Maybe Major Media Should Actually Research How Digg Works

February 11, 2007
Filed Under Blogging, Social Media | Leave a Comment

Probably like you most of you, I’m getting tired of the major media writing stories about social media that are completely inaccurate and not fully researched. They spread inaccurate information that is often the first impression for many people. In recent “The Wizards of Buzz” WSJ article, Jamin Warren and John Jurgensen wrote the following:

“On the other side of this battle are companies like User/Submitter.com. The site promises to pay users “easy money” for “digging,” or voting on, links on Digg.com. Its offer is simple: Pay User/Submitter $1 for every “digg,” or vote, you request and in turn it’ll pay a user. Users can earn 50 cents for every three “diggs,” and User/Submitter pockets the difference. At any given time, a top submission on Digg has anywhere from 800 to 3,000 votes, meaning a successful campaign could cost thousands of dollars.”

While I don’t know anything about User/Submitter.com (nor do I want to for obvious reasons) – I do know this statement from the article shows a clear lack of understanding of how Digg actually works. I got a bright idea, why don’t reporters like Jamin and John actually sign up, log in and use the system for a while before writing stories like this? It’s a good question.

If they had, they would understand that for a story to make the front page, it usually takes between 25-60 Diggs depending on various factors (time of day, amount of activity that day, etc). Once a story is on the front page, the now Dugg content organically gets tons of Diggs as it migrates from the top of the home page. So, even if someone did manage to page $1 per Digg, it would not cost thousands of dollars.

You might want to e-mail the reporters that wrote this story in the link above and ask them to do actual research by using social media before writing their next story. The gap between major media and social media might become smaller if they did.