Dec 10 2007
Do you Digg? I Don’t Think I Will.
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I submitted by first story to Digg yesterday - it’s kind of a pain! I’ve had an account since August, and while I had created a profile I had never submitted an article so I thought I should try it. I took several minutes to go through the process of checking for duplicates and creating a review.
Afterward, I did a little research:
The Dig Effect from Read Write Web has a good overview of using Digg. The post points out that “many top tier blogs have begun to rely on a different source of traffic - the web’s number one social news site Digg.” However, “getting to the front page of Digg leads to a such traffic surge that it has been known to cripple web servers.” Also see the Wikipedia article on the Digg Effect. 9 Ways to Digg-Proof Your Blog from All Tips and Tricks is a funny take on this issue.
Techcrunch says Digg is still the best social voting site (compared to Mixx, Propeller and Reddit). But the reviewer seems to give them the nod because they are the biggest and their site is more “appealing” (and more familiar?).
How to own Digg in 20 easy steps from Internet Marketing Online and 11 Tips to Enhance Your Digg User Experience (and Hopefully Bring You Front Page Fame) from Techipedia are good overviews on promoting your blogs with Digg.
7 Reasons Why Niche Social Media Outlets are Better Than Digg from AjaxNinja discusses several compelling reasons for avoiding Digg:
- Digg has a very hostile user base
- A lot of Diggers are in it for promoting themselves as power users
- Digg has too broad of an audience
- Digg’s high volume of stories makes it hard to get noticed
- Digg’s Categories are Too Broad
- Digg is not transparent; we don’t know why some stories get buried
- In order to improve your effectiveness and visibility on Digg, you have to invest a lot of time into its social network
I don’t know - I’m not convinced. It seems that most people use Digg as a tool to drive fairly indiscriminate traffic to their sites to earn money from ads. As I don’t have ads on this blog and I am looking for a very specific corporate audience for Northern Light’s products and services, so Digg seems like a lot of work for little longterm gain. And carries the very real possibility of garnering negative responses from the Digg community.
What’s your experience with Digg? Why should I use it?
