Who Spams Digg the Most
Erick Schonfeld
29 comments »
On the heels of the recently launched Techmeme Leaderboard, Patrick Altoft at BlogStorm has cobbled together an unofficial list of sites that have the most Digg juice. The ranking is based on Google’s site search (how many results come back for a search of “site:digg.com arstechnica.com,” for instance, a site which happens to be No. 4 on both lists). The sites with the most links on Digg rank highest.
The No. 1 site is YouTube, followed by Yahoo and Google. No surprises there. Only three blogs make it into the top ten (Ars Technica, Engadget, and Gizmodo). The rest are major news sites (BBC, Wired, CNN) and Wikipedia. TechCrunch is No. 41 on BlogStorm’s Digg list.
The problem with this Digg Leaderboard is that it doesn’t filter out anything. It would be useful to know, for instance, which sites get linked to on Digg’s homepage the most, or on the front page of each of its topic sections. (Kevin Rose, are you reading this?) But this list doesn’t do that. Instead, it counts any link on Digg, even deep in the member comments. Since so many blogs and sites constantly put up their own stuff on Digg and actively campaign to get those links on Digg’s homepage, you’ve got to wonder how that impacts these rankings. Any Digg Leaderboard, for that matter, would be particularly susceptible to such spamming campaigns.
So TechCrunch is not a blog?
Have you thought that maybe Engadget, Gizmodo, CNN, BBC and other sites get into the Digg front page because people actually like their stories?
Instead of whining about “digg campaigns” (it looks to me like original stories don’t get 3000 diggs because of campaigns) you may want to start looking at your own content, do some actual reporting, start thinking about what people want to read and try to be better than the competition.
That’s how it works. That’s how those sites are leaders and others are not, Digg or no Digg.
Well techcrunch is doing good, it has 614k readers
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
This is an easy answer… RON PAUL. My GOD the site should have a section dedicated to Ron Paul. Forget individual dot coms, the brilliance of how that campaign has completely overwhelmed digg with ridiculous stories about the fringe candidate is spell bounding.
Louise, I think the point they’re trying to make is not that the top sites are using digg campaigns, but rather once you get deeper into it (perhaps beyond the top 20…if not further back) you’ll start seeing the effects of “digg spamming”
Nice swipe at Digg’s popular sites, TechCrunch. Naturally you only like the leaderboards that rank you highly. I wonder what you’ll say about the Techmeme leaderboard in 2 months when you’re not #1? Has it occurred to you that the same people don’t read and appreciate the two different sites, maybe?
I believe Ron Paul bots spam digg the most as was most recently revealed -> http://digg.com/software/Ron_P.....t_Revealed
Some of the bloggers on this list are very ethical - they just have enthusiastic and loyal followers
As one of the folks in that digg list, I resent you suggesting that I’m spamming digg. Of course you like the stupid leaderboard more, you’re on top of it. When it’s revealed that you’ve paid or sponsored or sucked your way into getting damn near every techcrunch article on techmeme, what happens then? Why is it that any list you’re not on top of must have flaws? The only reason you get the readers that you do is for SOME reason people in tech seem to think that talking to you is the best way to promote their product/service. When these people finally smarten up, your feed count will go from 600k to 60.
I think the Ron Paul spam is sufficiently contained. Its down to 1x a day and they are generally decent stories. The list seems inaccurate as the NYTimes.com is nowhere to be found.
digg is not limited to tech news like Techmeme is.
By saying, “Guess which one we think is better?” I think that we are incorrectly assuming that the audiences are comparable, while I wouldn’t necessarily expect the gamer-in-the-basement-of-his-mom’s-house-with-Red-Bull-cans-everywhere stereotype to be a close fit for the typical TC reader.
Yuvi did exactly what you’re asking for Erick: http://blog.yuvisense.net/2007.....ett-diggs/
Blogspot.com actually ends up on top
Ralph - which blog are you? Seems odd that you’d take offense when you were not called out personally.
The main point of this post, which people are missing, is that it would be cool to have a Digg leaderboard similar to the techmeme leaderboard.
Well, to be fair, the headline of the article is “Who Spams Digg the Most” implying that all those on the list are the worst offenders. A better headline would be “A Digg Leaderboard, useful?” or some such.
Michael - Perhaps Erick should have made that more clear, instead of having that first paragraph seem like a complaint that Techcrunch itself isn’t viewed as #1 in some places.
Look at the dugg analyzer (digg api data) for a list of hosts ordered by the number of front page stories. Click on the ‘Top Hosts’ tab for the top 10.
http://demo.qliktech.com/qlikv.....efault.htm
wait… XKCD out diggs facebook?
Maybe there is hope for our species yet!
this guy simply writes poor stuff.i dont expect anything from erik
@Michael Arrington
To answer your question - I’m (one of) the blogs listed that simply doesn’t want anything to do with TechCrunch. I’m one of the ones that puts out actual content, that people actually get use out of. I’m one of the sites that’s sometimes popular on digg because it provides practical, helpful information.
And is the title of the post, “Who Spams Digg the Most”, in any way related to what YOU say “its main point” (that apparently some of us are “missing”) is? No. So why give it that title? Because it’s the type of sensationalist SHIT that makes it to the top of whatever-circle-jerk-site is popular today. By giving it the title Who Spams Digg The Most, what whatshisface flat out said is that if you’re on that list, you spam digg the most. That’s not how all of us are recognized.
Do you get it now? A lot of bloggers are popular in spite of not having you “mention us” on your almighty house of self-jerkoffery, or by “spamming” digg. Some of us just concentrate on content, rather than make big bold and stupid statements, spam, or praise your self-important ass.
Ralph I didn’t get your site. Will you please tell it.
The list is inaccurate because the author chose what to search for. If he/she didn’t know a site existed, he didn’t search for it or subsequently list it.
If this was an accurate report, my site would have been #49 or #50 with a rating of 7200 or so. Oddly, we’d be within striking distance of TechCrunch which is laughable.
For the record, I am not going as far as Ralph but most of these site are legit and not spammers.
Jay
Erick - good recommendations for refinements, I like them. Would be very interesting to have these refined statistics.
“Have you thought that maybe Engadget, Gizmodo, CNN, BBC and other sites get into the Digg front page because people actually like their stories?”
I think Louise nailed it. These guys aren’t exactly BlogSpot + PLM + AdSense, are they?
They are not spammers, u retard, they are sources, contributors, originators.
While some of the comments are harsh on TechCrunch, I will admit that you make some good points. However, I see nothing wrong with ’spammers’ as you call them, submitting their stuff to digg. Because if they submit GOOD content, it’s more likely to be accepted by the digg community, and eventually make the front page. There is also a term for this - it’s called LINKBAIT.
But I do see a difference between what you call ’spammers’ and the *real* spammers that truly spam digg with porn & viagra sites. The ’spammers’ that you speak of are just trying to get their blog/site more widely known, and I see nothing wrong with that.
This guy has writeen a bot to analyse the sites that have been on digg’s front page and you can get the list of sites with most diggs from here http://blog.yuvisense.net/2007.....ett-diggs/
A shitty title placed just to catch the eye. Too bad our huge work and marketing strategies can be so easily interpreted as “SPAM”.