On Sept. 7 Lyndoman wrote How many digg votes does it take to get to the front page?. This is not the first article about Digg and the issues that come with using the service. If you look at the comments on this article you will see one from ob81. He discusses friends Digging stories. If he is right and Digg has decided to give less weight to friends voting I cannot blame them. When you have 100 friends that Digg your articles it doesn’t mean that the article is a good one. People are manipulating the system and I understand the need to create some kind of system that works, in their opinion.
My Suggestion
I think that in the future if you want to do well on Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us etc. you may not want to include your friends or add them to your friends list. You may want to just create a network that is separate from these social media sites and exchange votes that way. It may make your articles look more credible.
HOWEVER, I must say that the friend votes bug me A LOT. Anyone that reads here knows that I like Sphinn, but I am very irritated that some people get Sphunn 35 times for crappy articles. The writers may be popular and network well, but it doesn’t mean that their articles are good. I go and look at it because of the number of Sphinns and then I am disappointed that I wasted my time! People Sphinn, Digg and Stumble without actually reading the article and they do it for a buddy. I understand it to a point, but I also know that a lot of my time is wasted because of these inflated numbers.
The search engines make us jump through hoops because of those that manipulate the system. I think social media sites understand that the votes are being manipulated as well. Can we blame them for intervening?
Melissa- SEOAware.com
Good Points. I certainly do share your sentiments. I have been “fooled” too many a times.
Costa, I wasn’t sure if I would tick anyone off by discussing it. Digg may be jerking some folks around, but they also might be trying to fix a flawed system.
Randfish discussed this same issue- http://www.seomoz.org/blog/social-media-manipulation-runs-rampant on 8-15-07.
Some people do deserve to get to the first page and are not making it for reasons that may not be fair at all. There are a lot that are making it that shouldn’t be there. At this point I think the system is COMPLETELY flawed. It will take some time to fix it and try to avoid manipulative techniques. At the same time, ordinary people that write fantastic articles deserve a shot at the first page. They shouldn’t have to waste their time spending months on the Internet trying to meet a 1,000 people to Digg their articles.
Very good write up. It only makes sense to devalue friend votes to a certain extent. You hit it on the head though. Having no friends at all is the best bet. Thats why you see certain stories go front page with like 50ish diggs. It is hard being seen as a lonely soul on a million user network though 😀
peace
ob81, you are right and that was a great comment on his blog. I think it gives us all something to think about.