zaibatsu vs. msaleem: The Race to 1000 is ON

They do a podcast together.

They are two of the top 3 members of the most powerful social news website in the world.

They've shut down their share of servers for a day.

This month, they are going head to head.

Chances are good that sometime during the month of November, 2007, both zaibatsu and msaleem, two of the most prolific contibutors to Digg, will surpass the 1,000 mark for stories they submitted that reached the Digg homepage. Yesterday, I sent a shout to each about the magic number. Here were the responses:

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Me to msaleem: "Submitting a ton lately, I've noticed. We should have a betting pool (fake money, of course) on what day you'll hit 1000 "Made Popular" submissions. My guess is November 19."

Msaleem response:

"Haha, that's very kind of you. Who all is in the pool, and can I join? (That guy, Zaibatsu certainly won't make it easy for me).

Just kidding Z, Peace in the chicken grease."

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Me to zaibatsu: "Hey Z, I predicted Muhammed would hit 1000 "Made Popular" by November 19. When are you going to hit the magic number?"

Zaibatsu response:

"I'm actually fighting to regain my former glory. It's on baby and November 19th days is way to long, I can FP 10 in a day my friend. Help me kick some ass on digg, spread the word it's NEO vs. Morpheus on Digg. Who ever get to 1000 1st gets to pick who the f*ck they are. I don't want to be Morpheus.

I'm sitting at 922 now, give me until Nov 10, wekends suck for me and I need to a day or so to recover from a FP streak!"

SOUNDS LIKE IT'S ON!

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Here is my take on the two. No offense intended to either. I have the utmost respect for both apparent styles. In real life, both may be completely different, but on Digg and The Drill Down, here is how they come across to me:


Zaibatsu is the Digger for the common man. Excited, passionate, ever-active, he wants everyone to Digg his submissions because they're good and because he's Digging your stuff too. Rolled up sleaves, shovel in hand, ready to get to work. A Donald Trump style power digger.


Msaleem is a Digger for the elite. Proud, selective, enduring, he only wants to Digg what he likes and expects people to judge his submissions on merit. If it's crap, it's crap, and neither shout nor reciprocated Digg will earn his vote it's crap. A Crown Prince style power digger.

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The stats and analysis:

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Member since:
zaibatsu - 12/2004
msaleem - 09/2005

No advantage here for either. Both have been on the scene and well known across Digg channels long enough.

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Friends:
zaibatsu - 178
msaleem - 98

The more quality friends (those who are active and Digg your stories) you have, the more Diggs you can potentially get. The way the Digg algorithm seems to work, the more friends you have, the more Diggs you need to make it to the homepage. Both have found what they consider the "sweet spot" as far as number of friends. Whichever one is right may end up being the winner.

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Diggs:
zaibatsu - 82,517
msaleem - 42,975

Again, this comes down to personal preference. Zaibatsu is more prolific in his Digging, honestly telling people that he'll Digg a lot of their stories, as many as he can, as long as they are Digging his as well. Msaleem is more selective, trying to take the higher ground by only Digging what he considers "quality". As with everything else so far, it seems that the advantage will come to whoever's strategy is more correct, and only the programmers for Digg know for sure.

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Comments:
zaibatsu - 1,493
msaleem - 1,613

Some say it has an effect. I tend to believe that it just gets more people to your profile page with an opportunity that they'll like your stories. I've been wrong before, but I think it's pretty much a non-factor.

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Submitted:
zaibatsu - 2,150 --- Last 8 days: 5, 9, 7, 3, 4, 9, 2, 2 -- 41
msaleem - 2,997 --- Last 8 days: 10, 11, 8, 0, 1, 4, 9, 12 -- 55

Msaleem has an advantage here. More submissions means more opportunities. The one good thing for zaibatsu here is that he can ramp his submissions up. It will bring his percentage down, but a month's worth won't damage his high popular ratio too badly.

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MADE POPULAR:
zaibatsu - 925
msaleem - 945

A big lead going in for msaleem. Twenty is an awfully wide gap to overcome.

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Popular Ratio:
zaibatsu - 43%
msaleem - 32%

Zaibatsu has always been one of 3 or 4 top Diggers to maintain a 40% or higher Popular ratio. In this race to 1000, ratio may get thrown out the window. It's all about bulk. Will he be able to step up?

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I've tried to look at this as a race. Then, the image of a hot dog eating contest came to mind. Finally, I came to the conclusion that it's like Iron Chef. A time limit, a goal, two different styles, two different strategies. I see MrBabyMan sitting at the thrown overlooking kitchen stadium nodding his head at their efforts.

Adjusting to the New Digg

Okay, it isn't that bad. It took forever to make it to the homepage (12 days) but once there, I realize that it isn't that bad. Here are the adjustments that I made:

1) Getting 30, 60, 90 Diggs isn't as easy as it used to be. Before, having a ton of friends and doing a ton of Digging was enough to ensure that you could get a bulk of Diggs to anything. Now that people actually have to click on to the page, there is a chance that they will read it, which means that spam submissions is out, for the most part. This is a HUGE plus for Digg users, especially those who hate the spam. Will it continue? Of course. But the chances of a spam submission getting more than the initial Digg is greatly diminished.

2) Shouts don't work for most. I've been tracking some of the "shout spammers" out there and it just isn't an effective way to get Dugg. Sure, you'll get some, but for the most part, you might as well email spam and get the same results.

3) Quality of submissions is ever more important. Catchy headlines will always play a major role in the quest to make it to the homepage, but the story needs to be a good one.

4) Keep it up. Like I said, I wasn't a power Digger by any means, but I used to be able to count on at least one story making the homepage every few days. Now, it seems that the gap is growing. As much as I want to dump the efforts, I just can't. If you are thinking about it, keep going. It'll happen if you stick with it.

5) Fans are nice, but most are meaningless. There are "Fans" out there who never Digg your stuff. Because there doesn't have to be the same gap in time between adding friends, many are trying the bulk friend approach. This may actually work, but you can't just befriend them and go. Digg their stuff, keep digging their stuff, and hopefully you'll get noticed, added, and Dugg.

6) The time it takes to make the homepage seems to have increased. Where before, 24 hours was usually the cutoff, there are more and more popular stories that approach 2 days before becoming obsolete.

7) Submit less. Before, submitting a ton of stories every day would land you somewhere with something on the homepage. I've examined some of the mass submitters and seen literally hundreds of submissions in a row without going popular. Submitting good stories is much more important.

In conclusion, I was completely against the new Digg. I've changed my mind. The quality is improving, and after all is said and done, that is really what will make Digg great again. It was getting too easy to post crap and make it the homepage, or at least get a ton of Diggs for it. Now, you have to submit good stuff to have a chance. This is a great thing for serious Diggers, and even a greater thing for those who read Digg for the news itself.

Digg SEO

10 Tips for Getting Dugg on a Small Budget

There are 10 things I've learned about Digg over the last few months:

1) You need friends. Unless you are a respected Digg member, you can post a Pulitzer Prize winning piece, but without a few friends to Digg it with you to get it noticed, it will soon fall to the "under 10 Diggs hell" and lost forever.

2) Appealing to the 20-something crowd works, but it is no longer the only way to get Dugg.

3) Sex, drugs, and video games are not topics that will get Dugg easily anymore.

4) Humor works, but it has to be really funny.

5) You need friends. A video of an alien abduction will get buried if you don't get a boost of people to push it into the spotlight. Not a lot -- 5-15 friends are enough to get it noticed by the casual and hardcore diggers.

6) You must be FAST with national news. Constant, diligent monitoring of feeds is the only way to scoop a story.

7) Sometimes, scooping is not enough. You can Digg a story first, but if a "power-digger" posts the same story a few minutes later (and ignores the duplicate check), yours will get a few diggs, but not enough to make it.

8) Unknown blogs need a power-digger to get them popular.

9) Digging stories directly from other social sites is taboo. Digg it from the source.

10) You need friends. An story written by J.D. Salinger will get buried if you aren't respected and don't have friends.

* * *

The other technique is to pay for it. Contact someone who's stories always go Popular and offer them a hefty fee to submit your story or video for you.

Article commissioned by the royal automotive kings at Dealer Website Design.

Special thanks to the Digg community and creators for putting together the highest quality social bookmarking site in the universe.




Social Bookmarking SEO

Digg to Make Digg Digg Again

There is Facebook. There is Pownce. There is Reddit.

And then there WAS Digg.

It was different. It was better.

There are millions of ways to socialize online.

There are hundreds of places to store pictures.

There are dozens of quality news sites.

None of them were like Digg, until Digg became like them.

This Digg is not good.

This Digg Sucks.

Bring Digg Back.

Digg to make Digg Digg again.

Testing the New Digg System with Self-Promoting Articles

There won't be much here. This is, of course, by design. Just checking to see if another terrible headline with another batch of terrible descriptions leading to a story that doesn't say much will get dugg.

In the past, someone could expect to get a least 20-40 Diggs for meaningless stories if they were submitted by someone with an established group of friends and a high level of activity. The new Digg, which requires that upcoming stories must get clcked on to get Dugg, may eliminate the self-promoting, search engine optimization related submissions.

I have used this method to get a page of a website indexed quickly. For non-competitive keywords, I have actually gotten 1st page rankings in Google within hours for pages that were brand new -- never indexed.

This article is the tester. I will have a buddy submit it who is relatively strong at Digg (he's had several stories make it to the homepage, unlike me). We'll see if it goes anywhere.

And just for the pic factor, here is one so we won't be able to blame it on the lack of a picture:





Social Media Marketing

Digg Becoming More about Photos than News

Photos have always been popular on Digg. Now, they are becoming more "Popular" as an increasing amount of users digg the sacred word pic normally written in parentheses to indicate 3 things:

1) It's probably funny
2) It won't take any time to get the full effect
3) It won't require any thought or reading

This screenshot of "Top 10 in All Topics" was taken shortly after midnight cst, 8-20-2007. It is clear that the key to not only going popular but also making the most of it after going popular is to add 5 characters to the headline, ( p i c )

With Google Universal Search starting to have effects on the results, we should start seeing an increase in Digg's power over the search engines.

Social Media Marketing

Kevin Rose's First Digg that DID NOT Go Popular

It's official. Kevin Rose, the Digg Master, has submitted a story that did not make it to the Popular front page. His 285 submitted story, "XREP - Taser via Shotgun", was submitted on August 7th.

It has stalled at just over 100 Diggs and did not make it over the hump.

Proof positive, in case anybody doubted, that Digg is truly algorithm based without manual override.

The funny part is, that story will probably get more hits now than it would have had it gone popular. You have to admire the guy, not just for creating the most powerful social news network on the planet, but also for "keeping it real" in most situations and not abusing his fame and power. Unless...

Why would he have submitted this story? It doesn't seem to fit with his standard Digg-related or tech related-story submittals. Did he just find the story interesting, or was it one of my possible conspiracy theories?

1) He was paid. Lots. The company with the product or the website with the story (or both) sent him a large check with a url.

2) Someone close to him was kidnapped. The ransom was one crappy Digg submittal.

3) Blackmail. Someone found a deep, dark secret about Kevin and they forced him to submit the story in exchange for their silence.

4) Hackers. His account was hacked and he either hasn't noticed or he's keeping it quiet until there's a full FBI investigation.

5) Disinformation. The algorithm IS rigged and they wanted to ruin his perfect record just to prove it.

6) Stocks. Kevin bought a ton of stock in a company that manufactures the Taser XREP and he's trying to cash in.

7) Attacked. Someone hit Kevin with the XREP, knocking him unconsious. They had just enough time to submit the story, and since there's no way to unsubmit or correct errors like there should be (like with comments) he was unable to correct it and just hoped for the best.


Whatever happened, I give my full kudos and respect to Kevin Rose...

...but something seems fishy.

Social Media Marketing

"I Support Bush" and 9 other reasons this won't make the Digg homepage

1) Bad title. It mentions a top 10 list and doesn't bash the Republican party in any way. Plus, it's too long and doesn't say [pic].

2) Nobody important in Digg visits this blog, so it will probably be submitted by a loser (or me if nobody submits it at all by tomorrow, which they probably won't).

3) It doesn't fit into any category other than "Offbeat News" but it's really not that offbeat and it's definitely not news.

4) The Ron Paul Online Army doesn't know my blog exists. If they did, they would spam it, so I prefer the anonymity.

5) It is posted on a free blog that was created a few months ago, so it would take 150 Diggs and 50 comments to get it past the Upcoming section.

6) I'm broke -- can't buy Diggs.

7) The story description will probably be really bad. In fact, they'll probably just cut and paste reason number 7 (if the digger reads that far down).

9) It will be buried as inaccurate since I skipped #8, thus, there aren't "9 other reasons this won't make the Digg homepage". (did that make sense?) Plus, there is a mispelling somewhere in this post.

10) The picture in the story is boring -- just a list of the top Diggers according to votemoojj.com.


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