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11 Tips to Enhance Your Digg User Experience (and Hopefully Bring You Front Page Fame)

August 9, 2007

Just a few months ago, I had a love-hate relationship with Digg. Now, after acquainting myself with the system and learning more about what works and what doesn’t, I’m one of the top users of the service. Do I still hate Digg? Occasionally. After all, Digg is a social network that unifies individuals with different opinions. You can definitely expect the unexpected here. Additionally, there are a few fixes I still hope to see for the Digg experience to be improved for all users. But do I still love Digg? I think that answer is self-evident. I find most of my interesting news from Digg, and I consider my knowledge of everyday news to be a lot more comprehensive now that I am an avid user of the service.

On Monday, I celebrated my one-year anniversary as a Digg member. After using Digg quite regularly lately in the latter part of my membership at Digg, I’ve gotten acclimated to the service and to the likes and dislikes of others. Granted, I don’t know everything, but I feel that I’ve gotten a pretty solid feel for what works and what doesn’t. Here are some tips that should help you get the most out of Digg too.

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A Virtual Hug: As Touching as a Physical One

August 7, 2007

Virtual HugSome of you may know that my grandfather is quite ill and has been in the ICU for the past few weeks. I’ve been spending a lot of time focusing on family and in the hospital. A number of friends online have helped me be strong. One in particular, Miguel Lopez, shared this story (below) with me about how online relationships have helped him cope with the illness of his mother.

It started with a headache.

My mother, like most senior citizens, has more than a fair share of health problems. But a few weeks ago, they turned worse. She started complaining of severe headaches, then dizziness, then vertigo. Worried, we called 911 and soon she was in the ER, being subject to all kinds of tests.

I’m sure most of you have been in a hospital waiting room. In most circumstances there is not much you can do to try to keep your mind away from the uneasy feeling creeping out of your gut. You call your immediate family or close friends, watch the TV, read a magazine.

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“Subvert and Profit” Profits No One

July 25, 2007

Many of you know I’m writing more and more about Digg. I’ve become deeply involved in the community and I’ve gotten a greater understanding of what stories make it to the main page. I’m about to break the Top 100 (that list is here). It’s something, that, as Muhammad Saleem said, is because of a heightened awareness of what that community seeks:

Because they understand the nuances of the site and the preferences of the community, they are able to submit content that is appreciated by the democracy-based community of Digg and the content is consequently promoted to the home page.

When I submit a story to Digg, I have a good deal of confidence that my stories have a decent chance of hitting the main page, typically because I generally look for the content that is worthy of a Digg front-page mention. That’s why I was astonished when I saw a story in my feed reader that I ultimately submitted to Digg get buried at 43 votes. I spotted an anomaly that I typically didn’t detect once the story got buried: the rate at which it was being Dugg still grew, and by the time I checked the story again just a few hours later, it had an additional 60+ votes. Typically, buried stories taper off. They don’t grow like this. The community saw the piece and felt, like me, that it was deserving of a front page promotion, but the story inexplicably didn’t make it.

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Does Social Media Have an Impact on Today’s Journalism? You Tell Me.

July 20, 2007

Computer JournalismAs I become more and more immersed in the world of social media, I begin seeing how it’s not just me; social media is a tool that infiltrates our existence and our being. Consider the Digg effect: if your server is ill-prepared for a traffic spike and you hit the front page for the first time, your web host will probably disable your service contract. Within the first few hours, you’re seeing at least 10,000 visitors to your website. That’s substantial. These thousands of users are all accessing your superior content at the same time and are being influenced by what you say. In fact, social media is on the radar of many prominent news outlets. Journalists are watching what is being submitted, and more interestingly, they are watching what you say.

Two examples have arisen this past week.

In anticipation for the highly acclaimed Harry Potter novel, photographed pages of the book have already leaked onto the Internet. Within hours, the discovery was brought to the forefront of the Digg community. The Wall Street Journal covered the initial leak. What tipped them off? This TorrentFreak post seems most likely. After all, it made its way to Digg.

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29 Super Awesome Tools Built on the Digg API

July 11, 2007

Ever since Digg opened its API, talented programmers have built a ton of tools that utilize Digg. Some of these tools monitor upcoming and popular stories. Others tell you about your account statistics and your circle of friends. Yet others allow users to browse stories, videos, and pictures in very unique and flashy ways. Here are twenty-nine tools, with some being lesser known than others, but all of them having some pretty significant purpose in the life of a Digger.

1. diggwatcher is a simple application built in Flash that runs in the background and monitors a single Digg story of your choosing. You can receive sound alerts when you get new Diggs, comments, and when your story becomes popular. The script refreshes every 60 seconds.

diggwatcher

2. The Digg Noise Filter is a tool that will let you watch upcoming stories before they become popular… that’s if you don’t want to use the regular Digg upcoming tool. (Developed by Russ Jones)

Digg Noisefilter

3. Digg Entourage was also developed by Russ Jones and shows you who is in your Digg social circle by avatar and also in table format (number of stories Dugg, percentage of stories Dugg, and whether they’re your friend or fan):

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