Much more than the number of diggs
I don’t read Digg avidly, but I am a fan. I’m also fascinated by its algorithm (not that I know it). I did read about it before, and stumbled upon this reminder yesterday (and another from the comments). I learned a thing or two, and was, yet again, impressed to think about all that is considered for a post to make it to the front page. I never really thought about the speed of which a story gets “dug,” but that really does say a lot for its popularity. The fact that it’s not well-known as to how smart the algorithm really is shows how Digg employees care more about the content that floats to the top than promoting a smart, feature-rich system. It’s not just the number of “diggs” after all.
Lee Thursday, 18 Jan, 2007 Posted at 03:08AM
Digg is a really interesting case study for me. They seemed to have gotten the balance of timeliness and participation down. The site seems to be able to offer an interesting nugget of content from a user at just the right time. One of the things that interest me is the interface that allows these items to be pushed up into the “flow” of the site and not stay buried in the pages below like most traditional sites. I wish we could incorporate some of these principles in our software.
Ryan Thursday, 18 Jan, 2007 Posted at 06:31AM
One thing digg really has going for them is a very large user base. With the traffic they get, it’s a lot easier for them to implement algorithms based on user activity and time. When you can promote something like the digg spy, you’re at the level where it makes sense to really take user activity into account. And once we get to millions of users, we’ll do it :-)
Ryan Thursday, 18 Jan, 2007 Posted at 06:48AM
Top 100 users have 50% control over the front page. That’s interesting (if it’s even true). It’s odd to think of all the users of digg, that 100 of them (or less than 0.02%) could control over half of the stories. Overall, I suppose that doesn’t really mean anything. Content is content, and it seems to be, in no way, harming the digg community. If nothing else, it’s just interesting.