The Social News battle between Reddit.com and Digg.com is nearly over – with a clear winner prevailing. A recent post from AdamSherk.com, studied traffic from 12 major magazines and web-only destinations from both Digg and Reddit.

The results? Reddit referrals rose 360% from 2009 to 2011 while Digg traffic dropped to 4.6 million in 2011 – just 14% of the referrals the site was sending 2 years ago.

Even with 45 million in funding, Digg continually found a way to alienate their community members, the lifeblood of their site. Digg has tried to fight back with features like Newsrooms, Digg Newswire and Social Reader but the results haven’t been favorable as traffic has continued to plummet.

One the other hand, Reddit has always listened to their audience focusing in on their requirements and needs. Instead of overloading the site with ads or promotions, Reddit has strove to be independent from parent corporations. Reddit also helped to cultivate niche groups with subreddits, small communities catered to specific topics.

For more information and full details see Adam Sherk’s publisher survey.