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Jakob Nielsen on Digg Users: "Notoriously Fickle"

useit.com — Usability guru Jakob Nielsen considers Digg traffic a 'low value' referrer: "People arriving through these sources are notoriously fickle and are probably not in your target audience. You should expect most of them to leave immediately, once they've satisfied their idle curiosity. Consider any value derived from Digg and its like as pure gravy."

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  • pleeker, on 06/30/2008, -1/+12Some would say that describes Jakob, as well. :-)
  • grumpyrain, on 07/01/2008, -0/+10Mr Nielson is mistaken indeed if he thinks that digg users actually read the linked articles.
  • swissgeek, on 06/30/2008, -0/+10Well, digging this is giving a bit more exposure to Jakob Nielsen, once again. I would never give my opinion on the internet if I had a website looking like his.
  • Sketchee, on 07/01/2008, -0/+7Don't take it personally. We sometimes find sites we come back to on Digg but often don't revisit that site or article after reading it.
  • bosssmiley, on 07/01/2008, -0/+6Digg, or bury? I'm so damn fickle I've no idea which it'll be...
  • jwserra, on 06/30/2008, -1/+6Aside from the Digg mention though, I think he did make a valid point about the value of bounce rates relative to the traffic sources.
  • str3ama, on 07/01/2008, -0/+5Digg is an absolutely great platform to get attention to new content or small time content that would otherwise not be given the time of day in other conventional mediums like television. The value in Digg as a way of getting attention to indie stuff is through the roof, but in terms of sites looking solely to capitalize off of the traffic it's close to useless - and in that way Nielsen is right. Most Digg users block ads, and are unlikely to stay on a page that tries to overly monetize the users experience on the site. So Neilsen is right in that the traffic is useless, but that only applies to those who determine success by a direct relation between the traffic they recieve and the amount of sales or money they immediately earn. Those people forget about the sheer value of the exposure they've gained, and the long-term effects of having their content spotlighted to thousands if not millions of web users - even if it only lasts for 15 minutes before being buried.
  • anagoge, on 07/01/2008, -0/+4This guy is so very wrong. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and OGC over Ron Paul while playing on my PS3 with one hand and my XBox 360 with the other and shouting about ***** the RIAA before proclaiming that's what she said in Soviet Russia.
  • inactive, on 07/01/2008, -0/+3Meh, I checked out his website for 30 seconds then left.
  • gmuslera, on 07/01/2008, -0/+2His focus isnt great graphics, flashy effects, or bumping ajax animations... is usability, delivering fast and straight to the point what you have to say. Probably the site design is part of the message he want to give, isnt like he didnt reviewed and recommended flashy site designs that had good usability in the past.

    And a message could be right or wrong, independly that the one that brings it have untied shoes. In fact, i think he is right there, not entirely sure about Digg in particular, but in general about random visitors linked from massive unrelated links connections, that you have hundreds of unique visitors from that sites dont mean that you are making your goal (if your goal goes beyond a single page view from most).
  • RealmDown, on 07/01/2008, -0/+2and the majority of the internet
  • dudup, on 07/02/2008, -0/+2Usually I don't like Jakob's articles because he's a champion in pointing his finger on bad examples, and *never* points to good practices and examples on how to do things the right way -- always easier to criticize...

    But I have to admit that he's quite right on this one: web marketers love to sell the idea of "spike traffic" as a measure of success, and this got to end.

    This "phenomenon" is something that bothers me a lot. To get an article on Digg's front page is the holy grail of search marketing, and because of this, we have tons of submitted content being thrown here.

    To our luck we have Kevin and the Digg crew fine tuning the algorithm and creating new features like the recommendation engine so we can face less web-makreting-prostitution-junk on Digg.
  • gavin422, on 07/02/2008, -0/+2I clicked on the link, but it didn't look interesting, so I left.
  • floort, on 07/01/2008, -0/+1This is actually quite true. The advertising value of Digg is very low by web publishing standards. The users here move very quickly, are focused on what they want and move on to the next thing rapidly. When was the last time you clicked on an ad on Digg?

    On second thought, we would destroy Digg by having everyone click on a ton of ads every time they came here. The fraud alone would cause all advertisers to flee.
  • wonderbriefs, on 07/01/2008, -0/+1I agree. If a site looks like it came straight outta '95 then I might not even take the time to read it. If it's an attractively designed site, I may poke around for a few minutes longer. If it's a great site, then I say a little prayer to the Digg gods for delivering such a wonderful bounty and I continue to waste my time on the new site.
  • tvanwyk, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1So... what's wrong with gravy?

    Poor word choice at the very least.
  • nevetssav, on 07/01/2008, -0/+1He's half right, half wrong:

    Digg traffic in general isn't going to dawdle, isn't _usually_ going to browse through your sources or related articles, and is going to give one hit on one subpage of a site - which is what he's talkign about. Think about it - how many of you read the article and closed it without looking at the homepage or anywhere else on the site? I just did...

    Where he's wrong is that we still exhibit message retention - some of the best on the web, I'd be willing to bet. If it's interesting enough to make it Digg front page, chances are someone will remember it.

    If your goal is message spread and retention, Digg/Redit + the like are amazing, but if for some reason you care about how many hits your "about us" section is getting, sure, go ahead and discount social media sites.
  • floejoe, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1Let's see someone try to make a flash site W3C, Section 504 compliant using flash. I do usability research for a company here in midwest and you have to take into account how blind users will use the site with screen readers, how otherwise disabled people will use the site, how will cognitively impaired people manage to navigate the site. Flash does not lend itself easily to ALT tags and other W3C, Section 504 requirements. So, yeah you got your fancy flash site but if you care about sales and customers you make that page compatible to as many people as possible rather than limiting yourself to healthy people between ages 14 and 25.

    The truth is, his site is not "beautiful" but I am not going around Web searching for Pixar quality graphics. I want my information to be presented in clear, concise manner that makes it easy to find and locate afterward.

    At the same time I do not want to be distracted with one page ads prior to viewing the given page, or banner ads that split the story or other stupid flash crap that pops up while reading a story whose "exit" button is timed to wait 10 seconds to show up prior to giving you a choice to exit the damn thing.
  • Angostura, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1Yahtzee probably would not agree.
  • theWrkncacnter, on 07/02/2008, -0/+1I don't know, I just found the plain white background really ugly. I guess I'm used to pages like digg with aesthetically pleasing layered effects. I share your dislike for flash pages -- this was much better than that.
  • snekse, on 07/01/2008, -0/+0Make sure to click another link once you get there :-)
  • theWrkncacnter, on 07/01/2008, -1/+1mmm, gravy...

    EDIT: For a web expert that's a pretty ugly page...
  • babychen, on 07/01/2008, -1/+1He is right, and he is wrong.

    Low value? By what standards? If you are comparing them to regular readers, or search engine referrals, obviously you are not going to monetize the hell out of them.

    OTOH, as a platform for new sites? Tick.
    High interest articles from popular sites? Tick.
    Revenue from CPM advertising? Tick.
    Links to your story from digg users, their blogs, and a pile of other social media sites? Tick.
    RSS subscribers? Much more than you would get if you sit on your ass. Tick.
    Sky high Alexa rankings if you can manage a few digg front pages? Tick bloody Tock.

    Neilsen obviously doesn't run his own site which needs traffic.
  • alphadesigner, on 06/30/2008, -3/+2The man is bitter! :)
  • Webwonk, on 07/01/2008, -6/+4Teach Jakob Nielsen a lesson: follow a link on Digg, then read more stories and click on some ads!

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