How Relevant Is Digg Now?

Two years ago even critics looked at Digg and its popularity with amazement. Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson seemed to have hit a home run with the social news site Digg.com.  In Jan 2008 Techcrunch ran an article that estimated there were 2.7 million users.

After having a look at Digg today, the article greeted me was a picture of several children. A few of which were making funny faces. Amazingly, this submission had over 1600 diggs. A digg is basically a vote by users to promote the popularity of a particular story or article. Or in this case, a picture. Users can also leave a comment that other users may reply to. Thereby furthering the discussion. Users can also digg up or digg down any of the replies and comments.

Some of the most popular votes for the picture submission we looked at were:

• really, I don’t under… OH MY GOD!
• If this makes the front page, the [Pic] will be the only reason why.
• White kids are creepy
• I’d like to see her whole thing….
• eye spy with my little eye…
• The all seeing eye of Zauron ?

And the intelligent conversation goes on for several hundred replies. It is as though Digg is at the level of Nickelodeon. Nick certainly has its place in our society and even in the hearts of our children. But Nick is infact a site geared toward children. Everyone including us here at Phat1 like a bit of humor in our lives. Some of us even make a living out of it. And you wouldn’t have to look far on this site to find some humorous items, just look to your right. But the childish antics like exampled here are fairly common on Digg. Do we really need another kids site masquerading as a serious tech site? Could these two extreme genres coexist in the same online community? The experts say, certainly, but not without some caveats.

Over 90% of Digg’s incoming revenue is generated from onsite advertising

But with so many people becoming oblivious to such ads. And most everyone using some sort of ad-blocking software in their browsers. Estimates say revenue for Digg is way down. The first three quarters of 2008 Digg had revenues of $6.4 million and losses of $4 million. That implies total 2008 revenue of $8.5 million, with $5.3 million in losses according to TC.

A quick check of Digg’s about page states:

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg — we’re here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online.

When John Graham-Cumming asked the question How Many Users Does Digg Have?, there were a few things he couldn’t tell you, since his data consisted of randomly self-sampled users. Well, with the power of two PHP scripts, we can pull large amounts of user data and form queries. Our first question is how has DIGG grown over time?

Read: How many users does DIGG have?

Top 100 Digg Users Control 56% of Digg’s HomePage Content

SEOmoz says “When folks think of Digg, they’re often misled into believing that the content seen on the homepage is representative of what a wide base of Internet users think is news-worthy and important. The numbers tell a different story – that of all stories that make it to the front page of Digg, more than 20% come from a select group of 20 users. Digg isn’t shy about hiding this fact, their top users page plainly displays the statistics”

This page has now been replaced.