Do you dig Digg?

For my entry on Digg i wish to discuss the Digg chapter in Paul Levinson's book "New New Media."The first topic about Digg that Levinson discusses is how a submission becomes "popular." Levinson says that in order to make a Digg article popular it has to receive "an undisclosed number of Diggs, and no minimum number of Buries (Digg keeps this Digg/Bury algorithm secret), the submission becomes 'Popular,' or is put on the front page of Digg," (Levinson, 100). It is important to know that a Digg is what you click when you like they story, and a bury is what you click when you dislike it.

A controversy within Digg is that, like Wikipedia, Digg and Buries are often amassed via deliberate campaigns of readers, instead of being an assessment by an individual reader. From 2007-2009 Digg had a "Shout" option that would allow you to Shout to as many as 200 friends to encourage Diggs or Buries. This option was eliminated in 2009 because the Digg administration was worried about deliberate campaigns on and off the system to Digg or Bury stories. Operations purported to Digg X number of Diggs for a given story for $1 or more per Digg.

Another topic that Levinson discusses is the difference between real like friends and online "Friends." He states that in order to be friends with someone offline it requires you to know a lot about the person, but online that is definitely not the case. However, he does state that they do have a similarity and that is that they both have a similarity or a community of interests. On Digg online Friends often have a similar taste in the stories that they like. Anyone can become a fan of someone else on Digg and this generally means that you like the stories that this person likes or for whatever reason are interested in what they have to say.

This blog overviewed three aspects of Digg, and through this blog i hope that you had a deeper understanding of whether or not you dig Digg. In this article they discuss and analyze the top 100 Digg articles of all time.