The Digg Effect

As previously mentioned The Podcast Network was Dugg over the last 24 hours. Cameron Reilly was astounded at the hit the TPN servers copped from Digg. This is the first time that The Podcast Network has been “Dugg”.

Today Cam released a post where he states:

“I did the same traffic to G’Day World in one 24 hour period that I normally get in a month. And we aren’t currently geared up for that kind of attention.”

The last sentence was in response to the “issues” with trying to access the network this morning. G’day World carried the story as well as The Global Geek and that was the one that got Dugg.

He is also kind enough to demonstrate with a picture and includes screenshots, this is amazing. Click on it for a full sized version.

This is “The Digg Effect”:

 

Nice 🙂

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Apple Story Crashes Servers

This is a good kind of crash. The Apple story that Cameron Reilly ran on The Podcast Network ended up on Digg and managed to attract enough traffic so that it went down for a while. Tops. I was pleased to hear that it made the front page of Digg, so I guess that will put a strain on any network.

At six am this morning Cam was onto it and had the tech guys working on a solution. They managed to throw some more bandwidth at it and restored order. Thank you to the team at The Podcast Network for their quick action. The connection sometimes fails still but just hit the reload button.

I appologise to the listeners of other shows on the network that could not access the shows that they listen to and their respective hosts. Thanks to Cam for covering the story.

A Bullet Proof Way to Cheat Digg?

Digg used to be about content. Content that deserved attention based on the quality of that content. Spike the Vote is set to destroy that once and for all.

Digg is constantly on the look-out for people that cheat Digg, such as with multiple log-ins. But what if each Digg is from a unique user with a different IP? You could not say that it was not legit. That is exactly what Spike the Vote is aiming to do.

“Spike” the founder of the site says his motivation for starting it:

“… I’m tired of 30 elite users (or bots, perhaps) controlling the front page content of digg.com. That’s why I created this little community here. We collectively vote each other’s stories to the front page.”

I am not sure that is entirely accurate. Especially considering the fcat that the algorithms on Digg were recently changed to prevent a group of “Top Diggers” from controlling what gets to the front page. Now there has to be a greater diversity of Diggers, Digg a particular story in order for the story to get to the front page. I guess ironically that very fact makes this venture even more successful.

So how does it work? You must be registered to use the service. Second each day you are given a “mission”, that mission is to Digg some stories on Digg. You have 12 hours to complete your mission. 20% of the stories are users of Spike the Vote the other 80% is random stories on Digg. This is to:

“… eliminate footprints and keep things anonymous.”

Each story you Digg will earn you points that you can trade for Diggs on your own stories. “Spiking” was not going to start until there were 1000 registered users. They must have reached this total as at the bottom of the page there is a list of the current “missions” and their status. Seems they are having some success.

I don’t know what Digg can do about this. There is no way of determining which users of Digg are a part of the “Spike theVote” community… unless they intend to plant a spy? Be careful Spike.

More than anything does not the actions of this site contradict the very principles that motivated it’s invention? That stories are pushed to the front page by few users. I think so, so how does he justify that.

Sink or swim? Swim I think, who would not go for a fool proof way to game Digg and for Digg to be able to do nothing about it?. That is of course if “hits” are all you are in it for. The motivation is certainly there for people to complete their mission as they then get to have their own stories Dugg. It is pyramid schemes for Digg! I also wonder how many commercial and profit organisations will gravitate toward this service? Many would find even a few thousand hits profitable.

I am not blogging just to get noticed and I have written before about the value of being Dugg. While the buzz is nice the everlasting effect can be argued. But the other fact is that I don’t have the time to Digg in the first place. Is this the tip of the iceberg and beginning of the end of Digg? Potentially the end of creditability.

UPDATE: Sold to Jim Messenger for $1275 on ebay. It would seem that he is a strong Digg supporter and donated it to them. Looks like a few Digg gamers just got caught. Seemed like a bit of a low thing to do even though they were gaming Digg. That is just my opinion though.