Mykarma.in

When we give examples of user influenced “social media,” Digg.com, Stumbleupon is right up there with del.icio.us and Wikipedia is the torch-bearer for “user-generated content,”

The popularity of digg has skyrocketed within 2 years and is revered as the best place to get the best stories and also to get traffic for your site. That is why probably there were rumors of digg getting acquired by News corp, Yahoo and many others.

Unlike traditional news sites where editors decide what news is, Digg emerged two years ago as an alternative where readers post links to stories from other Web sites that they think are newsworthy. The users hit a “digg” button if they like it or a “bury it” button if they don’t like it. The most popular stories appear on the front page. Users are encouraged to comment on stories, and they can give comments a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.”

But the recent news of digg rigging its articles and companies that offer services of making your stories popular by buying diggs has really not gone down well with the internet industry and the anticipating userbase which thinks that one day their stories will also get dugged and be popular.

So whats with all the rigging news …..

There was an article where it said that the service is somehow rigging stories which get “dugg” or promoted to the front page of the website – and also Digg was censoring anyone who tries to post an article about the same. It was first covered in an article at ForeverGeek.com, which mentioned that two stories posted to the front page of Digg were “dugg” by the same people – and not just a few of the same people. The first 16 diggs were all by the exact same people, and in the exact same order, and Kevin Rose was one of them. When several readers tried to digg the article from ForeverGeek.com, they were banned and the article link was removed. According to Digg, the article had violated the terms of the user agreement, which bans articles that allege misbehaviour by other Digg users.

According to Digg.com, its URL has been banned because it has been “spamming” Digg with its own stories and trying to get them on to the front page. Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg posted a response to the Digg blog, in which he said ForeverGeek.com violated the terms of service.

There are two issues here it seems one is the that Digg (like other social media or folksonomies) is susceptible to being influenced by a small group of insiders. That one is difficult to prove. The other issue is whether Digg.com should be banning people who post stories that are critical of other Digg users.

Another explanation of how a random useless story comes to the front page of Digg is by rigging and inducing the users with rewards or reciprocally helping them with their own stories.

Now, Internet marketers are planting stories and paying people to promote articles and are manipulating rankings on Digg and other social-media sites like Reddit and Delicious to get more visitors to their websites.

“People basically trying to use the user influenced system of Digg to their advantage by promoting a story with fake diggers or other methodology of link swapping.”

Companies charge as much as $15,000 to get content up on Digg. And if a story becomes popular on Digg It generates good enough traffic and links back to the marketer’s Web site and that site rises in search engine results and would not be required to use search engine marketing.

There are other ways to buy votes. A site called “User/Submitter,” is paying people 50 cents for digging three stories and charges $20 each for stories submitted, plus $1 for every vote it gets. Another site Spike the Vote Web site boasts that it is a “bulletproof way to cheat Digg” and offers a point system for Digg users to submit and dig stories. And Friendly Vote bills itself as an “online resource for Web masters” to improve their marketing on sites like Digg and Delicious.

Then there are a few that I found are more of a link swapping and community driven dig rigging sites something like ” I dig yours and you dig mine” which require invites from existing users to take part in.. Every user has some points to start with and gets points on digging other stories which can be exchanged for diggs on your stories. I had one to check how it is.. there is one called piqq.us which was previously called diggboss.com.. there is also one called diggfreak.com .. the list goes on ……

Digg has become a big enough phenomenons that it does move ideas and in some cases generates enough traction that people are influenced and can get them to buy a product or can generate an interest. That is why it is becoming more of a concern for brands and companies alike to monitor such sites. And also use these sites to their advantage.

Digg – and others – need to realize this that the fuel that drives their services forward with users is trust, and once that trust is lost it is very difficult to regain.

Lets see how Digg changes and responds to threats like these. And lets see if this post goes up in digg or not or just gets banned.

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