Comments for Digg stats after Jason Calacanis offer

Digg stats after Jason Calacanis offer

2006-08-02T12:33:12Z

The Diggtrends website has just done some stats relating to the Netscape owner's offer to buy out digg's top users. They found that the top 10 users contributed 1792 of the frontpage stories - i.e. 29.8%. The top 100 contributed 3324 stories, i.e. 55.28%. Nearly 30% of frontpage stories contributed by just 10 people is a pretty amazing stat - talk about the A-List!

What's more, there are 444,809 registered users and out of these only 2287 contributed one or more story for the period of 6/19/2006 to 7/30/2006. The implication being that relatively few Digg users a) contribute at all; and b) even fewer regularly get onto the frontpage.

More details on my ZDNet blog and on Diggtrends.com when they release the full stats.

Comment from adam on 2006-08-02

2006-08-02T16:29:43Z

So guess this proves that what Calacanis did was a smart move afterall.

ps: does anyone know what percent of the linkers accepted the Netscape offer?

Comment from soxiam on 2006-08-02

2006-08-02T16:38:37Z

Stating the obvious (for most folks) but top Diggers' submissions are weighted more in their ranking system. As the stories you submit land more and more on the home page, it becomes incrementally easiser to submit a story that will rank well.

Comment from adam on 2006-08-02

2006-08-02T20:05:39Z

ah...thanks for the tip soxiam (ps - great site)

Comment from Otis Gospodnetic on 2006-08-02

2006-08-02T20:43:28Z

That must have been Digg's best kept secret! What a big head and a skinny little long tail!

Comment from Nick Lothian on 2006-08-03

2006-08-04T04:53:55Z

Isn't everyone missing the point here?

a) The valuable thing on Digg ISN'T the user-contributed content (ie, the coments), but the act of selecting which stories to post. Since so few users actually select the stories Digg isn't really very different to tradional media with a paid editorial board.

b) If the top 10 users are worth $10,000/month (ie, 10 * $1000) then I'm kind of surprised there are no start-ups (AFAIK) writing software to do what they do automatically. It would seem to me that there would be a market for that....