Everyone who uses Digg regularly knows that certain sites have a tendancy to hit the front page often. Very often. Others might get a few hundred Diggs and never make it to the Hot in All section of upcoming.
Digg, despite their claims, has whitelisted certain sites and autoburied others. It’s a fact that they continue to deny despite mounds of evidence to the contrary. How can sites like TorrentFreak, Cracked, and PopularMechanics have the vast majority of their stories hit the front page? Are they just THAT incredible at creating content?
How can sites like HuffingtonPost, Arstechnica, and Telegraph hit multiple times a day with fewer Diggs than new sites that have quality content? Are they just THAT breaking and original that they always get the scoops?
The answer to both of these questions is two-fold. First, they have a tremendous readership that allows them to have a natural advantage on Digg because of the diversity they are able to pull from. That part is clear and understood.
The second part is more sinister. Digg favors these sites because they incite visitors to their own site. It’s that simple. It’s a give and take — if you Digg from the source, it takes you to Digg. It increases the potential for page views and new users by working with high-traffic sites like these. Of course they want to favor them. It’s good for business.
Regarding why smaller sites get less play, that part is easy. Digg does not like to be gamed and their algorithm obviously takes into account how often a domain is submitted and how it has done in the past. New sites, which used to keep the Digg homepage fresh with new discoveries and different perspectives, have been shunned. It has become extremely difficult to take a new site and get it to the front page regardless of the number of Diggs it gets. There are exceptions, of course, but a site has to start off “blacklisted” and pay its dues with multiple submissions that don’t get buried before it has a realistic chance of making it to the front page.
If Digg really wants to be a social media site and not a loosely pieced together RSS feed reader from a handful of sites, they will have to start grading websites on a curve. HuffingtonPost, for example, will still hit the front page even if the threshold to get there is raised. The only difference is that they won’t have a ton of stories that are linkjacked or regurgitations of other sources. Their quality content will still hit - the crap will not. Same goes for the other sites.
Digg can be great again. They just need to go back to basics and start listening to their users more.
You’re right on the money here. I get so sick of seeing everything Cracked.com managed to squeeze out hit the front page.