Yesterday, Digg founder Kevin Rose made one of the shortest blog posts in Digg's history, announcing that the Wall Street Journal has added Digg buttons to its site which in turn give Diggers free access to paid content there. What's this new deal mean? Let's take a look. Currently, the majority of the Wall Street Journal's content is available to paying members only. There are some free articles, but for most stuff, you will get prompted with this screen: Or perhaps just a snippet of the article like this: Now the Wall Street Journal has added Digg buttons at the bottom of each arti [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Digg

Tons of people have been using the Digg shout it feature lately. A shout is a message that can be sent between two or more users on Digg, making it a very powerful tool for getting many people to take notice of content, and potentially garnering lots of Diggs. Some Digg users consider the shout out feature to be the most effective way to get a story on the Digg homepage. Others, however, feel that it's nothing more than an easy way to spam others. I personally see it as a very effective feature. Here is how what you need to know to use the feature optimally. First, grow your Digg user pro [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Search Engines: Digg | Social Media Marketing

The third session at SMX Social Media is covering topics such as Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Newsvine, and social news sites. Neil Patel from ACS, Chris Winfield from 10e20 and Tamar Weinberg from RustyBrick are the speakers for this panel. There is also coverage at Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Journal and aimClear Blog. Danny explains there are different categories of social media sites and this session is about social news sites specifically. A community defines what is hot in the news world. First up is Neil Patel to give an introduction to Digg. He said that he loves Digg. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Digg | Social Media Marketing

Digg Labs is a wonderful place where the folks at Digg create new and interesting tools for using the popular social news site. I was lucky enough to score some exclusive inside photos of the construction that goes on there. Heh. OK, it's a slow Friday, and I'd been meaning to upload these photos from Legoland Windsor that immediately made me think of all those who use Digg. See, the Digg construction area: You can catch one of the Diggers climbing above this sign: And my favorite... Diggers are sometimes accused of acting like children. But see? New rules now set a minimum age and requi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Digg

This is the week for top lists, it seems. First, we had the Techmeme Leaderboard get launched (and now being debated again), then we got a list of the most mentioned sites on Digg. Now there's a third one -- sites with the most cumulative Diggs. More on both Digg lists and the Techmeme debate, below. Patrick Altoft over at BlogStorm did a Digg Saturation List this week. The idea was to see how often a site is mentioned on Digg. Patrick did a Google search focused within Digg itself for a variety of sites, then put them in order. YouTube topped the list, followed by Yahoo and Google. It was i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Blog Search Engines | Search Engines: Digg | Search Engines: Social Search Engines

Last week Chris Winfield did a great job reviewing the new Digg. Today, I want to discuss how the changes affect SEOs. We all want to get on the homepage of Digg because it can bring in thousands of links, but the recent changes made it both easier and harder to get stories promoted. Here's an overview of the changes and what they mean for SEO. Friends submission page. Other than spamming, the easiest way to get votes was to add tons of friends. By having hundreds of friends, when you submit a story many of your friends vote on it, thus increasing your chances to make the homepage. The re [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Search Engines: Digg | Social Media Marketing

At some point today, Digg will be rolling out a massive update to help users of its service connect more and to become more social. As BusinessWeek reports, these changes "might seem more at home on Facebook or MySpace than on a web site where users post links to online articles and other media". So what exactly does Digg have in store? Here’s a quick rundown: Increased friend capabilities Currently on Digg you can add friends (just not too quickly), and this allows you to see easily when they submit something, Digg something, etc. But to truly interact with them, you have to try to m [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Digg | Social Media Marketing

Every wanted to see the highest rated images over at Digg? Digpicz.com has launched to serve that purpose as the "unofficial Digg Picture Browser," commentsStan Schroeder. Digpicz uses the Digg API to aggregate images from Digg and place them in one location. Digg has sections for news, video, and podcasts, but it does not have a section devoted to images, something many on Digg have wanted. That is where Digpicz comes in. You can learn more about how the creator made Digpicz work at his blog. Here is a screen capture: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Digg | Search Engines: Photo & Image Search

Digg has dropped Google as its ad provider in exchange for for a three-year exclusive ad deal with Microsoft. Microsoft will be providing the display and contextual advertising on Digg's popular social news site, with traffic estimated at over 17 million unique monthly visitors. The switch over will take place in early August and will impact only US traffic. Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft, said: Our collaboration with Digg is about bringing our advertising technology and sales force to one of the fastest-growing sites on the Web and a true [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Microsoft: Partnerships | Search Engines: Digg

After a grassroots revolt by Digg users, Digg has decided to stop censoring posts about an HD-DVD decryption number used by the industry-backed Advanced Access Content System to protect HD-DVDs. The AACS claims that anyone publishing the number may be violating US laws against circumvention of copy protection. How the story unfolded below, plus more on how the DMCA takedown notices being issued by the AACS to Google don't seem to be valid and certainly aren't like the usual ones fired off for actual copyright theft. Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0 from Digg found [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Legal: Censorship | Legal: Copyright | Search Engines: Digg

Our recent Top 12 Ways To Win Friends & Write Magnetic Headlines article not enough to help you write the perfect headline to go popular on Digg? Via Pronet Advertising, I thought this was fun -- the Digg-A-Meter applet tries to tell you the potential success of your story titles. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Digg | SEM Tools | Social Media Marketing

Six or so months ago, it used be easier to get on the homepage of Digg. Lately, sites have been having problems. Most of these troubled sites are usually about online marketing or other business-related topics. It seems that users are burying these stories for no apparent reason. A buried story dies with no chance of reaching the home page and gaining a lot of traffic and attention. Based on monitoring and reading comments that users leave on Digg, here are some of the reasons these users are burying stories: Domain: Many Digg users don't like marketing or SEO sites. If you have a domain [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Search Engines: Digg | Social Media Marketing

After a week of questions about Digg's "Bury Brigade," Digg founder Kevin Rose has come in with some public comments about the system and the "alleged" brigade. Unfortunately, they're just comments -- not solutions to protect Digg from the actual brigade I myself can see. More about that in the article below, plus how buries work and can be misused. For any story at Digg, you can see who voted for it -- who dugg it. You use the "Who Dugg or Blogged It" tab like shown highlighted in the red box below: That provides some transparency into the Digg system, makin [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Digg | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Social Media Marketing

Will today's launch of Spotplex be the beginning of the end for Digg? Probably not, but this new social media site might prove a more civilized "trafficracy" alternative to the mob democracy of Digg. For those seeking attention and traffic, Digg has long been the crowdsourcing 800lb gorilla. Unfortunately, explosive growth in the Digg community and a certain amount of paranoia on the part of its administrators regarding good verses bad story submissions has led to many marketers, businesses and bloggers of all kinds turning away from the once loved poster child of social bookmarking [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Digg | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Social Media Marketing

Earlier this month, I wrote a long article looking at how some people at Digg might bury stories just because they disliked the topic rather than the story content itself. Indeed, many doing buries might not have read the article. Worse, they might use the bury reason of "spam" rather than more appropriate options. Unfortunately, there's no easy way at Digg to see who has done a bury over a long period of time. However, The Bury Brigade Exists, and Here's My Proof from Pronet Advertising describes a new technique you can try to monitor things, and I'll add some tweaks to that as wel [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Digg | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Social Media Marketing

There are tons of tricks that people use to get stories on the homepage of Digg. Unfortunately, in their eagerness to get the visibility offered by Digg, most people are ignoring basic submission guidelines. Rather than concentrating on gaming Digg, if you submit stories using some common sense, your chances of hitting the homepage drastically increase. Here are three surefire steps to help you submit stories that Diggers will love to Digg—and, if you're lucky, get your story on Digg's homepage. Step 1: Submit the simplest URL The first step in submitting a story to Digg is submitti [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Search Engines: Digg | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | Social Media Marketing

Yesterday Yahoo announced the launch of their new "suggestion boards." Yahoo says that these new boards enable "you can browse suggestions from other site visitors or post your own. Digg-style voting means we can quickly discover what’s most important to users." In fact, these have been live for a while, I specifically noticed the SiteExplorer Board at least a few months ago. Techcrunch reports that many from the Digg community are upset with Yahoo over this announcement. The top level Digg message said that Yahoo "ripped off the Digg interface." To be fair, Yahoo did give credit to Dig [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search Engines: Answer Search Engines | Search Engines: Digg | Yahoo: Message Boards

Over the past two days, there has been a ton of debate over Jason Calacanis's post calling SEO "bull." Since then, Danny's done a long response, Jason's been challenged (and accepted) to have his site SEOed and much more. Here's a rundown and a rough timeline of developments: Why people hate SEO... (and why SMO is bulls$%t) from Jason kicks things off.   Jason Calacanis takes another cheap shot at SEOs from Threadwatch has SEOers pushing back.   Social Media Marketers Need to Accept Some Responsibility from Greg Boser pushes back also at the idea that SEOers are respon [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Engines: Digg | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | SEM Industry: General | SEO: General | Social Media Marketing

It's been a busy day, with me trying to provide some more balance and education about search engine optimization in today's Why The SEO Folks Were Mad At You, Jason article. About two hours ago, I noticed it drew the attention of those on Digg. It jumped to the Tech News popular page, in fact. And about 30 minutes after that, it was gone. Gone? Flagged as spam by some, which seems to be a euphemism for some on Digg to mean "I just don't like a story that I didn't bother to read." Let's see some of the ignorance and absurdity, shall we? Check out the story post on Digg. I've been [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Search Engines: Digg | Search Engines: Social Search Engines | SEM Industry: General | SEO: General | Social Media Marketing

Last week Digg removed the "Top Diggers" list in order to help stop the manipulation and gaming of Digg, which resulted in a lot of commotion. Today, I wanted to take a fresh look to explain how the move may impact Digg's "Friending" system and possibly allow more non-top Diggers to place stories with the service. Without the top users list, it will be harder for new Digg users to friend the top 100 users. For those not familiar, any Digg user can make another Digg user their friend. You just find a Digger's profile or Dugg page like this. Look under their icon, and you'll [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social | Search Engines: Digg | Social Media Marketing