If you’ve checked in over at Reddit lately, you know the place is overrun with Digg refugees.

So, apparently the “new Digg” didn’t go over well on an epic scale, and many Digg users have vocally begun to express their displeasure. Amusingly, even Time thought to cover the longstanding rivalry:

But the best revenge? Teaming up with the enemy. So many enraged Digg fans jumped ship and headed to competitor Reddit that the latter’s moderators posted a Reddit 101 guide for new users. And as icing on the betrayal cake, one intrepid Digg-hater set up an automatic feed on Digg of Reddit posts.

I have to admit to not being a good, objective reviewer because I strongly prefer the format and tone of Reddit to Digg. It’s difficult to quantify how the large-scale frustration will play out in the long term for Digg, or whether the many new users proclaiming to be Digg refugees will stick around and become contributing members.

Have you switched? Are you finding the “new Digg”still preferable to Reddit? Pic attached, it’s my Digg front page.

Digg mutiny continues, feud makes ‘Time’ as users abandon ship to Reddit is a post from: The Inquisitr

Wow, this will surely be getting the blogosphere in an uproar as the news spread but apparently Digg, and possibly other social networks, has been targeted by a large group of influential conservative members in an effort to censor liberal oriented stories.

According to a post on Alternet.org this group through the use of multiple accounts, deliberate attempts to get liberals or progressives banned, has been in operation for over a year and one of the conservative bury brigades as they are called claim they are able to bury 90% of targeted posts, and usually within 1 to 3 hours.

A group of nearly one hundred conservatives have banded together on a Yahoo Group called Digg Patriots (DP), and a companion site at coRanks to issue bury orders and discuss strategies to censor Digg and other social media websites. DP was founded on 21 May 2009. Since then, over 40,000 posts have been logged at a steady rate of around 3000-4000 per month. The “Patriots” Network on coRank is a tool to submit Diggs to a group list as opposed to sending an e-mail every time. It also has some tools that make submitting to the list as easy as clicking on a bookmark. The DP membership includes the following Digg users (among others):

The Alternet.org post also contains a list of the names of Digg members involved with the Digg Patriots group. It seems, according to the Alternet.org post that hate is a prime motivator for these groups.

There are a few differences of opinion within DP, although for the most part, they are extremely similar in perspective. They hate Obama. They hate progressives. They hate the UN, diplomacy, and peace/disarmament efforts. They hate reforms of health care, Wall St., and immigration. They hate science, in fact many are creationists, and some even blog about it. They hate the secular nature of our nation. They hate environmental protection, requiring polluters to be responsible for their own cleanup, and especially hate climate efforts. They hate unions and any attempt to level the playing field to give all Americans economic opportunities. They hate the government, except the military-industrial complex. They hate abortion rights. They hate public schools and really hate higher education. They hate anyone in the media except far right personalities like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Michelle Malkin. They hate anyone who doesn’t think Obama is a secret islamist and/or marxist who was born in Kenya. They just love to hate.

Granted some will suggest that Alternet.org isn’t without its biases either but it will still be interesting to see how Digg responds to this investigation.

Investigation reveals massive conservative censoring of Digg is a post from: The Inquisitr

Kevin Rose’s first decision as CEO of Digg has been to dump the controversial Digg bar, less than a day since it was announced that his predecessor Jay Aldeson was leaving the building.

The Digg bar forced links from Digg to be displayed through an iFrame, with the Digg bar sitting on top of every page. When first introduced it caused a storm, although the later option for registered Digg users to opt out did placate a lot of the original drama.

The dodgy thing with sites that use an iFrame bar like this is that it immediately inflates traffic; instead of the page view going to the linked site alone, Digg gets an extra page view on each click thru as well, despite only displaying the bar at the top.

Rose said in a post to the Digg blog that

“Framing content with an iFrame is bad for the Internet. It causes confusion when bookmarking, breaks w/iFrame busters, and has no ability to communicate with the lower frame (if you browse away from a story, the old digg count still persists). It’s an inconsistent/wonky user experience, and I’m happy to say we are killing it when we launch the new Digg”

The change confirms long rumored tension between Rose and Aldeson that first arose last year.

Kevin Rose Dumps Digg Bar is a post from: The Inquisitr

Long serving Digg CEO Jay Adelson has announced that he is stepping down from the position after a five year run that saw the social sharing site grow to the top of its class.

Adelson explained in a post to the Digg blog that he feels that this is the right time to go, and that “the entrepreneurial calling is strong, and I am ready to incubate some new business ideas over the next twelve months.”

Noting what others are also noting, he adds “As the economy exits a very deep recession, I believe that it is an excellent time for new companies to develop.”

Digg founder Kevin Rose has stepped up to the plate and is now acting CEO and Chairman, although it wasn’t clear from the announcement whether this arrangement may become permanent.

Adelson will remain an “adviser” to Digg for the immediate future.

Jay Adelson Quits As Digg CEO, Kevin Rose Steps Up To The Plate is a post from: The Inquisitr

Surveillance video of a guy being casually frickin’ awesome in relation to a guardrail. He could open it, but opening it is for pussies.

[Digg]

Video: Going to work, awesome style is a post from: The Inquisitr

Beaker meets commentator-haters in an internet video. Statler and Waldorf keep digging until it’s buried.

Video: The Muppets meet the internet is a post from: The Inquisitr

Where have I seen this before

The Super Secret New Digg Page is a post from: The Inquisitr

In case you were wondering how it works, here’s a handy flowchart explaining the process.

Digg’s promotion algorithm revealed is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you’ve got a Facebook account, you may have noticed the option to like/unlike ads on your profile. Digg unveiled a plan today to take this concept a step further- charging less for ads voted up by Digg users.

With the new system, popular ads will get a lower cost per click rate while ads with more “buries” will be more expensive and likely pulled more quickly by media buyers. The new Digg Ads will appear within the content stream, marked as sponsored but otherwise mimicking regular Digg content.

Digg users are notoriously fickle, and speculation abounds as to how the community will react to the new ad model. (Such as mass burying all ads.) To gauge community and advertiser feedback, Digg plans to roll the system out slowly, starting with geek Digg-friendly sponsors Intel and EA.

Digg’s new social advertising platform prices ads based on popularity is a post from: The Inquisitr

A little over a week since launching, the DiggBar feature from Digg continues to be the focus of widespread condemnation.

In case you’ve missed the noise, the DiggBar places a Digg specific frame around sites, and is bundled with Digg now linking to short URL’s as opposed to sites directly. The arguments against it range from bad web practices, through to stealing SEO and destroying the end user experience.

Some of the principles argued by opponents are reasonable ones, but most people shouldn’t be really that concerned. Why? it all comes down to numbers.

Distribution

Most site owners would be appreciative of getting on the front page of Digg once. We’ve managed it maybe half a dozen times since launching last May. The reality with Digg has always been that there is an uneven distribution between favored sites and the rest of the web.

Richard MacManus in Read Write Web

Digg users also have their favored blogs and websites, which get a disproportionate amount of attention than other less fortunate sites…. A lot of times, the favored sites get dugg very very quickly by digg users. The main problem with that is that the original source for a story often gets overlooked – and the popular site garners all the diggs instead.

Search Engine War has a chart from 2008 showing the distribution here. I did a quick crunch of their stats: for their sample period, 25 sites accounted for 31.98% of front page stories. It should be noted that the 25th site on the list accounted for 0.5% alone, so although the distribution tappers off towards the end of the list, you could easily get to 40-50% out to the top 100 sites.

A small number of sites dominate the top stories on Digg. So to what degree outside of those sites is the DiggBar really the end of the world?

It isn’t.

If Digg wants to send this site a pile of traffic on occasion and put a bar up top, I’ve got no major issues at all. Would I prefer they did it without the DiggBar? yes, but I’ll happily take that traffic none the less. I also don’t have to bet that others would happy accept the traffic, I know that they would (and I did ask some before writing this post.)

If you don’t like it….

Although offering the DiggBar as standard on links, Digg isn’t forcing sites to accept the bar. The code to get rid of it is actually remarkably simple. Engadget for example is blocking the DiggBar (an excellent post here) as are a number of other sites. So if you really, really hate it that much, add the code.

Conclusion

I do sympathize with the principles expressed by opponents of the DiggBar, but for most people it shouldn’t be an issue, nor is it. If you’re fortunate enough to get on the front page of Digg, does it really matter that much if you’re not a top 100 site if there’s a bar on top, a bar which it should be noted can be used to Digg your site even more? I won’t be blocking the DiggBar, and nor will most people.

Why you shouldn’t be concerned about the DiggBar is a post from: The Inquisitr

Proving once more that the best ideas are often stolen, Digg has launched the DiggBar, an iframed toolbar that offers a range of features.

At its core, the DiggBar is naturally a voting platform for Digg. Users can Digg a site while on the site via the frame, and if the page is not already in the system, use the DiggBar to submit it. Along side the service is a handy URL shortening feature that is used by adding digg.com in front of any URL in a browser. Socially, the DiggBar supports related content and “random” content, so you can navigate through items that have previously been featured by Digg.

If those things all sound familiar, they should, because URL shortening aside, it’s a dead copy of what’s already being offered by StumbleUpon (who now offers a similar iFrame toolbar) and Reddit (via the Socialite plugin). Some sites have gushed over the DiggBar, using superlatives such as “amazing” and “incredible;” yes, the implementation is solid, but the idea is none of those things. Forgive me that unlike others I’m not interested in dropping my head into the crotch of Kevin Rose with my mouth wide opened.

What is interesting though is that Rose and company have decided to take on StumbleUpon with the move, although admittedly it’s not in the same league yet (no category surfing for example). There’s talk of ads appearing in the DiggBar, but it should be remembered how StumbleUpon makes money: by selling page views that are added when users are stumbling. It’s a solid business model, and from experience, a great way to advertise a site. Here’s betting that Digg wants a slice of this action as well.

Digg copies StumbleUpon, Reddit with the DiggBar is a post from: The Inquisitr

Number two player in the social voting space Reddit has won by a clear mile in the April Fools Day prank competition by rebranding the site as Reddigg.

The skin includes the choice to Digg an entry, or bury it, vs the usual vote up or down on Reddit. Unlike Digg, Reddit offers a transparent voting system; the inclusion of a bury button up front is pure mokery.

A close second is Google, who worked off the theme of the Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity, with sub pranks outside of the original prank.

Reddit wins the April Fools Day pranks is a post from: The Inquisitr

WeFollow is remarkably simple, and that’s where its strength lies. The site indexes users based on user submitted interests via hash tag. For example, the front page offers the top users in categories such as news, music and more based on the hash tags submitted by the user themselves. Users can nominate three hash tags, and are automatically added to the index.

The site works both as a ranking and discovery service. Users are ranked by their number of followers under each tag. Visitors can then visit lists and discover users that share their interests.

The only criticism of the site is that it mainly serves to promote the A-List on Twitter, because to rank on the front page, or first page of most tags, you need to have a lot of followers to begin with. So far though, it’s not impossible to rank, although this will change as more and more add themselves to the site. For example, at the time of writing I managed to pop up at 19 on the tag web, but this is bound to change.

To list yourself on WeFollow, send a message on Twitter as follows: @wefollow #tag #tag #tag, placing your preferred tags where #tag is listed.

Kevin Rose launches WeFollow: a Twitter user directory is a post from: The Inquisitr

We apologize for having passed the incorrect information on to you. The story, in its original form, follows.

Digg is seeing a significant drop in shared content when it comes to submissions made via a popular third-party platform.

ShareThis, the Web publishing utility that lets users submit pages to multiple social bookmarking sites from a single interface, is planning to release some new metrics next week. The measurements show which sharing services are most frequently used by surfers.

Here are the results for January of 2009:

Digg, you’ll notice, is now down to a tiny sliver — just 2.10 percent of all the ShareThis submissions for this past January. That’s a drop of just over 9 percent from half a year earlier. E-mail sharing, while still by far the largest chunk of the pie, has dropped about 7 percent since August. MySpace, StumbleUpon, and Technorati saw small decreases as well.

When it comes to increases, Facebook is seeing the biggest gains within ShareThis, jumping up nearly 13 percent to a total of 21.20 percent of all the platform’s submissions. Twitter and AIM also saw minor increases.

It was just last month, you may remember, that data from Hitwise indicated Twitter had overtaken Digg in overall traffic for the first time. The new measurements from ShareThis may contribute to the argument of a broad shift slowly taking place in social bookmarking preferences. They may also, of course, simply indicate that more Digg users are sharing content directly via digg.com rather than through a publisher’s sharing platform.

About 80,000 online publishers have the ShareThis platform installed on their sites.

Digg Takes a Hit in Widget-Based Sharing is a post from: The Inquisitr

First, Hammer popped up at this week’s Twitter-oriented “Shorty Awards,” and he didn’t go unnoticed, either. Listed as a “special appearance” and billed right under Shaq and CNN’s Rick Sanchez, Hammer ended up stealing a good bit of the spotlight from the highly covered event.

The guy’s got 60,000 followers on his Twitter account. And now, the Hammerman is popping up in a spoof video said to show the secrets behind Digg’s mysterious algorithms:

All right, so let me just ask: When did it become Hammertime again? And, for the love of Vanilla Ice, can we at least get some parachute pants on that guy if he’s going to be dancing all around the Web 2.0 world?

Why is MC Hammer Suddenly All Over Social Media? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Now I am pretty sure that we all know who Digg.com is; and if not that is one hellva rock you’ve been hiding under, but Village Voice Media is probably not quite as well known. Well it so happens to be a media company who among other metropolitan newsweeklies owns the venerable Village Voice newspaper. It appears as well to be; or at least some of its employees seem to be behind a very active campaign to game Digg.com.

This is according to Ed Kohler of The Deets blog, who has done some pretty interesting investigation recently about the connection between CityPages.com, Village Voice Media and one City Pages; which is owned by Village Voice Media, web editor named Jen Boyles. the connection Ed makes that since the day that Jen joined Digg and began heavily promoting CityPages stories another very regular Digg user by the name of IvanB also began promoting CityPages stories. Interestingly enough is the fact that the friends of Jen Boyles happen to live in cities where Village Voice Media also has news properties.

As Ed points out using this graph it seems that IvanB; the influential digger, as a real affinity for CityPages stories

and apparently IvanB isn’t the only influential Digger to be doing the same thing. Ed suggests as well that one of the other heavy diggers of CityPages stories is nothing like their Digg profile portrays them to be. In fact instead of being a woman they are a man who works for Village Voice Media

Just for fun, I’m going state the obvious: The Digg user Philostrato is NOT a she, but a he (pictured on the right here and left here). Philostrato is a he by the name of Keith Plocek, whose work titles are:

* Social Media Manager at Village Voice Media
* Web Editor at Houston Press

Exactly the kind of roles a person would have who obsesses over Village Voice Media’s web traffic.

While there is no absolute proof that what Ed Kohler is suggesting in his post it sure does make for some interesting reading and I am sure will reaffirm a general consensus that Digg is and always will be gamed for the benefit of advertising dollars.

[hat tip to Susan Mernit]

Catching Village Voice Media with its hands in the Digg cookie jar is a post from: The Inquisitr

Twitter climbed to the #84 spot in market share last week while Digg landed at #85, according to new data just released by Hitwise. The data analysis company credits the heavy Twitter traffic related to the U.S. Airways crash into the Hudson River for helping bring the site over the edge. Twitter’s success is likely even larger than it appears here, too, as these figures do not take into account Twitter usage originating from cell phones.

Twitter is also rapidly growing in the 25-34 age range, with 45 percent of its traffic now coming from that group. Only 12 percent of Twitter’s traffic was within the 25-34 group one year ago. Digg, in comparison, currently has 20 percent of its users in that range.

Another interesting note: While Digg’s traffic comes largely from Google, Twitter’s comes largely from social networks.

Not too shabby, eh?

Twitter Overtakes Digg In Traffic is a post from: The Inquisitr

MixedInk is a new collaborative wiki service with a strong dose of social voting, or as the company suggests: Wiki meets Digg. MixedInk aims to help users overcome the noise created by multiple contributions by adding a voting element to each user generated contribution.

The base of MixedInk, like any Wiki is a topic; an organizer proposes a topic and invites people to participate. Participants contribute ideas and opinions addressing the issue. They also edit and remix other people’s submissions. While this is going on, users can also rate other submissions, creating a social preference that allows the best contributions to rise to the top.

Demo video below. It’s an interesting idea, but it feels a little busy. On one hand you’ve got your Wiki elements, but users can edit other contributions before and during voting, so it wouldn’t be difficult for example to edit a higher ranking contribution to make it worse, or having done that using it as your own. Still, maybe it won’t be gamed, and it is different as an idea. One to watch.

Check out Slate’s Inauguration Speech wiki for an example of how it works here.

MixedInk: Wiki Meets Digg is a post from: The Inquisitr

Digg has advised that their popular social voting site will be addressing duplicate entries and other issues.

Anton Kast, head of R&D for Digg said in a post to the Digg blog:

Duplicate submissions have been an ongoing issue, and we are working on several new tools that will help address this. Improvements in duplication detection are underway and expected soon. We’re also working on a new system that will, among other things, allow us to track users who abusively submit duplicate content. While we haven’t fully hammered out all the details, the tool will likely include warnings and limits on duplicate submissions.

Sadly, Digg won’t be getting rid of tools, sorry Digg members who do nothing more than down vote other members. No, apparently those participate too much need fixing:

Another area of recent community debate has focused on home page diversity, and the concentration of certain popular submitters. Our goal is to give each person a fair chance at getting his or her submission promoted to the home page. Digg’s promotional algorithm aims to ensure that the most popular content Dugg by a diverse, unique group of diggers reaches the home page. Since Digg began over four years ago, we’ve been making ongoing tweaks to the promotional algorithm. We spend a lot of time analyzing the data and improving the system. While most of these changes go unnoticed, we will be testing different approaches to increase submitter diversity in the upcoming months.

I’m divided on the last point; on one hand, I know a couple of the top guys and know they are good value, but likewise we don’t get a good run on Digg, so opening it up some more might help us.

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

Digg Will Address Duplicate Entries. Sadly Tools Not Included, But Top Submitters Are. is a post from: The Inquisitr

Once you add a feed, you’ll see it post every time a new story becomes popular within that subject. The system is built on the Twitter API.

The full list of Digg’s Twitter feeds follows. And did you see the first-ever “State of the Twittersphere” report for 2008′s fourth quarter? The study found 70 percent of Twitter users signed up in ’08, with an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 new accounts popping up daily. You can check out the full findings here (PDF).

Digg’s New Twitter Feeds

• Digg Homepage updates as every new story is promoted
• Digg 2000 : Stories that reach 2,000 or more Diggs
• Technology: Popular stories from Digg.com/technology
• Apple: Popular stories from Digg.com/apple
• Software: Popular stories from Digg.com/software
• World & Business: Popular stories from Digg.com/world_business
• Political News: Popular stories from Digg.com/politics
• Science: Popular stories from Digg.com/science
• Environment: Popular stories from Digg.com/environment
• Offbeat: Popular stories from Digg.com/offbeat
• Gaming: Popular stories from Digg.com/gaming
• Images: Popular images from Digg.com/images
• Video: Popular videos from Digg.com/video
• Entertainment: Popular stories from Digg.com/entertainment
• Sports: Popular stories from Digg.com/sports

Get Your Digg On Via Twitter is a post from: The Inquisitr