Netpaths Guide to SEO & Web Design » digg

Why Digg Lost Its #1 Spot to Reddit

CVOS — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:32:34 +0000

Digg.com lost its reign as the most important social media site to game use, so now reddit.com will need to need to upgrade their system to keep up with the new SEO’s users.

After an eternity (in internet years) as the top dog in driving traffic, how did Digg lose their footing?

The problems began with the version 4 redesign in the spring of 2010 when they were terrified of being marginalized by twitter. This led them to try to become twitter, which was a huge mistake as their rabid fan base was loyal to Digg specially because they WERE NOT twitter.

They tried to become a social media site focused on sharing between friends, and killing the Upcoming News tab. They tried to justify this using questionable statistics, hyperbole and long winded blog posts, but the end result was not good. Traffic is down 37% in the past 3 months and this crushing blow has caused them to loose their lead over the main competitor Reddit.com.

A quote from Founder Kevin Rose

“Out of 200+ Million pageviews in July, only 0.4% was from upcoming (yes, that’s less than 1/2 of a percent). I definitely see the fun behind wanting to see stories just before they jump…”

The problem with this is the role of that page for so many die hard users some of whom make their livelihood/spend extraordinary amounts of time getting stories promoted to the homepage. The Digg team was asking questions wishing for answers, but they forgot the people they served and are paying for it with lost traffic.

Unfortunately team Digg misinterpreted the results and did not see the correct patterns in site usage and user engagement.

After the new Digg redesign, they called it a success:

“Usage looks extremely good (ie. more people registering (43,000+ new users yesterday), digging, consuming, clicking, following, etc.)”

It’s easy to postulate, but they cannot ignore a bad situation or change statistics to fit their desired results. This activity was from the short-term spike in awareness and buzz from the relaunch, but it was not sustainable.

Digg was like Yahoo in the late 1990′s when they were terrified of being swallowed by Microsoft, so they transformed themselves from a tech company into a media company. In the end, they met the exact fate they tried to avoid, and lost their core search business to MSN.

Digg appears to be in the same position, trying to differentiate themselves from other social media sites and stop hemorrhaging users to twitter, but they appear to be doing a “Yahoo”.

They need to ask tough questions, examine the data, and check the patterns to determine whether the numbers you end up using actually help people, or constitute self delusion.

They have a great website, millions of users and a strong brand, I am rooting for the Digg team to come out swinging with version 5 and retake their past position.

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Google To Buy Digg for 200 Million?

CVOS — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:28:06 +0000

What do you get when you combine Google search engine and Digg social voting: Giggle. There is a strong possibility the Digg users will have their usernames transferred to Google accounts.

I can’t wait to see the uprising on digg when they realize all their voting and browsing history will be transferred to Google, and Google will use this to their advantage. Users have a history of mob like behavior and are prone to shooting first and asking questions… someday.

Some possible name mashups:

Diggle
Giggle
Doogle
Gigg
Googg
Goig

Google has ad technology to pinpoint the best ad to the right user, so they must believe they can pay for this acquisition in a few years.

The purchase price is reportedly 200 million which is approximately $66 for every registered user, assuming there are 3,000,000 digg users. For comparison, AOL paid about $40 for every Bebo.com user and eBay purchased the social networking site StumbleUpon for about $45 million, valued at $20 per registered user. The big difference is it is extremely difficult to monetize StumbleUpon.com, while digg.com has lots of advertisements.
Diggers must click on a lot of ads – oh wait no they don’t.

Currently Microsoft is providing ads to Digg, but this should immediately change with a Google takeover.
As reported by TechCrunch and commented on by scores of excited, nervous, hyped, curious, incredulous and indifferent blogs.

Where are the Google haters? If you are furious about this deal we want to link to you.

Digg is currently the 115th most popular site on the internet according to Alexa. Digg traffic is extremely volatile, dropping over 100% last month before rebounding.

Alexa.com graph showing Digg’s popularity

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How To Linkbait Digg

CVOS — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 21:41:05 +0000

This is an excellent piece of linkbait that shows how to bait the most prominent social network, Digg.com. It is well known in the search engine optimization community that a piece of linkbait making the homepage of Digg can get 30,000 to 50,000 hits in 24 hours. This creates enormous incentive to submit ~~spam~~ quality top 10 lists to this social news voting website.

Because Digg users hate being owned by anyone, they have developed an acute dislike of SEO’s and will usually automatically bury any content submission if it appears to be commercial linkbait.

So how do you steal 150 million dollars from Terry Benedict’s impenetrable safe? Gangster style – become their friend, tell them what you are doing, then walk away with their loot.

Socialnewswatch has beat Digg at its own game by posting a masterful piece of linkbait that doesn’t attempt to hide the fact that they are gaming digg.

So, let’s experiment. The idea has been percolating for a while, but James Pegram’s Blog beat us to the punch. No worries.

Another thing they did was pit them against an archrival, Stumbleupon.com. No self respecting digger wants to be second string to any other social network, especially one owned by the ‘corporate establishment’ (ebay.com inc.)

On Digg, as stories move down the front page and on to the next, the traffic slows, like tall rollercoaster freefall that hits tremendous speeds, then gradually levels out and slows. Stumble is like a bumpy rollercoaster in the dark. You know the traffic will go up and down, you just don’t know when it’s going to go up, nor when it’s going to stop.

It’s well known that diggers hate advertising with a passion (almost as much as SEO’s) so to appease them:

A quick note about incentive: This blog makes next to nothing in ad revenue. That can be expected, as almost all of its traffic is generated by social media users who are normally too web-savvy to click on adsense or purchase from an advertising banner.

Finally, offer to show data and results. Digg users love code, statistics, numbers, facts (even those of dubious veracity) and the chance to be part of a widely used online survey proved irresistable.

All data will be posted here with times and results as they become available… Please Stumble/review it. Please help. Data is coming.

The result – this story was dugg like crazy, with almost 1000 votes as of this post.

Checkout the Socialnewswatch post to see this masterful linkbait in its full glory.

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