What is Digg?
Posted by gemsuraj on September 14, 2007
By now you must have at least heard of Digg, a popular news site. Do you know what it is and how it works? When used properly, you can use Digg to drive traffic to your blog. When taken advantage of, Digg can become a magnet for spam. What follows is look at Digg.
How Does it Work?:
Digg is a contributor-generated social news site. While many people don’t quite understand how Digg works, it’s actually quite simple. A contributor will submit a news story to Digg. Other members will vote “or digg” for the same story. Popular stories might have hundreds of diggs, while others fade into obscurity with nary a digg at all. Stories “dugg” by 40 or 50 users have a good chance of showing up on Digg’s main page, driving traffic to the website or blog that originally broke the story. Digg users can also “bury” a story or label it as being “lame.” This of course moves it further back in the Digg basement.
How Can it Benefit My Blog?:
If you break a news story or post an interesting how-to, you can submit it to Digg. Once submitted, it can drive traffic to your blog. Usually the traffic is short lived and you only see an increase for a day or two. With luck, some of those visiting your site will bookmark it so they can visit often.
You can also install a “Digg This” button under news-worthy posts on your blog. This will enable your readers to submit or digg your post.
Social Networking:
Registered members can comment on the different news articles. Members can also make “friends” with other member and view their statistics.
Disadvantages of Digg:
One popular complaint is that writers will pay Digg’s top contributors to post their stories in hopes of having it appear on Digg’s main page. Another is that phony or spammy news is also posted and dugg. Top users can rule Digg. They will vote on each other’s contributions and decide which articles get to the front page. These scenarios are damaging to Digg’s credibility.
Digg’s emphasis is on technology, science, politics, entertainment and politics. If blog something different, you’ll have to get creative when submitting to Digg. Though it’s meant to be a site for real news fluff still gets through.
