my fancy new buttons below.


Wheat- Paste Posters - video powered by Metacafe

Making the Front Page on Digg

Here's the very first story I ever submitted to Digg. It made the front page. Talk about beginner's luck. It took another 200 submissions before I ever made it there again. I guess vomit and/or Barack Obama are keys to a successful story on Digg. And there I was thinking it was all about Ron Paul and boobies...