The Digg Effect v4
Digg, Social Media | 19 Oct 2010The Digg Effect – n. The power of one social bookmarking site to pummel your servers with a burst of inbound traffic. Formerly the Slashdot Effect.
Digg v4 launched at the end of August with a new look, new features and a lot of criticism. There’s been talk of how Digg’s traffic is down overall, but so far there have been only anecdotal reports of how much traffic the new version is sending publishers.
That’s where we come in.
We spoke with editors at eight different websites that receive steady traffic from Digg. They gave us hard data on Digg referrals for four separate months: the September following the launch of v4, and the July, May and March preceding it. We didn’t want to get bogged down with stories that quickly got buried off the front page, so we pulled out any with less than 1,000 referrals. That left us with 321 front page stories.
So what’s a Digg front page story bring these days?
You can get a better look at the numbers below, but yes, you’re reading that graph correctly. Referrals are down. A story on the front page of v3 brought somewhere over 12K referrals on average. With v4, you’re looking at 7K.
Is 7,000 referrals worth scoffing at? Heck no. Most publishers would love that exposure. And Digg still boasts 23 million unique visitors a month. But the dampening of the Digg Effect does signal the need for the social bookmarking service to keep wooing its users back. New CEO Matt Williams says a lot of the older features are being reinstated, including the bury button, and we’re looking forward to seeing what develops.
They'll get that axle fixed soon enough, we're sure...
The Digg Effect v4
| Month | Average Referrals | Median Referrals |
|---|---|---|
| March 2010 | 12,613 | 8,370 |
| May 2010 | 13,994 | 9,842 |
| July 2010 | 12,739 | 8,214 |
| September 2010 | 7,256 | 5,250 |
Astrodome, huh? Is that place still standing? I haven’t been there since 1983. It was a great building.
Yessir. They keep trying to come up with ideas to save it — make it a hotel, make it a casino, etc — but last I heard it’s in limbo.
Personally! I like the new Digg very much! I like the interface the AJAX they incorporated, but the only thing I miss in newer version is the related or similar stories while submitting my link!
When you mention “referrals”, can you clarify if you mean visits directly from Digg’s website, or views overall for a particular page on a website?
I’m asking because Digg seems to be responsible for various videos and pics going viral. Something gets noticed on Digg, and then ends up on message boards and blogs. A Youtube video may get 10k clickthroughs on Digg’s website, but a few hundred thousand if visitors to Digg spread a direct link on other websites. Seems like a drop in direct referrals doesn’t necessarily mean a page on your site will be any less viral in the long run.
Great question. In this case “referrals” are visits directly from Digg to each website. The extra visits that come from the content being passed around the web aren’t part of the averages above.
I sure hope DiGG v4 revives itself, and bring back those nice old school features. Since the change my digg traffic went to a straight 0.
Bring back the Digg of 2007.
I to add issues with the traffic from digg. That is why I looked elsewhere!
Personally I love the new approach to Digg. It is now set up so a new person entering the landscape has a chance for traffic and visibility. Prior to the new site you had to be a power user to really benefit from anything on the site and now with the ability to follow others and see who is following I think it gives other users a fair chance for visibility.