Gawker: valleywag, gaming the system

On Internet, Digg Games You

Owen Thomas — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:26:15 EST

Gasp! Village Voice Media abuses Digg. But ineffectively.

Websites race to take credit for Obama victory

Owen Thomas — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:40:00 EST

Forget hacking voting machines; our media brethren are, at this moment, most concerned with gaming Digg to get out the vote for their stories about Barack Obama's apparent victory in the electoral college. (Our sister site Gawker was late to the game; its headline submission for "Obama Wins!" was seventh in line, judging by the URL.) Taking the lead: "Digg This If You Voted for Obama!" with more than 20,000 votes. It points to a CNN.com story. New media serves merely to confirm the victory of old media.

5 reasons to Digg this article now

Owen Thomas — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:40:00 EDT

In "King of Digg," GangstaDawg4Life takes on FroggietheDestroyer! This is the future of media. Kevin Rose conceived Digg, his so-called social news site, as an experiment in democratizing the consumption of news. Rose's formula: Get rid of middleman editors. Replace them with the wisdom of crowds. Or so he says. But while he was starting Digg, Rose was a TV host on G4TV, the cable channel about videogames. That's the secret of Digg's success: It's a videogame. An old-school journalist would wonder: "Why do they keep score on individual submissions? Doesn't that reveal which of your stories were believed most, or at least read most? Damn, there goes my Pulitzer!" But now, Rose and company are fighting with Digg's most active users, trying to blunt their success. Here are five reasons — from a 13-year veteran of MSM formulas — why Digg's management should hug their top Diggers even tighter.

They like articles about Digg. That's not a crime. By regularly promoting articles about Digg to its homepage, the site's users provide readers a dashboard-like meter on Digg's importance. Newspapers do this all the time: "Let's spill some dirt on ourselves. We'll look more credible." I mentioned King of Digg, a video submitted to the site. In theory, that will get me onto Digg's home page. In reality, it could just as well get me buried.
They are fiercely loyal. In "King of Digg," GangstaDawg4Life slags Fark.com, another popular news-discussion site. It's like Bill O'Reilly versus the New York Times Everyone loves a war! CNN would kill for that kind of loyalty. Plus it has the added bonus of allowing commenters to talk about Fark.
They keep odd hours. Top Diggers' erratic sleep schedules, as shown in "King of Digg," keep Rose from having to hire an overnight staff to post breaking news stories and other fresh items for an audience that may be awake, alert and hungry for distraction anytime. Veteran newsmen call this Always On journalism. We call it normal.
They're really, really into each other. A social network is only as strong as its weakest links. Show me a Facebook user who obsesses on his friends as much as Digg's users do MrBabyman.
They like articles with numbers in the headline. I got this from MIT dropout Paul Boutin. Reading articles with numbers in the headline makes Boutin feel like he's doing math. Kill your blog, Paul, and get back to work.

Why lies win online

Owen Thomas — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:00:00 EDT

Three's a trend, right? Take the false report of Steve Jobs's heart attack, spread by a CNN website and Digg; a six-year-old report of United Airlines' bankruptcy, resuscitated by Google News; and a silly story about Oprah and Sarah Palin. And what do you get? Lies, lies, lies on the Internet! Some Web operations are promising to factcheck Wednesday's presidential debate in real time. Right! I ran a magazine's factchecking operation, and much to my fellow editors' chagrin, a thorough vetting of the accuracy of a report does not happen instantly. Passing on some concocted tale that confirms your worldview? That takes no time, or thought, at all. All the Internet does is speed things up a little. (Illustration via The Second Road)

Viral-video dancer on the lazy way to become a star

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:20:00 EDT

Matt Harding, the guy who travels around the world taking videos of people dancing with him, knows how to work the system without doing much work. First, he got Stride gum to sponsor his video-making trip around the world. Since the result went viral, he's milked his fame on the speaking circuit. First he made yet another "dancing" video at Yahoo's Sunnyvale headquarters. Last week, he spoke at nerdy-person gathering Gnomedex in Seattle. Watch his talk and learn all about how much — or rather, how little — work went into the popular "Dancing" video. Or, skip to 4 minutes in if all you're interested in is yet another crowd of people doing Harding's funny-looking jig.

Look, it's Katie Couric in a Digg T-shirt — what?

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:40:00 EDT

CBS hired anchor Katie Couric to turn return its news division to ratings glory. Didn't happen. So like any good media organization in the 21st century, CBS has resorted to good old-fashioned Diggbaiting. Below a video of Couric in her office, sporting a Digg T-shirt and reading a script — "Oh, hi everybody! Nice to see you. Welcome to CBS News. Sorry about my mess." Putting a woman in well-cut Digg clothing is a trick as old as the site of course. Two years ago alt-porn star Posh Suicide did the same thing, drawing 2,828 Diggs. Couric has a ways to go to catch up: Her video is sitting at a meager 40 votes after 18 hours. But then, we'd already discovered that Digg users aren't quite the slobbering teenage boys spammers assume they are.

In which we fall for a hip-hop star's Apple-baiting ploy

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:00:00 EDT

First Bare Naked Ladies, then Weezer, and now a hip-hop performer calling himself AC have marketed themselves by parodying Internet memes. AC takes on Apple's "New Soul" commercial in the video below. And since three's a trend, we feel obliged to report on it, allowing us to post the video and let it work its magic. Enjoy AC's "New Soul," directed by Steven Tapia during your lunch hour and remember, you're a sucker for these tactics too.

10 Digg stories not even Kevin Rose could make popular

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:00:00 EDT

Of the 377 stories Digg founder Kevin Rose has submitted to his social news site, 367 went to the site's front page. When I read this, all I could think was: God, those 10 that didn't make it must have really sucked. Maybe he should have pretended to be a hot girl? We thought we'd help the ~~spammers~~ "social media marketers" out by listing Kevin Rose's failed submissions below. If these stories couldn't hit the front page, with Rose's hordes of mancrushing fanboys clicking on them,then they're the exact kind of story our Digg-optimizing friends shouldn't even bother with. We'll tell you why.

You don't ask questions on Digg. You give emotional answers. Next time, Kevin, submit this one as: How Obama already beat Clinton!

A commenter on this submission wrote: "Clinton rules" and got buried 11 times. On Digg, only Obama rules.

Rose submitted this news after someone else already had. Don't do that.

Plastic bags were banned "one year ago this week"? That's too long ago for Digg users to care.

Again with the questions. Next time, write this headline as: "How Diet Coke makes you fat."

Microsoft gets you no where on Digg, unless somebody's throwing eggs at Steve Ballmer. Zune was a sponsor at a Digg's last meetup in New York and they couldn't give away T-shirts.

This Digg headline is far too wordy. Put down the thesaurus and just use the word "stunning."

A common mistake made with Digg submissions is that people think anybody outside of the Bay area knows who people like Mike Arrington, Marc Andreessen, Jeff Bezos and Paul Graham are.

As one commenter notes: "maybe there aren't a lotta diggs cuz this story sucks!"

The top comment; "You really don't care about duping other submissions, do you, Mr. Rose?" You can't submit a story to Digg that's already hit the front page and expect it to hit the front page. Not even if you're Kevin Rose. Only if you're Mr. BabyMan.

(Photo by mariachily)