Now here’s what I think Digg must to do regain their users and become the user-powered news website it was before Digg v4:

1. Remove the auto-import feature. It’s really annoying that websites are allowed to import everything they post to Digg. For example, there have been articles from Mashable where they were thanking their sponsors. Also Digg was about choosing only the best and most interesting stories and now is just about who has the most followers.
2. Bring back the upcoming section. The lack of upcoming section only helps the big publishers. Now the users can only get votes from their friends or their friends friends, because the rest can’t see their submissions, while the big publishers have tens of thousands of followers and get much more votes. The algorithm seems to be based on votes and shares on other social networking websites too, which helps them even more.
3. Separate articles, photos and videos. It was just great with the old Digg, when those 3 were separated and one could see what he wanted. Now you don’t know if you are about to read an article or only look at a photo.
4. Bring back the bury button. Now users have the option to hide a story, but it might not be the same as burying it and it’s not that clear for everyone. The bury button was probably the only way to fight against poor article submitted by big publishers and now it’s gone. The only reason I could find for this is that Digg really wants to kill the users and their submissions and transform the social news website into an aggregator.
5. Fix the bugs and stabilize the website. I have been using Digg pretty much lately, because I was curious what they did and wanted to test it. Unfortunately it’s really stressful due to the high amount of errors and bugs. For example, I have 3,082 followers, but when I publish a story I get the message “This story was sent to your 3 followers.” Also I am getting a lot of errors when navigating the website, checking out my followers, voting or hiding stories.
6. Make the top news page default. What’s the point of promoting stories if I see only my friends votes when I login to Digg ? Digg was about promoting interesting things, but doing this goes into the wrong direction.
7. Add the submissions tab to a user’s profile. When I visit a user’s profile, sometimes I want to see what he submitted, not just what he voted lately. With the old Digg it was possible, but now there’s no way of doing this. Also the “friends submissions” page was also really useful. Usually people follow others because they like their submissions and don’t want to follow 50 people and see hundreds of stories voted by them, but submitted by others.
8. Let users socialize easier. A private messaging system or at least the option to comment on someone’s profile would be just great. Digg calls itself a social website, but it lacks a lot of social features.

What do you think about this and is there anything else you would like to see implemented on Digg ?

P.S. You can follow me by clicking here.

I have been an active Digg user for a while and I know a lot of other users, including power users and others. Also I read a lot of blog posts about Digg and other’s thoughts. I will try to share with you what I’ve learned until now and try to make you understand the algorithm, at least a part of it, because only they know it exactly.

Along with the algorithm, I will try to share with you some tips that will get the story dugg and to prevent it from being burried.

1. Headline
   It’s very important to write a headline that will attract the users to click on the story and visit the link. Try to make it attractive, but offer the users an idea of what the story is about. The headline depends on what category you submit the story in ( e.g If you submit it in comedy, then make it funny ).
2. Description
   Try to write an excerpt of the article in the description, so if the user isn’t convinced from the headline to click the link, to make him do it.
3. Thumbnail
   Digg now offers you the possibility to attach a thumbnail to the story. If you submit your own website, try to edit the photo to fit well in the thumb size.
4. Category
   If you submit the story in a wrong category, it’s doomed, so think well before submitting.
5. Time
   Don’t submit your story at 3AM, because nobody is using Digg at that hour and won’t be using it in the next 12 hours at least. Your story has to be up and fresh when Digg is most used and that’s starting at 5PM. There is an advantage if submitting at an hour Digg is less used, because you have lower competition, but also less votes. Before submitting it, check what part of the world it’s headed too and make sure they are awake and aren’t at work at that time.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of factors that prevent a story to get popular and I’ve figured a part of them. There are some you can deal with, while others don’t depend on you.

1. Flamers
   There are a lot of users that don’t do anything but burying all stories and posting flaming comments. Unfortunately you can do nothing about it, except submitting something that will seem perfect for them.
2. Headline, Description, Image, Category
   If you write a wrong headline or description, users might not be interested in your story and don’t even check it. Or worse, your story might get buried. Also if you submit in the wrong category, fans of that category won’t find what they were looking for and will probably bury your story.
3. Time
   If your story doesn’t get popular in the first 24 hours after submission, chances to get popular are almost null.
4. Website
   If the website is poorly designed or full of ads, it might disturb some users and leave without voting. If it’s really disturbing, it might even get buried or marked as spam.
5. Content
   The story has to be very well written, with no mistakes or typos and to say clearly what it has to say. Also pictures are very important and attract the users.
6. Moderators
   Even if Digg states that there’s nobody implied in the process, there are stories that have lots of votes and comments, being really interesting, that don’t get popular. What else could keep them from hitting the front page ?

From my experience, a story doesn’t have to be only voted positively and some buries might also help. Many votes, comments, buries and positive/negative votes on comments make a story controversial and this seems to help it a lot get popular.

Still there are stories with a lot of votes and comments that stay in the upcoming page for hours and don’t get popular – some get after many hours, some don’t at all -, in my opinion, that’s where moderators are implied. Let’s take an example: The story in the screenshot below was first in upcoming for many hours and has 332 votes with 97 comments, being submitted 23 hours earlier the sreenshot was made. This example is a lucky one, because the story got popular finally. The strange thing is that while it was just staying there, upcoming, about 20 stories got popular, some with three times less votes than this one and lesser comments.

Maybe you noticed that power users need more votes to get their stories popular. That’s because Digg’s algorithm tries to keep users away from exchanging votes and tries to offer everyone equal chances.

Now it doesn’t only count on the number of votes, but it also depends who’s the voter. If someone is voting your stories frequently and doesn’t vote many others, their vote counts less or doesn’t count at all. So you need to get your story voted by a variety of users.

Power users need more votes from two reasons. Having many fans and many stories submitted, there is a high chance that the same users vote some of their stories and this reduces the votes’ value. Also having more fans it means more chances to get their stories popular and Digg requires them more votes for this, while users with less popular stories, fans and friends need less votes.

One more thing that might keep power users from getting their stories popular with less votes is because fans’ votes might also count less.

Though this is no brainier and I didn’t offer you any secret way to suck Digg’s traffic, I hope it will help you better understand Digg and avoid making mistakes.

Please share your thoughts and opinions !

ReadWriteWeb has written a very interesting post about Mixx. Now it’s one year old and traffic seems to grow really fast, but still can’t be a liable competitor for Digg, receiving less than 5% of Digg’s traffic.

Still, it seems to be on the good road and might grow, especially that Digg is full of spam stories, flames and unsatisfied users.

I have also noticed a decrease in traffic from StumbleUpon, but i can’t tell for sure if it’s because of the algorithm or because my websites have been down and flagged as unavailable, due to my servers issues. I will be able to tell more exactly in the future, when I’ll be sure I’ve got rid of that flag.

Lately, Stumble became the best social network, from my point of view, being easier to market than Digg and sometimes brining more traffic. Unfortunately, Stumble isn’t such a good link bait as Digg, but can still bring some quality, related links.

As you might already now, Digg has screwed it’s algorithm really badly from it’s last updates and has hired moderators that won’t let anything pass to the front page, if they don’t like it. That’s why a lot of users left and some of them joined and started using Stumble. Now, Stumble seems to have taken Diggs example, by screwing it’s algorithm.

There truly are a lot of accounts that ruin the system and have to be banned, but in my opinion, they have to focus on aggressively spamming profiles, haters, flamers and others that do a lot of bad and less on those that do promote their websites, along with many others.

With this I have to say Social Networking has reached a crisis point especially for Social Media Marketers, but for regular users too. Some new idea has to come out and I’m curious when this will happen. Considering this, it seems nothing can’t stay clean, but also this was already known. When something gets big, it has more and more issues, because everyone tries to profit.

I would like to read your opinion about this.