So many moons ago, I added Digg.com and Reddit.com button’s to my site as a way to help get traffic. Well, after having the buttons on my site for a bit, and having articles submitted to both Digg and Reddit, I have discovered an interesting pattern.



But first, a little background. If you don’t already know, Digg and Reddit are basically Link submission sites. People submit links to things they think are fun/good/interesting/odd/whatever to Digg and Reddit. Once submitted the Digg or Reddit users can look at the link and vote it up, or down depending on if they like it or not.

If you want to know more about it, you can go to their sites and read more about how it works and such.

So, while using Digg and Reddit to help get traffic to my site, I noticed something interesting.

Digg.com is crap. Yeah, I said it. DIGG IS CRAP. Deal with it.

Looking at the logs to my site, articles I submit to Digg and Reddit at the same time, generate very different results. For example, my post about Mowing.

Number of people who visited from Digg.com? One. Maybe.

Number of people who visited from Reddit.com? OVER 2,000!

That’s just one example. Most of what I submit to Reddit does not get up voted beyond 1 or 2 points. And that’s fine, that means my content is not as interesting to some people as I would like. But the same things submitted to Digg get between ZERO and TWO visitors.

To me it appears Digg may be suffering from what I fundamentally call the “High School Problem.”

The “High School Problem” is basically a popularity contest. The Super-Submitters, and popular sites and blogs are the ones that get Digged up and payed attention too. Some of my entries that I have submitted to Digg have received NO hits referred from Digg.com at all. It’s like the ‘loser’ in high school who walks through the halls being totally ignored because he isn’t a football player, or doesn’t have a new car bought by his parents like all the popular kids.

Where in contrast, Reddit.com is like College. I submit my posts to Reddit and get at least a few hits, and usually get down voted and we move on. Like in college where it doesn’t matter if you are popular or not, people will at least give you the chance to say what you have to say. Some will appreciate your thoughts, and originality, some won’t. But at least they don’t just ignore people because they aren’t part of the ‘in’ crowd.

Fun Fact: Hitler used to ignore updates from his unpopular officers that didn’t get Panzers from their parents.

I know there are other link type sites like Digg and Reddit out there, but I haven’t really used any of them so I cannot really say anything about things like StumbleUpon or whatever.