OPEN

Digg diving:

Digg‘s not so much about the wisdom of crowds as the winning of cliques, it seems.

Ian Delaney has made a first analysis of the front page in an effort to understand how the voting works. It’s interesting to note what he comes up with, especially that the rate of voting on an article seems to be relevant when determining whether a link makes the front page.

He also links to a superb post by Alex Bosworth who is thinking about game theory and alliances of “friends” on Digg.

This certainly chimes with what I’ve observed, anecdotally, about what content wins out in Digg. 

I’ve seen some content in the past that was purest Digg-bait, that every instinct and insight I have say will be a winner in the community – worthy of a few hundred votes at least. But nothing.  A trickle of votes over a couple of days and then silence.

All very interesting and definitely worthy of some serious study, Given my own poor numeracy I’m not going to wade in on the statistical analysis.  

What this is crying out for is a social network analysis of the groups of friends in Digg. Maybe if I wish hard enough…

 

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Antony Mayfield

5 responses to “Digg diving:”

  1. Jackie Danicki Avatar
    Jackie Danicki

    I never read Digg, but I did like the ‘most linked to’ stories on the sidebar of Newsgator when I was a Newsgator user. I sub to WeSmirch, the gossipy sister of Techmeme, which seems to work similarly. Digg seems sorta fun if you’re into the whole voting thing, but I’ve been sort of surprised how seriously people have got about it. Individual trusted human filters always point me towards good stuff – including new human filters (that is, bloggers) – all the time, no voting interface needed. As we know all too well from politics, what is popular is more often than not unworthy of our attention or consideration.

  2. Antony Mayfield Avatar
    Antony Mayfield

    The crowd can get in the way or not be useful in the case of Digg? Could be on to something there.

    i find Digg fascinating, but like you I rely on the constant refining and reviewing of my network (individual bloggers), mainstream media and meme-trackers (Techmeme’s my favourite) to bring me what I want.

    The better you tend to your network, the mroe serendipty you experience in the themes and information that comes your way.

  3. Jackie Danicki Avatar
    Jackie Danicki

    Right. And ruthlessness with sources – being willing to cull those which do not deliver the goods – is key. Harder to be precise in that, I think, when your source is a collective like Digg.

  4. Ian Avatar
    Ian

    From what I’ve been able to divine, promotion seems to be almost entirely down to who submits the page, assuming it hits some of digg’s favourite topics. Right now, the user Supernova has four stories on the front page. Lo and behold he has 162 friends.

  5. Antony Mayfield Avatar
    Antony Mayfield

    Digg gangs. It’s all beginning to make sense… This serious undermines Digg’s model, surely? Or does it..

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