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179 Comments
- kevbryant, on 10/12/2007, -5/+121Those 'freeloaders' provide HUGE ad revenues. How many people contribute to ZDNet stories?
- Freshjive787, on 10/12/2007, -4/+84OK, i just registered. are you happy?
- FullMetalMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+64Can you imagine 8.5 million people all posting stories on Digg!
- RadiantBeing, on 10/12/2007, -4/+53Exactly. "Freeloaders" provide ad revenue, which is invested into website and hosting upgrades, which benefits both participants and "freeloaders." Everyone wins. How many people even care about ZDnet?
http://google.com/trends?q=digg%2Czdnet - dirtyfratboy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+50Look at her other article bashing Digg:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/?p=156
What a silly broad... look at the screenshot of Digg that she supplies... she's using IE, MSN Messenger, AND Norton.
Edit: AND MS Paint!!! :))))))) - baronvonrolo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+43Dunno, don't see anything wrong with not signing up, I felt like I didn't have anything interesting to say for about 2 months whilst reading digg, then when I decided my whitty retorts was upto par I enlisted.
Rather have loads of strangers then people who have to sign up, then end up just posting *****. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+48Considering the common attitude of digg users re. blocking advertisements (the whole "i'm so cool i block ads nobody needs money least of all a site I use all day" thing), thank ***** Digg has 8 million visitors a month that make the site sustainable.
- thegreatsam, on 10/12/2007, -3/+32Granted, I'm not a webmaster, and don't know much in that subject, but it would seem to me that 8.5 million visitors wouldn't necessarily work to 8.5 unique people. People could hit the site, read some, come back later, read some more, etc, and wouldn't it count for multiple hits? Or maybe they are like me that read at work, then check it when I get home, that would be at least 2 unique IP's a day, right?
- baltakatei, on 10/12/2007, -5/+29Not everyone has time to read and vote on potentially uninteresting articles in the Digg for Stories section.
- shinynew, on 10/12/2007, -2/+25I do my part by writeing usless comments.
- isny, on 10/12/2007, -1/+207.99999 million other friends? He must really throw the average of friends from 2.08 really far off.
- dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19Unproportional? Most definitely. But the vast majority who read this site are interested, in some way, in tech news, otherwise, they wouldn't be here. You can say that those core 2000 represent the here and there opinions of the rest of their 8,000,000 brethren.
Any statistician will tell you, that at 2000 random individuals, the margin of error for representation of a population (yes, even 8,000,000) is negligible. This is supposedly how Nielsen ratings work.
Exposure's exposure. It doesn't matter if people read a story or submit it, just so long as it gets out there. Those core 2000, I think, have been doing a pretty damn good job of being relatively ecclectic in their news submissions and selections.
P.S. I'm #2300... Doh! - qedx, on 01/11/2009, -3/+20300000 people submitting stories and digging is better than a 20 man editorial staff choosing what you read for you
- cerisaac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Users need an incentive to sign up. For me, it's the fun of posting stories and hitting the front page. It's great to see your ranking too. Digg needs to make it easier to make friends on here though. The one way friend thing is great and it's easy to converse via comments, but they need a way to message other users. An in-box for messages or an AJAX based messenger system would be cool. Digg 3.0 looks to add a few new friends features, but they need more. They also need to get cracking on the Buried Stories "container" they have been promising it's "signed in users".
- johndi, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17No, it makes me wonder how many ''freeloaders'' CNet and ZDnet have. Donna Bogatin has about 2 paragraph's of tripe inter-spaced with large blocks of quotes, and she makes a poor attempt at hiding that the first paragraph is mostly quotation as well. She made a similar nonsense attack on Wikipedia. Both look like an essay done by a 6th grader. So my question is what is her agenda? Would she prefer all media be editor selected like the publication she works for?
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14ahaha, That's great dirtyfratboy, looks like ZDnet is getting a bit antsy about Digg stealing all of their traffic.. ='(
- RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17It's a shame. I think every digger should take some time to leaf through the Digg Cloud and report a few stories as "lame" each day to help weed out the trash from getting to the front page...
- RyeBrye, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I bet there are 300,000 active users, and 8.2 million NSA agents spying on them.
- JoeCool1986, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14@thegreatsam
There's usually an easy way to just see how many unique IPs visited your site that day or month rather than hits, which is always way, way more. But with dynamic IPs these days that kinda screws that up (especially when talking over a month) so you still have a valid point... - venir, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Unfortunately a lot of digg users still post crap. I guess you gotta take the good with the bad.
- bitcloud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Wow, just like a real democracy!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Am I a literary freeloader if a read a newspaper???
- kazzyD, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11We're not talking everyone; we're talking less than 4 percent vote on both uninteresting and interesting articles...
- Machine, on 10/12/2007, -2/+111. There's a lot of inertia on the web. I have a photo on Flickr that's been looked at 20,000 times (yes...it's of a cute girl) and commented on 23 times. Either there's nothing much to say... or it takes too much effort to say it. I don't know which.
2. People are kind of scared off by the general snarkiness of sites like this. Let's face it... people mod down or are rude for political affiliation, having a contrary opinion, or just because they happen to be in a bad mood. Hell... I've done it myself. Digg makes it pretty easy to make people feel like losers because of unlimited individual comment modding. And who wants to register for abuse? - dawgma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9WTF is going on with this thread? So far many of you have said:
- Only 2000 people out of 304,000 registered users actully submit stories.
- That "8.5 million number" doesn't mean unique hits.
First of all, the submitter dude said 2000 STORIES per day are sumitted from amongst the entired registered group of 304,000 registered users. Not that 2000 USERS out of 304,000 are contibutors.
Just browse through diggs top-users section: http://digg.com/topusers/page25
and you will see that the top 1000 users have submitted, on average over 100 stories each. And amongst the top 10,000 users there is STILL active submissions occuring. And out of the top 100,000 users every 2nd or 3rd user has contibuted 3 or 4 stories. That's huge.
Also consider another important part of digg: commenting. How many users sign up to just write comments? Probably a LOT more than those who submit stories.
And if you look at the contributions as a *fraction* over registered users (2000/304,000) you get a small number.. but jesus christ, what other news site is posting on average 2000 articles a day? How much can you possibly READ?
ALSO all of this content is simply technology related. Just think of how many more submissions digg will be getting when v3 launches on Monday! I bet there will be 3x the content availble. right now there is only one "front page", by monday three will be half a dozen.
And finally, it was mentioned at diggs v3 launch party that the 8.5 million users were UNIQUE. Even if there is a number of people who log onto digg from different computers every month, there are still millionS of people visiting this site per month. and those people who aren't registered are at least providing ad revenue that supports the site. - merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10What a lame title. This has been true of EVERY net forum since BBSes and USENET. It's so common, we have a word for it: "Lurkers".
- JoeCool1986, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12I guess that makes sense, since I personally only have 0.0001 friends that I confide in.
- ZenKai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8The responses can and should be unlimited, though I wish there was a way of directly referring to another user without the need of the now-infamous @. I'd like to see who lists me as a friend too; I have people that I watch due to their regularly amusing comments, or similar taste in Diggs. Unfortunately, there's no way for them to know it.
- ta10n, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13You wanna tell your 7.999999 million other friends to do likewise?
- kevbryant, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11youre just missing the whole point. 96% of people don't WANT to contribute. so what? what the hell makes people who register at digg "elite"? you see all these little "slips" in your wording exposes your real point. you want people to think digg is some revolutionary social change. while it may be revolutionary in application, it is a NEWS SITE. its not turning into anything. its just getting more publicity and more casual users. stop being a little hippie blaming "the man" as if digg is some kind of commune.
and as to your ignorant comment about the "age old" problem of elitism- people choose not to work for a strict democracy. people are lazy. utopia exists in one place- books. if you think you're helping by giving exposure to thoughtless critiques like this, why don't you go protest at dead soldier's funerals. it's all just words, when it comes down to it, the only people listening are people stupid like me who just want to yell at you. - Justice101, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Yes. Imagine the Digg effect that would occur with 8 million users! It would become the scourge of the web, a plague so terrible websites would fear Digg. Stories would get put onto Digg out of spite.
- kodek, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10"I do my part by writeing usless comments."
And I do mine by writing sarcastic comments:
Nice spelling, there! - etruscan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9Visitors indicates unique visits. Hits indicates total, regardless of IP. Having said that, I'm not sure which they meant, but they did say "visitors", so...
- Strongoloid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Her story isn't that great, because it seems like she is missing the point of the site. People that actively submit stories, or even just Digg stories are contributing to the site. People that only read the stories are getting useful info (presumably), and are freeloading as much as I'm freeloading by reading her story. Interesting read, but I disagree with her completely.
- TheKillDoctor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6
I'm hoping for a filter to remove any post with the words Dupe or Lame also the phrases "how did this get on the front page?" and "why did I get modded down?". - spideyfanatic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6KazzyD - Well put. I admit I zeroed in on the 'freeloaders' comment, but completely failed to see the intended point. My apologies.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This reminds me a lot of America. A small portion of society takes action, the rest watches.
- templest, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"For Michael Arrington, %u201CDigg is looking more and more like the newspaper of the web.%u201D Given that the only %u201Cnews%u201D Digg actually provides is commentary on other%u2019s news, in what it calls %u201Cdigg user news" (your latest diggs, or someone else's), however, I hope Digg does not represent our newspapers of the future."
No *****, idiot. This isn't a news maker; it's a news aggregator.
It's like taking news articles, and setting up a place to discuss it.
Wait, no. Not "like", it *is*.
Like the commentary section of any newspaper, only updated right before
your eyes... idiot. - Strangers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Not just that, bit there're only a certain amount of articles that can be submitted. Imagine the amount of duplicates on the front page if every unique visitor submitted a story.
Anyway, I visit Digg up to ten times a day. Their figure of 8.5 million is bull. - Leonichol, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Hold on a sec... "The Social Web that is purported to be harnessing a “collective wisdom” of millions, is merely reflecting the opinions of a small number of self-selected active contributors"
Coming from a zdnet blog, that one person 'submits to'. Does anyone else see the flaw here? ¬¬ - Swampthing, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5After reading her "article," I understand why someone found the desire to invent the phrase and action: "bitch slap."
- rickross, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It's surprising that there are so many responses, yet nobody has really done the math with basic web metrics. Digg is getting 8M "visits" per month, not being used by 8M "users." It's evident that the real number of users is larger than the number of registered users, so let's say it is 500K, even though it is probably larger than that. If each of those users came to visit Digg just once every other day, then we'd be getting pretty close to the 8M "visits."
In short, there is NO WAY digg has 8M "people" using it - not anything even close. You guys know how often you visit digg, and it's a lot more than once every other day. When you're gone for more than 30-60 minutes, you start a new "visit" which is getting counted into that 8M. Also, a lot of people are registering in order to submit links, in hopes of getting traffic from the site if their story gets dugg.
Typical web metrics for a site like this would probably have 2.5-4.0 "pages per visit." The number is low because the site is effectively a place you come in order to find somewhere else to go. Lot's of people visit the front page and click away immediately. If the average was 4.0 "pages per visit" you'd be starting to estimate digg's actual traffic on a fairly reasonable basis.
Finally, since the majority of pages have only Google ads, and especially since these are not centered on high value keywords, the sites revenue is probably proportionate to average CPM revenues of all Google ad users. Lots of you use these ads, so you know what the average CPM earnings are, and they aren't that high - even with 30M+ pages per month to earn them with.
Isn't math fun? - saska, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Perhaps it's problematic, but more likely it's that many people just come to the front page to see what's new and are perfectly content to let the regular participants choose what they see there. After all, they've been trained by sites like /. to take what comes to them.
For that matter, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that /.'s numbers are surprisingly similar, Anonymous Cowards aside.
I'm curious how digg-like sites in other languages that cover more topics (like meneame.com in Spanish) stack up. - jcidiotashram, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4from slashdot FAQ
Basically, people with altogether far too much spare time sit and reload Slashdot, hoping that they will get the "First Post" in a discussion.....
sometimes these active contributors just have so much spare time, that decide what is a good story, and if you say anything different(for example say something good about microsoft, you get atleast -10 diggs). that makes digg or slashdot more like a news site for people with that attitude instead of a collective wisdom of millions - mc7winkie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I really wonder how much registration will occur after this article. I want some stats tommorow morning
- kevbryant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4who cares about web 2.0 or digg supposedly being social. the option is there for everyone. it IS a service as well for those who register, ie bookmarking for personal.sharing use. what friggin difference does it make? digg is a business with two purposes, to provide a desired service and to make money. they do both VERY well. I don't digg articles for the utopian purpose of making them hit the front page, i digg them because I want to bookmark them. the good ones rise to the top in many cases, and some of my diggs never get above 4. the point is, i use it how i want and digg recovers revenue from me because of the advertising. i think its a perfect trade. the more you use, the more revenue you generate for the company providing the service. this is the way good web services work.
"Freeloader" is derogatory. How dare anyone call someone a freeloader when all they're doing is reading news. This isn't some utopian effort, its a good business model. no one is trying to change the world here. - Justice101, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6What is your friend, an arm, leg, possibly a finger?
- kazzyD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The irony is that if this article was trying to "expose" Digg in any sort of negative way, the opposite effect is taking place with more diehard digg readers registering now to prove that they're not part of the 8 million freeloaders...
- waratah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Notice 'posting stories'. Doesn't get it springs to mind. I am posting a comment against a story, this does not count either. There are people that post their blog everytime they write on, some are really lame. Are they providing more to the community than me, I don't think so.
The article totally discounted my efforts going through Programming and linux/unix daily and voting on stories to get it to the front page and filtering the cruft, marking dups and lame articles. I appreciate the effort of the people that do the other sections bringing interesting articles to my attention.
I love the concept of digg and I rarely return to /. anymore from a daily reader to a digg convert in about 6 months. The question with answers is not really a digg thing, I miss that part of /. - Gatesophile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3When I first found digg, I was a "freeloader", and just came to find cool stories and such. I had nothing to say and therefore no need to comment, and the stories featured seemed fine enough that I didn't feel the need to add my digg. But more stories came along that I was REALLY interested in, and I felt the need to comment and join the community.
Calling people who come by just to read a "freeloader" is unneeded and derogatory. Once they either want to add a story or want to digg a story or want to comment on a story, they'll join. But I think, as long as they have nothing to say, and are fine with that, then let them be! -
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