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Yesterday, a video of a pug puppy licking a screen got more than 14,000 Diggs. This from a website where a link is considered popular if it gets more than 1,000 Diggs. I'm relieved to have finally found the purpose for "social sites" like Digg or YouTube: the 21st-century version of America's Funniest Home Videos. Nothing meaningful ever happens, but it's a fun diversion.

For what it's worth, America's Funniest Home Videos remains massively popular and profitable. But no one mistakes it for the future of news. And what are the odds someone would pay $300 million for an online version of it?

The main change affects "top diggers," the few submitters who contribute a huge percentage of the stories that make the Digg front page. These users, who have all submitted thousands of stories each, submit more than 10 percent of stories that make the front page of Digg. Muhammad Saleem — known as msaleem on Digg — has submitted 1,201 articles that eventually made the front page. He tells Valleywag that prior to the algorithm change, it would take him between 110 and 130 Diggs for a submitted story to make the front page. Now, it can take more than 200.

A top digger submits a story, it gets 100 diggs and then sits there in upcoming queue for 8 to 10 hours getting 180-190 votes and not being promoted to the front page. Other stories with 40 votes (from newbie users) get promoted from under you. Everyone loses. Good content submitted by top users is doomed to fail.

It seems a fairly transparent strategy to clean house of the submitters who have been dominating the front page for a while now. Essentially [they] adjusted the diversity factor to skew against popular submitters. Digg-critical stories are frequently buried before they ever reach the front page.

Our theory? Digg is attempting to throttle the number of stories that make the front page. As more and more stories get promoted to the front page of Digg — FP'd, in Digg-lingo — stories spend less time in the spotlight. By increasing the number of votes it takes for a story to make the front page, turnover should decrease.

I also spoke to Drew Curtis, proprietor of Fark.com, a semi-competitor of Digg's, about the changes.

Fark is a benevolent dictatorship or as I like to call it, a house party. You can come in and have a good time with the rest of us but if you shit on the floors and tell me my sense of decor sucks and the beer is awful, you're gone.

Digg is like Student Government on any given campus. It's a full-blown governmental institution completely ignored by the administrators, created for the appearance of having a say in what's going on. No wonder there is chaos. Or maybe it's more like Soviet Russia, where you're told you've got freedom and a voice and can make a difference, but you really can't do shit.

Digg's trying to do one of two things, either improve the quality of submissions or drive the pageviews up. I would suspect the latter, once VC gets involved it's all about the money.

as we point out in our FAQ, occasionally you will see stories in the upcoming section with 100+ Diggs - this is evidence of our promotion algorithm hard at work. One of the keys to getting a story promoted is diversity in Digging activity. When the algorithm gets the diversity it needs, it will promote a story from the Upcoming section to the home page.

If there continues to be manipulation and big brother-esque control behind the iron curtain of Digg, the users may soon give up and look for social news elsewhere, taking their pageviews with them. It's an open question, however, whether the masses of Digg users share the parochial concerns of top submitters.

I attempted to reach Digg CEO Jay Adelson and founder Kevin Rose via email. Rose was in a meeting at the time, and has not gotten back to me yet.

Pogue, holed up in Connecticut, proves as out of touch as those wraparound-sunglassed hipsters who never seem to leave SoMa. The cheeky news site — based in Lexington, Kentucky, not San Francisco — has had its own Jeopardy category and is featured annually in Reader's Digest. The popular site's name was originally meaningless nonsense, sure, but it has come to mean the "crap," as Curtis puts it in his new book, that fills so much of the mass media.

By including Fark in a list that could otherwise go on without end, Pogue reveals how little he knows about Internet culture. Or maybe he's just hoping to attract some traffic from enraged Farkers. Too bad Fark users' informal rules forbid links to the New York Times.

Update: After multiple readers commented on the inclusion of Fark in the list, Pogue has conceded his error.

Like Slashdot, Fark is based far from Silicon Valley or another tech mecca. Its Kentucky base keeps Curtis in touch with his mainstream-America roots. A Fark Jeopardy category? "Fail," whine Uncov's dozen readers. Excerpts in Reader's Digest? "My grandmother reads that," sneers the Pownce set. Fox News producers troll his site for story ideas — blue-staters tell themselves no one's watching. Well, no one who matters. Ok, make that no one cool in downtown San Francisco — that only leaves the rest of America.

Fark's accessibility may be the key to longevity. Show Digg to any friend outside Northern California or high tech, and you'll have to explain the headlines. Fark's pithy summaries go into Reader's Digest and onto Jeopardy without an edit. Curtis's new book, It's Not News, It's Fark.com, has sold 35,000 copies. Gawker's much hipper hardcover? 242 copies. Score one for flyover country.

As a former RD contributor back when they had a tech page — typical article: How to shop for a photo scanner so you don't have to fight over Grandma's scrapbook — I know what you're thinking: No one reads Reader's Digest. You'd know better if you had checked Wikipedia first:

The Audit Bureau of Circulation says Reader's Digest is still the best-selling consumer magazine in the United States, with a circulation of over 10 million copies in the United States, and a readership of 38 million as measured by Mediamark Research (MRI). According to MRI, Reader's Digest reaches more readers with household incomes of $100,000+ than Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Inc. combined. Global editions of Reader's Digest reach an additional 40 million people in more than 70 countries, with 50 editions in 21 languages including a Spanish language edition called Selecciones.

It's News to Me

Let's face it, the news can be dull. That's where fark.com comes in. They give you the real story, with their own twisted take.

"Study shows three out of four women would rather get a plasma TV than a diamond necklace." In other news, only one if four women can keep her husband from signing her name on surveys.

"Hundred-year-old who entered college in 1925 gets degree." Claims he had to graduate now because his dad was tired of paying tuition.

"IRS commissioner to head Red Cross." Says getting blood from people should be no problem.

• Startup mixer Stirr is back for a "Founder's Hacks" event. Ev Williams from Blogger and Twitter, Jangl and Ooma founder Michael Cerda, and Friendster and Socializr founder Jonathan Abrams will be on hand to share tricks they've learned in their entrepreneurial endeavors. 6 p.m. at Mighty in Potrero Hill. [Eventbrite]
• There's a "Media Web Meetup" on the topic of music copyright and creative commons and what the future of digital music is going to look like. Fun topic! But it starts at 1 p.m. in SoMa, so it's not for people with real jobs or something. If you work at Yahoo Brickhouse, however, feel free to go. [Upcoming]
• Fark founder Drew Curtis, the washed-up male figure skater pictured above, will be at Cafe Murano on Steiner Street for a Fark meetup tonight at 9 p.m. Expect beer. [Google Groups]

Digg's user base is two-thirds the size of Facebook's, which just garnered an investment from Microsoft valuing the company at $15 billion. On the other hand, Digg's users are much less active on the site. Advertisers are ultimately buying users' attention, and whether measured by pageviews or time spent on the site, Digg falls short. Still, with an audience that has grown sevenfold in a year, and investors desperately looking for a home for their cash, Digg surely will be sold based on a buyer's future hopes, not present reality.

That's a lot for a small-time blogger, but nothing for news sites that pull 40,000 to 1,000,000 readers per story. If you're hoping to bring the world to your door, forget Techmeme and go get yourself Dugg for 50,000 clicks — or better yet Farked, where 100,000 readers will be directly linked to your site without Digg's story summaries. If you've got a real news scoop, send it to Matt Drudge — your server can handle a million hits, right?

Got more precise numbers? Gabe? Post 'em in the comments. The bigger publishers' reluctance to share on the record is exasperating.

Thompson: What's the possibility that Fark could be wrong? And if that happens, what can be done to redress Phillips' damaged reputation? Curtis: Our chances of being wrong are close to nil. Even with the information we currently have we're standing at 99.9%. Our data indicates that only one individual was using the dphillips Fark account for the entire time it's been in existence. That individual worked at Fox, used a Verizon Wireless card, and a Comcast cable modem account in the Memphis area.

It's either Phillips or he's been completely owned by someone else, who coincidentally has access to all of his websites, email accounts, PayPal information, work and home computers. That's a huge stretch.

Given that, it's odd that the Fox station has made no comment in this matter. Odd, especially, because according to Thompson, the station had promised a statement earlier this week, but none has materialized. At this point, some might say that Fox's silence is beginning to speak volumes.