If any of you guys follow Digg closely, you might have noticed an amusing article to hit the homepage a few days ago called You Might Be Addicted to Digg If. If you’re a keen observer, you might have also noticed this list was hosted on a new startup site called ListZe. This is a fun project I built with a buddy of mine (Parker) to help fill an untapped market of social organization and list management.

Lots of people out there have great ideas of informative or comical information they’d like to toss out as a list and submit to digg or reddit, but they don’t want to setup a whole blog or website, and then get limited static functionality from it. ListZe is a bit different. On this site, anyone can create a list and add items to it. Then other members can come along and add their own items that might have been forgotten originally. This is a great social collaboration tool in itself. Next members can vote items on any list up and down, effectively sorting the list in decreasing order, polarizing the items with the best (usually the funniest) up top, and the worst items on the bottom.

It’s a great site that could prove very useful to a number of people. Here are a few example lists for you to see the kinds of lists we serve:
- Funny Bumper Stickers
- 2008 Presidential Candidates
- Funny Blonde Jokes
- Excuses for Sleeping at Work
- Funny AIM Away Messages
- The Best Movies of 2007
- Amazing but True Facts
- Fun things to do at Walmart
And many more. View the complete list.

I’ve found Diggers like statistics. I received a great response to my Most Powerful Sites on Digg and the last Most Powerful Members on Digg article, but those were only for a 30 day period (as long as Digg allows a visitor to go back). In another recent article submitted, I had a large number of people requesting a follow-up Most Powerful Member post, and since over a month has past, I’ve sat down and recalculated everything again.

These numbers are analyzing how many articles each top user got to the homepage (and not buried) from April 19th, 2007 to May 19th, 2007… the most powerful users on Digg.

I’ve also gone an additional step in this post and included how many friends each user has. A lot of people speculate one trick to help your articles get to the homepage is to build a large friend-base, and digging each other’s articles whenever one person submits something. That said, if anyone is feeling lonely, I’ll definitely be your friend. In the following list, I’ve excluded anyone with less than two articles hitting homepage. In the case of a tie, I ranked users with articles hitting homepage more recently higher.

Are you listed?

#1 MrBabyMan (383 Friends) — sixty four articles
#2 mklopez (153 Friends) — sixty articles
#3 Alexius (12 Friends) — fifty one articles
#4 skored (291 Friends) — forty three articles
#5 msaleem (548 Friends) — forty three articles
#6 supernova17 (135 Friends) — forty two articles
#7 moojj (510 Friends) — forty two articles
#8 IvanB (641 Friends) — thirty seven articles
#9 sepultura (170 Friends) — thirty two articles
#10 interg12 (933 Friends) — thirty articles
Read the rest of this entry …

At what point does a site get too powerful?

I spent a good amount of time with Digg because it’s a great source for backlinks. Sure, I don’t make any money off this blog, but rather use it for experiments and giving back to the community. I occasionally post tutorials or reviews, building a small reader base and gaining decent weight in search engines, which becomes invaluable when I launch new products such as Desktop Nexus.

Most of my backlinks come from articles on Digg, but at what point does a supersite like Digg become too powerful? When does it gain wikipedia-like velocity, where no matter what happens, there’s no end in sight. I recently had an article hit homepage about Ubuntu Wallpapers, which received over 500 diggs. The problem, however, is after Google updated and reshuffled it’s results, the Digg article was crowned in the top space for ‘ubuntu wallpapers’ and number two (below) for ‘ubuntu wallpaper’, with my site below it at number five:

So Digg, receiving all it’s content from the community, has achieved such mass in search engines, that they themselves rank higher than the sites they promote. Should Google make adjustments to it’s algorithms, allowing less heavy sites to rank higher, based on the link structure? If a page has 50 backlinks, all pointing to it with no outgoing links from it (ie, no link exchanges), how can Google’s logic place one of the backlinks higher than the page being promoted? Common sense dictates that looking at a link structure such as that, Google should be able to decide which page is the source, and which are references.

However I’m tearing on Google mostly because they’re my main source of traffic, however Yahoo is even worse. Yahoo ranks both the Digg article and the DuggMirror on page one, but my site doesn’t come up at all in the first 10 pages. MSN, being clueless as usual, doesn’t rank the Digg article or my site at all.

Google is a great search engines, the best online today in my opinion, however I believe they’re over-tweaking their results. They’re degrading their overall quality by watering down the accuracy to help filter out spam.

Anyone else have any examples like this?

I just noticed we have some beautiful waterfall wallpapers on Desktop Nexus, so I threw up a quick Digg article: http://www.digg.com/design/Beautiful_Waterfall_Wallpapers

If you have a Digg account, I’d appreciate the support.

Two days back I spent an insane amount of time doing research and calculating statistics for the top digg users, based on how many homepage articles they submitted over a 30 day period of time.

From the results:

I’ve finally finished adding up all the authors who’s submissions made homepage in the past 30 days (same as before, March 15th 2007 to April 15th 2007), and it had a strangely cool outcome. The number of users who had more than one article hit the homepage in the past 30 days works out to be EXACTLY 300. It’s the small things in life….

I submitted the article to Digg (link), and within 3 hours it had almost 100 diggs. It quickly became the most popular upcoming article, but even at 100+ diggs, it did not cross over to homepage. In fact, after sitting there at the top of upcoming for an hour or two, it got buried. Here’s an example of the comments posted on the digg article after it happened, “This should hit the front page, I can’t believe it got buried.”

I’m not saying anything that didn’t deserve it should have been homepaged, I’m just curious with such high support in upcoming, why it didn’t cross over.

Now, I’m not sure what happened with Digg’s system there, but this article has been attracting quite a bit of buzz on it’s own, including a post on seomoz: link. From that, I’ve decided to try again and see if things happen any differently this time. If you know what could have stopped this article from crossing over to the homepage last time, I’d be curious to know (please leave a comment here).

Anyway, now to the results! Here are the top 50 most powerful digg users for the previous 30 days. View the full list of 300 here.

#1  MrBabyMan — one hundred thirty three articles (!!!)
#2  gmark13 — forty eight articles
#3  supernova17 — forty five articles
#4  mklopez — forty four articles
#5  AdmiralAdama — forty articles
#6  1KrazyKorean — thirty five articles
#7  interg12 — thirty articles
#8  skored — twenty six articles
#9  Blakovitch — twenty five articles
#10  IvanB — twenty four articles
#11  noname94 — twenty three articles
#12  populist — nineteen articles
#13  webtickle — nineteen articles
#14  zaibatsu — nineteen articles
#15  ace77 — eighteen articles
#16  webtech — sixteen articles
#17  sepultura — sixteen articles
#18  Andy.D — fifteen articles
#19  tomboy501 — fourteen articles
#20  jstohler — fourteen articles
#21  MercedRocks — fourteen articles
#22  OneManArmy — fourteen articles
#23  kevinrose — fourteen articles
#24  burkinaboy — fourteen articles
#25  djm0ther — thirteen articles
#26  CLIFFosakaJAPAN — thirteen articles
#27  koregaonpark — twelve articles
#28  Mythos — eleven articles
#29  decepticrat — eleven articles
#30  estvir — ten articles
#31  H3LLSL337 — ten articles
#32  littlebylittle — ten articles
#33  bonlebon — ten articles
#34  geekchic — nine articles
#35  drum_bum — nine articles
#36  gokss — eight articles
#37  webtechgeek — eight articles
#38  DiggityMcDigg — eight articles
#39  ojames — eight articles
#40  themaximus — seven articles
#41  Viewel — seven articles
#42  mcflynnthm — seven articles
#43  elsewhen — seven articles
#44  econoar — seven articles
#45  savingadvice — seven articles
#46  Hawker400 — seven articles
#47  xBBx — seven articles
#48  rwert — seven articles
#49  Hilton — six articles
#50  sterntastic223 — six articles

View the complete list

This will probably be my last Digg analysis post, as I’ve already spent WAY too much time on it, haha.

Following two successful studies on Digg’s Most Popular Domains (and Sorted by Topics), I had an idea for one to finish the series. Ever since Digg removed the top users list, I’m always wondering who is a one-hit-wonder submitter, and who has a track record of submitting high quality articles.

I’ve finally finished adding up all the authors who’s submissions made homepage in the past 30 days (same as before, March 15th 2007 to April 15th 2007), and it had a strangely cool outcome. The number of users who had more than one article hit the homepage in the past 30 days works out to be EXACTLY 300. It’s the small things in life….

And now, a comprehensive list of the top Digg users for the past month:
(are you listed?)

#1  MrBabyMan — one hundred thirty three articles (!!!)
#2  gmark13 — forty eight articles
#3  supernova17 — forty five articles
#4  mklopez — forty four articles
#5  AdmiralAdama — forty articles
#6  1KrazyKorean — thirty five articles
#7  interg12 — thirty articles
#8  skored — twenty six articles
#9  Blakovitch — twenty five articles
#10  IvanB — twenty four articles
#11  noname94 — twenty three articles
#12  populist — nineteen articles
#13  webtickle — nineteen articles
#14  zaibatsu — nineteen articles
#15  ace77 — eighteen articles
#16  webtech — sixteen articles
#17  sepultura — sixteen articles
#18  Andy.D — fifteen articles
#19  tomboy501 — fourteen articles
#20  jstohler — fourteen articles
Read the rest of this entry …

After the success of the recent Most Powerful Sites on Digg study, I decided to invest some time in a follow-up. In the comments, there seemed to be some interest in breaking down this list by the most popular Digg topics, so someone could see an isolated comparison of the top Political or Apple domains, for example. I’ve spanned this research over a one month time period again, from March 15th to April 15th 2007. Unfortunately I’m not very familiar with a lot of the more niche specific sites, so I’ll leave the commentary out this time, and just give you the raw results. Now, without further adieu, the lists after the split.
Read the rest of this entry …

I’ve become increasingly interested in Digg in recent months, and decided to run a study on the most powerful sites on Digg. This is a study over the past 30 days (from April 14th 2007 to March 14th 2007), analyzing which domain names hit the homepage most often, and which domain names received the most diggs overall, irrelevant to the number of homepage appearances.

List 1 - Most Powerful Sites by Homepage Appearances

#1 - arstechnica.com - 121 homepage stories - 91277 total diggs
Ars Technica is an obvious number 1. They rarely post top-ranking articles, with only 3,100 diggs on their top article over the time period observed, however they have a staple line of about 4 smaller articles per day reaching the homepage.

#2 - www.engadget.com - 84 homepage stories - 66409 total diggs
Engadget takes two from all the geeky pleasures Diggers get from prototype phones and ipod rumors.

#3 - www.nytimes.com - 44 homepage stories - 36487 total diggs
Usually hosting stories of school-related misconduct or political polls, the New York Times often provides a trustworthy medium for widely known stories. For example, today’s New York Times article about Google buying DoubleClick reached homepage, trumping over the dozens of other submitted sources about the same story.

#4 - consumerist.com - 41 homepage stories - 59473 total diggs
“Caveat Emptor” is a widely popular theme among Diggers, and I believe the Consumerist is a medium Digg uses to connect together and raise awareness of corporate misconduct.

#5 - gizmodo.com - 33 homepage stories - 34729 total diggs
Going hang-in-hand with number 2 ranked Engadget, Gizmodo further supports with Digg’s geeky gadget addiction.

#6 - news.yahoo.com - 32 homepage stories - 34974 total diggs
Another trustworthy medium (in Digg’s overall opinion) for high-profile stories and interesting oddball stories.

#7 - www.cnn.com - 32 homepage stories - 29821 total diggs
Tied with Yahoo News for homepage appearances, CNN was forced to number 7 by a slightly lower total digg count.

#8 - www.washingtonpost.com - 30 homepage stories - 27867 total diggs
The Washington Post - an alternate digg-trusted news medium.

#9 - news.bbc.co.uk - 27 homepage stories - 23236
I assume most of Digg is US based, so the BBC often adds an international non-biased spin on topics.

#10 - www.wired.com - 26 homepage stories - 18781 total diggs
With recent articles such as “The 10 Real Reasons Why Geeks Make Better Lovers,” WIRED knows exactly how to cater to a geek’s interest.

List 2 - Most Powerful Sites by Total Number of Diggs

#1 - arstechnica.com - 121 homepage articles - 91277 total diggs
With that many homepage articles, how could they not be number one in number of diggs?

#2 - www.engadget.com - 84 homepage articles - 66409 total diggs
Cool, new, geeky gadgets are almost automatically dugg.

#3 - consumerist.com - 41 homepage articles - 59473 total diggs
Getting bumps from articles such as the number 4 most popular article this month, “Google Suggests You Swim Across The Atlantic Ocean,” The Comsumerist easily secures #3.

#4 - www.nytimes.com - 44 homepage stories - 36487 total diggs
A fairly tight race against Yahoo News, the New York Times pulled ahead this month by a margin of 1-2 popular stories.

#5 - news.yahoo.com - 21 homepage stories - 34974 total diggs
Yahoo News, like all the others on this list, highlight the quality of articles written or the quickness of news broken… as each submission gets on average 1665 diggs.

#6 - gizmodo.com - 33 homepage stories - 34729 total diggs
Gadgets are often a hot topic on Digg.

#7 - www.flickr.com - 13 homepage stories - 32531 total diggs
There has been a strong push for a pictures section on Digg, however while each submitted picture that hits the homepage gets a very high digg-count, only having 13 popular submissions from Flickr all month tends to show it might not be worth it to dedicate an entire section of the website to just pictures. Granted other many websites submit pictures as well, so this benchmark isn’t very accurate.

#8 - www.cnn.com - 32 homepage stories - 29821 total diggs
Many articles made popular, but usually not as highly dugg as articles from the New York Times (#4) or Yahoo News (#5).

#9 - www.washingtonpost.com - 30 homepage stories - 27867 total diggs
The same as CNN, many homepage articles, but few high-ranking submissions.

#10 - www.scribd.com - 9 homepage stories - 25474
An absolutely incredible ranking- Scribd hit the top 10 list with only 9 homepage articles. They hold the number two slot on the most popular submissions this month with “What you always wanted to write on your exams but couldn’t,” which greatly boosted their ranking (6500 diggs).

There you have it, the top 10 highest ranked domains on Digg, in order of homepage appearances and total digg count. If enough people enjoy this, I might do it again over a larger time-period (maybe even from digg’s very beginning until now, using archive.org).

Have you ever seen one of those sci-fi movies where astronauts land on a distant, barren planet with blasts of acidic wind screaming across the desolate landscape, and a ground made from shards of ice and rock? Yeah… welcome to Digg. If you think you’re brave enough to register… first read through from our advice on how to survive among the masses.

11. Throw away your sympathy card
Diggers are (by nature) cold-blooded, heartless, soulless creatures with no morals. If you want some e-hugs for losing your goldfish, reconsider your membership.

10. Learn to hate Microsoft
Remember when you were six years old and fell off your bike? It is Microsoft’s fault. Didn&