Cool quote:

“Now that everyone and their grandmother’s smoking buddies are trying to spam Digg, Reddit, and Netscape into oblivion, I think the opportunity to use that as a reliable factory of linkbuilding has jumped the shark“

And another…

“Back to the masses of chainsmoking grandmothers and why you should jump off that bandwagon immediately. If you are trying to linkbait now, good freaking luck. Depending on the community, Power Accounts have either been marginalized or it’s too late to build an effective toolbox of them. It’s time to stop buying into the hype of Linkbaiting Millions and accept the fact that you “bait” an audience the same way people have been audience building for centuries“

Source: Scoreboard Media Group.

On a related note, SEOMOZ notices a big decrease in Digg traffic to their site.

“Far be it from me to post information like this without checking on stats from others. According to my unnamed, but “on-Digg-all-the-time” sources from around the SEO world, Digg has also been sending them far less traffic than previous efforts.“

Gaming any system will, eventually, either kill it or make it stronger.

The problem the social media sites have is that they are built on the idea of being an open free-for-all. However, if they limit their openness, as a defensive strategy against people gaming their systems, then they invariably change into something else.

As we saw recently with Digg, the audience can be rather fickle when it comes to constraint of freedom. The audience can  make a mess, and then move on to somewhere else. Yet, if freedom is not restricted, then the system could die under the weight of “spam”. In Digg’s case, publication of sensitive data that may lead to legal problems, and marketing-driven link bait. Not saying all link bait is bad/spam - it isn’t - however it’s fair to say that Digg probably don’t want the front page permanently occupied by SEO companies.

It’s getting harder to link bait social media. It’s getting a lot harder to run a popular social network, too.

Is the low-hanging fruit of social media just about all gone?

Is this the day Digg died?

There appears to be a Digg user revolt is in progress.

A digg-er submitted a HD-DVD encryption key. I won’t repeat it here - but hey - that code is going to be all over the Google SERPs pretty soon. That cat is soo far out of the bag, probably riding on the horse that bolted. After seeing the genie pop out of the bottle…

Anyways…Digg apparently withdrew the post. In response, the community has been Digging nothing but new posts featuring the HD DVD encryption hack. As of the time of writing, the entire front page of Digg is filled with posts referring to the code.

Just goes to show the downside of building value based on the wisdom of crowds.

They’re also wide open to the wrath of the mob….

BTW: DRM loses again. DOA. Actually, D.Before.A….

I don’t know if this is more 1st of April japery or not.

Subvert and Profit is a vote buying web site on which you can buy Diggs.

“We are a new kind of black market. We allow advertisers to purchase actions on social networks, and we pay social network users to perform those actions…We are currently only recruiting Digg users, the first 500 of whom will be guaranteed $0.75 per paid Digg indefinitely. Digg may know that we exist, but we employ sophisticated technology to prevent Digg from blocking us. Our goal is to outsmart Digg..“

What do you get if you take one idiot, and put him into a crowd of idiots?

Wisdom, apparently.

I’ve always been suspicious of the idea that there is wisdom in crowds, as the opposite, more often, appears to be true. However there is certainly value to be had in aggregating crowds, especially for marketers.

Interesting article on Read Write about sites which use crowds, although I’m not sure about the wisdom of using Digg as an shining example. Digg certainly reflects the fleeting interests of it’s demographic, but there’s not much in the way of wisdom generation going on, really.

Digg can be interesting, and everybody likes gaining links without having to pay for them, but the downside is having thousands of teenagers descending on your site all at once.

How can you avoid being Dugg?

Here’s a good top ten ways not to get Dugg. Probably should have been a top 11, or 9, really.

I can add a few:

• Write an article that requires more than two seconds of contemplation in order to understand it.
• Write about fashion, cool, business, money - in fact, write about anything that doesn’t involve Youtube, computers, Star Wars, or Digg itself - and you’ll be so far from the front page you may as well be in Iowa.
• Write about Iowa.
• Write an article about how great SEOs really are….

The irony is, of course, that article will probably be Dugg as it involves Digg. So I’m calling linkbait…

OK, I’ve been out of the loop for a week. I’ve been on holiday. No computer. Kind of liberating.

Anyways….

Danny Sullivan tried to debate with Diggers about SEO last week. They voted him off.

I thought I’d bring this up, because I’ve tried debating the occasional point with Diggers, too. A waste of time, as I’d get more intelligent debate if I tried debating with a cat. Rather than debate, many simply decide they don’t like something, and vote it down. Beats having to think, I guess.

Are there any intelligent debates on Digg? Just one? I don’t think I’ve seen any. The way Digg is setup, debating is virtually impossible, as opposing viewpoints are often silenced, leaving only the “wisdom” of the mob. Truth becomes the first victim because they simply can’t handle it.

Digg produces some interesting stuff. But the threads are a waste of time.

Kim recalls her experiences at being Dugg. She didn’t much care for it, and who can blame her.

While Digg can be interesting and useful, it is just as likely to be the opposite. The online equivalent of being in a room with a bunch of socially-challenged high school nerds. And no one wants that

This illustrates another risk of link baiting (not saying Kim was link baiting - she wasn’t pursuing that goal). If the aim is to be Dugg, would a client enjoy the possibility of negative fallout? How would this support the marketing goal? Links are nice, but what is the true cost?

BTW - Another thing I loathe about Digg is the voting on comments. Any view that doesn’t support the status quo tends to get Dugg down, so debate becomes impossible. Democratic? Wisdom of crowds?

Bullocks. Juvenile mob mentality.

I’m almost loathe to say this, but I’m finding Digg more interesting than many mainstream news aggregators, of late. I guess it helps that I enjoy the tech focus, and its fair to say Digg does pretty poorly outside that narrow range.

But what it does do, it is doing better. Perhaps it has reached a scale that produces better results? The conventional mainstream news sites are now certainly falling well behind in terms of freshness and interest.

Not that Digg is without problems in terms of editorial. The mob mentality is just as likely to bury interesting and worthwhile pieces in favor of the facile quick fix.

Is there something deeper going on? Is this the next step in search? Aggregating opinions by way of backlinks was a great idea, but communities of interest are potentially a lot more powerful.

BTW: A commenter on SEL brought up an interesting point. Is whoever was on the Google plane visiting Christchurch based Eurekster? Eurekster provide community-based search.

An article about the corruption of Digg.

“Companies charge as much as $15,000 to get content up on Digg, said Neil Patel, chief technology officer at the Internet marketing firm ACS. If a story becomes popular on Digg and generates links back to a marketer’s Web site, that site may rise in search engine results and will not have to spend money on search advertising, he said.“

15K? It can be done for a lot less than that.

Ignoring that aspect, people may whine about the corruption, and the corruption is indeed unfortunate, however it exposes a fundamental truth, and the reason why these systems will almost always fail: editorial control matters.

The problem with editorial control is that is doesn’t scale well.

That is the reality. Either these systems adapt, Google-style, or they will fail.

Or perhaps links will become a lot less important.

Can’t see it happening myself…