Allen Stern over at CenterNetworks did an analysis of current frontpage stories on digg, the popular social news site that started out as a tech competitor to Slashdot. Allen noted that now just 15% of frontpage stories are technology ones, which is a huge change from its roots. Slashdot meanwhile continues to focus exclusively on ultra-geeky topics.
I can add my own bit of analysis to Allen's. At the end of last week I did a check of which tech publishers were getting the most frontpages.
The data showed one interesting trend: digg tech stories are dominated by a few select blogs. Here is what I discovered:
Number of digg frontpages in last 30 days:
Ars Technica = 87
Gizmodo = 84
Engadget = 67
Torrentfreak = 36
Techcrunch = 12
Valleywag = 9
ReadWriteWeb = 6
Mashable = 4
Gigaom = 4
VentureBeat = 2
CenterNetworks = 1
As you can see, Ars Technica, Gizmodo and Engadget get far more frontpages than other top tech blogs like Techcrunch, ReadWriteWeb and Allen's own CenterNetworks. Ars gets on average 3 frontpages a day - in other words, they get as many frontpages in 2 days as we get in a month. Yet on Technorati's list of top blogs, only 7 places separates Ars (#7) from RWW (#14). I'm not complaining (much), it's just the way this business works. But it is interesting that digg, which is a social news site and famously runs without using editors, is dominated by such a small collection of top blogs. And that select group appears to be getting smaller and more exclusive by the day.
Don't get me wrong, Slashdot has its own biases - it almost always chooses to link to stories from a traditional 'old media' source, rather than blogs. So it too no doubt has a small collection of sources that dominate its frontpage.
My point (other than indulging myself in 'shop talk') is that at the same time that Digg is becoming more mainstream, the variety of its sources for top news has dropped. Is this a good thing? Obviously not for some of us tech blogs. But I'd argue it's also not good for digg readers, who are not getting the diversity of tech stories they used to get.
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Thanks for the link Richard - part II of my story (now in the trash bin) was basically what you just wrote - the diversity of what Digg promotes within tech.
The bottom line is that it's a 3 dog race and clearly Digg has given up on the smaller sites (like me). In fact, the Digg you mention for CN was close to the 30 day mark and we haven't had one since.
Sites like TC don't need diggs anymore as they got the early pumping which helped them immensely with google rankings and they have pretty good word-of-mouth now.
Frankly Digg needs to create better levels of diversity. I will still post about this tomorrow but now am required to take a different angle :)
Good post in any regard!
Posted by: allen stern | February 19, 2008 1:51 PMWouldn't it make more sense to look at the front page of the technology section?
I know I look first through technology then through the main section of digg. I guess you would know the difference in clicks between the two positions.
Posted by: Eric C. | February 19, 2008 2:19 PMTechmeme works somewhat similar except number of big dogs is greater than 3 and there is (are) robot(s) instead of diggers. Techmeme is heavily dominated by TechCrunch, Engadget, Silicon Insider and few others.
A few days ago I saw a sole NYT post on top, then after a while TechCrunch shown up in "discussions" among other links, then TechCrunch moved to "related" (as traffic was growing), then TechCrunch popped up on the very top and NYT was downgraded to "related". I did not check traffic measurement sites but apparently TechCrunch has more weight than NYT in the Techmeme rating algorithm.
When I open Techmeme, I just scan to find what's NOT on TechCrunch / Engadget.
Posted by: Gleb Tulukin | February 19, 2008 2:37 PMArs Technica, Gizmodo, Engadget, Torrentfreak, and Techcrunch are all sites we trust. Not to mention they get news faster than most. Why WOULDN'T they be among the most frontpaged? Would you rather Joe Schmoe's blog get to the front page about hd-dvd being dead when he's just linking to the Engadget article anyway? I didn't think so.
Posted by: Brant Tedeschi | February 19, 2008 5:03 PMInteresting analysis, Richard.
I am wondering whether this post will make it to the front of Digg. Seems like good Digg bait.
From a PR perspective, it'd be interesting to see which blogs make it to the front page of (as well as front of category pages) Digg routinely, as it'd probably be smarter to pitch blogs that are likely to get Dugg, assuming Digg has an appropriate audience for the company seeking the press.
Posted by: peter caputa | February 19, 2008 5:09 PMI published a trackback to this article but I'm not sure if it went through. You can read my comment here if not:
Digg's Social Network Has Undermined Its Diversity
Posted by: Aaron Stannard | February 19, 2008 5:15 PMBrant, I like all those sites too. My point isn't that they shouldn't be the most highly dugg - just that they get on the fp disproportionately more than similarly popular sites.
Posted by: Richard MacManus"similarly popular sites"
Richard,
Your mistake comes in thinking that Technorati's ranking somehow reflects how much traffic a site gets. Technorati's ranking reflects number of links to your site. It does not mean anything about how much traffic a site gets.
Gizmodo's traffic stats are public: http://www.quantcast.com/gizmodo.com
And they get 8.6 million uniques a month. Compare that to your own stats, and I wager your number is a tiny fraction of that. (nothing against the site, just proving a point)
arn
Posted by: Arn | February 19, 2008 7:00 PMSince my website wasn't mentioned I decided to add it here. :-)
MakeUseOf.com - 8 times in the last 30 days
Posted by: Aibek Esengulov | February 19, 2008 7:03 PMArn, actually RWW traffic is 7 figures monthly too, so it's not a "tiny fraction" of gizmodo's by any means. But also, being on digg 80 times a month is obviously going to give a site a lot of traffic.
But look, it's not about the traffic. I'll repeat again: ars, gizmodo and engadget get on the fp ***disproportionately more than others***. Techcrunch probably gets more traffic than Ars, yet it gets on digg fp 7-8 times less than ars does.
Posted by: Richard MacManusNot to dispute you off hangd... but want to clarify, so we are talking about he same metric: Gizmodo gets 8.6 million unique visitors, and 54,282,985 page views a month, and ask you to check your stats again.
And I can't say I agree that TechCrunch gets more traffic than Ars. It's hard to say. TechCrunch is a popular/influential blog... but pure traffic numbers? I wager Ars gets much more.
Last time they reported to Federated Media, they only cite 5,460,000 page views a month. 10x smaller than Gizmodo's monthly traffic.
arn
Posted by: arn | February 19, 2008 7:30 PM(for reference for numbers mentioned above)
Posted by: arn | February 19, 2008 7:31 PMhttp://www.federatedmedia.net/authors/techcrunch
Sorry... don't mean to spam the comments... but here's a direct comparison:
http://www.federatedmedia.net/authors/arstechnica
http://www.federatedmedia.net/authors/techcrunch
I forgot Ars uses FedMedia also.
ArsTechnica: 20,380,000 page views a month
Posted by: arn | February 19, 2008 8:00 PMTechCrunch: 5,460,000 page views a month
The big sites notice good news on smaller sites. They post the good stuff on their blogs and get their team of social media 'marketers' to digg it up enough to pass a few important thresholds.
Otherwise, Digg is absolutely boring. Just get a feed for the top ten up there and you're good.
Posted by: Preston | February 19, 2008 8:09 PMWell that's fair enough re FM numbers, although I should note they're often wrong for RWW.
Anyway, I don't think traffic has much to do with my point. It's still a disproportionate number of digg fp for a few sites.
Posted by: Richard MacManusI agree it's not all traffic. Two other thoughts...
1)
Engadget and Gizmodo specifically make it special efforts to get on Digg. This involves very prominent Digg buttons on stories they want promoted:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/19/ipod-shuffle-price-cut-now-49/
http://gizmodo.com/355843/apple-tv-20-review2
If you started posting large Digg buttons on your front page for stories you wanted dugg (and not just small little discrete buttons), your chances would be much higher -- but at the sacrifice of site design.
2)
You are comparing Apples and Oranges by comparing TechCrunch, Readwriteweb, Mashable to Gizmodo, Engadget, and Ars. You post different topics which may necessarily be less interesting to Digg as a community.
Amongst like-sites, ReadWriteWeb appears to have a comparable number of stories.
Is it really surprising that "Bungee launched PaaS for Building Web Apps in the Cloud" didn't make it to the front page of Digg? And is it surprising that an iPod shuffle price cut did?
3) Your little digg buttons aren't clickable on Safari.
arn
Posted by: arn | February 19, 2008 8:51 PMThanks arn, all very good points and I appreciate you doing that analysis.
I think your point here is particularly strong: "You post different topics which may necessarily be less interesting to Digg as a community."
Definitely the digg community is into gadgets, which explains Gizmodo and Engadget being so high. And Ars Technica is an awesome site that posts quality news about a broad range of technology - it's much broader than RWW. We focus on Web tech exclusively, whereas Ars does *any* tech. And all 3 sites post great content, which appeals to geeks. So no argument there.
I would say though that I *do* think "Bungee launched PaaS for Building Web Apps in the Cloud" deserved to be on digg fp, but I am clearly biased ;-)
Anyway, like I said in the post - this is the nature of the business and some sites clearly appeal to digg's audience more than than others. However, getting back to my original question: is it a good thing that so few tech news sources dominate a social news site? If you think it is, I have no problem with that. I would suggest tho that it means less diversity of stories and opinion for the digg community to discuss.
Posted by: Richard MacManusDigg is slowly deteriorating into a bathroom stall-like news source. Nearly all of the 'most dugg' items are either images or video, and they're rarely of the educational variety. Sort of sucks. I used to like going to Digg to read up on new tech news and world events and whatnot, now I go if I want to find a kid getting shot in the pancreas with a potato cannon...
Just found a newsreader out there that exists that bases it's content on what the user actually WANTS to see. It's 'Sprout', a "new intuitive newsreader that sends content to the user based on their personal preferences." (says their site). There's a free trial on now. You can find it here: www.yoursprout.ca.
Posted by: Steve | February 19, 2008 9:23 PMIf you place some sort of noble democratizing value behind the term "social news site", then perhaps there's value in diversity. But even so, the people have already spoken... and gizmodo and engadget are very popular sites. Why shouldn't they also be popular on the subculture that is digg?
The other presumption here is that digg was not always like this... and that in the "good old days" Digg was more of a diversity of sites... and I don't know when that was actually true.
It certainly wasn't true 10 months ago:
http://www.harrymaugans.com/2007/04/14/most-powerful-sites-on-digg/ (top sites: Arstechnica, Engadget, NYTimes, Consumerist, Gizmodo....)
Posted by: arn | February 19, 2008 9:31 PMPoor Ars, they used to get 120 fp per month. Now they only get 87.
arn, now we're getting into the whole debate of how 'democratic' digg really is. Maybe it never has been. But one thing I can say is that it is much harder for the vast majority of blogs/sites to get onto digg fp now. If a top digger submits your story, then it needs 150+ diggs to get to fp - which is increasingly uncommon. And if an unknown digger submits it, then you're relying on your blog community to get it to the fp. See where I'm going with this? I would argue that the Ars fanbase is big and strong enough in digg to keep pushing 3+ stories onto the digg fp every single day. Is that 'democracy' on a social news site? No, it's Ars' powerful fan base that consistently gets it onto the fp day after day.
You could also argue that it's just that many digg users are fans of Ars, which is fair enough. But either way, the bottom line is a few sites get onto digg fp disproportionately more often than other sites.
To answer your question: "Why shouldn't they also be popular on the subculture that is digg?"
My answer is that the top sites should indeed be popular, but that currently the top few are *too* popular - way out of proportion for a news site that claims it is more democratic than slashdot.
Posted by: Richard MacManusOne more thing. This might be a controversial suggestion, but if digg currently punishes top diggers by making them get 150+ diggs to make the fp -- shouldn't they also require the top few sites to get more diggs to make the fp too? It's the same principle.
Posted by: Richard MacManusI think something you have missed out here. Other than some geeky news that are always squeezing to the front page of digg, there is one website that is not technology related but it still always appears at the front page of digg.
ZenHabits.net is the answer.
And, this is one of the reason that I love digg.com so much because it covers not only technology related news around the net.
Posted by: siong1987 | February 19, 2008 11:12 PM"the bottom line is a few sites get onto digg fp disproportionately more often than other sites."
Ok. All other arguments aside... my main problem with this point is this... you (ReadWriteWeb) aren't even trying to get on digg's front page. Not really. Not like Engadget, Gizmodo are. It's no great mystery or conspiracy how Engadget/Gizmodo's stories are getting on digg more frequently. They promote the crap out of that digg button.
Do this for me... next time you have a story that you think is "digg"-worthy. Post a large Digg button on the front page of your site and also embedded in the story itself. None of this discrete small integrated button. A flagrant ugly digg button embedded before the first sentence. And submit the story yourself with an catchy/interesting title and categorized correctly.
If you don't want to because it seems cheap or ugly... that's fine, but you also can't complain that you can't get on digg's front page while xyz.com can, when xyz.com is working hard to get there.
arn
Posted by: arn | February 19, 2008 11:23 PMWell, I think there's more to it than a big ol' ugly digg button. But granted, Engadget and Gizmodo certainly do a great job 'optimizing' for digg.
Posted by: Richard MacManusHow can there be more to it?. More "diggs" => front page.
To underscore the point, the commenter above said that "zenhabits.net" is "always" on digg. I've never heard of the site... but sure enough, they optimize for digg.
This curiously boring article made it:
http://zenhabits.net/2008/02/punk-rock-your-life-the-simple-six-letter-word-that-determines-success/
requests for diggs, large digg button at end of article.
arn
Posted by: arn | February 19, 2008 11:46 PMDigg has made itself irrelevant. At first, it was the site I depended on to get me caught up on interesting, relevant news from a variety of sites.
Now, it's just a bunch of parrots cawing at each other in the top of a few trees, all about the same thing.
The stories are uninteresting, the comments are worse, the most interesting articles are invariably buried as they are more complicated, and most of the editors seem to be just out of elementary school.
Now, I stay away from Digg.
Posted by: Mike | February 20, 2008 12:08 AMarn,
Posted by: dan zarrella | February 20, 2008 3:16 AMIts very, very clear why that zenhabits link you posted made front page and it has surprisingly little to do with the digg button on the page I think.
http://valleywag.com/346642/kevin-rose-doesnt-deny-digg-has-secret-editors
Posted by: Owen Byrne | February 20, 2008 4:50 AMdan, i personally found the zenhabits article exceedingly uninteresting and pointless... but to each his own. obviously the readers of zenhabits liked it, and they "dugg" it with the convenient link at the end of the article at the request of a site they frequent. would it have received enough diggs if it was buried amongst the thousands of other digg submissions?
I feel like I'm harping on this, and I don't meant sound like the rantings of a crazed person.... but it's all so transparently obvious, I have a hard time letting it go.
- you know that popular diggers with lots of digg-friends get their stories to the front page
- you know that pay-services that get a lot of people to digg your story can make it to the front page
- it's not rocket science that if you can SOMEHOW get more people to digg your story, you are much more likely to get the front page. Hmm... now how can a site with a reasonable amount of traffic get people to digg their story?
engadget and gizmodo know the answer to this question, so does torrentfreak, so does zenhabits. Ars is the only outlier in the list, in that they don't flagrantly promote the digg button.
arn
Posted by: arn | February 20, 2008 6:58 AMarn, I hear what you're saying -- but I have actually been tracking the 'performance' of the digg buttons on RWW, and we used to use the big ol' ugly buttons. I tried putting them bottom of the post, top of the post. But for whatever reason, RWW readers won't click them (and yes I'm aware of that Safari bug, which I've asked our designers to fix). In my estimation, very few people actually click the buttons. I sometimes wonder why we even have them.
So my guess is that the buttons on Engadget etc aren't as big a factor as you think they are. They probably do help a little, but there are other more subtle factors at play. The fact that Ars doesn't use the big buttons is probably further evidence of that.
Posted by: Richard MacManusMy personal experience is very different from yours (i run MacRumors.com)
No digg button: very few diggs
Small digg button: many diggs, usually reach the front page
Large digg button: many diggs very quickly
digg buttons reserved for topics that I consider diggworthy, so they aren't on every story.
Again, no disrespect, but traffic does have a large factor to do it. We get 35 million page views a month. I compete in the same topics as engadget and gizmodo and know very well the effect of the Digg button on their stories as well, and frequently have seen stories between us race to the front page. The effect of having a button and not having a button on a story is distinct and clear for us. (larger the button the better).
Posted by: arn | February 20, 2008 6:35 PMAh, I was wondering who you were arn! :-) OK then, that makes sense for your site, for sure. I might do more experimentation with this for RWW.
In the meantime, for the broader issue, I've added this comment to the digg Town Hall meeting post:
Top news sources should have a handicap like top diggers
Digg up my comment if you agree:
Posted by: Richard MacManushttp://tinyurl.com/26bfdc
Nig is full of diggers!
Posted by: Ibod Catooga | February 21, 2008 10:52 PMya, sorry, richard. didn't mean keep my identity "secret"... just usually don't open with that when I comment. :) I'll be interested to see if they discuss it at the town hall.
All being said, I actually agree that there should be a site handicap, because that normalizes against relative traffic. As is, it ends up being a "top sites" list where the site that can refer the most traffic wins.
arn
Posted by: arn | February 22, 2008 6:42 AMThanks arn, I've enjoyed this exchange in the comments here. You have an awesome site at Mac Rumors, and I have a lot of respect for what you've accomplished there. I will try some more experimentation with digg buttons here, based on your feedback. I wonder tho if RWW's core audience just aren't 'digg people' and so that's why they don't click the buttons. But need to do more analysis on that.
Posted by: Richard MacManus