The Titans of Digg

It’s hard to imagine in today’s social media world that a website with millions of viewers per month could be dominated by a couple hundred people that didn’t work for the company. The Digg “Power Users” might not have been paid by Digg, but it was volunteer work that equated to a full time job for many.

There were two things that were required to become a Digg power user. First and foremost, you had to know how to game the system. This sounds worse than it really is. The Digg algorithm was relatively complex and with thousands of stories submitted daily, trying to get attention to any one at any given point was impossible without knowing how to play the game.

It wasn’t hacking. It didn’t require special insider knowledge. No animal sacrifices were used. The “gaming” of the Digg system meant that you had to get the attention of people by Digging a lot of their content. When you Dugg their content, many of them would Digg your content. Once you got to a tipping point of receiving enough “auto-Diggs” from those who were also trying to game the system, the second part of the equation came into play. You had to submit the right content.

This was the hard part. The Digg algorithm favored certain sites. Cracked, XKCD, The Big Picture, APOD — these were sites that, once submitted by a Power User, had a great chance of reaching the front page regardless of the quality of the story. They posted on a regular schedule and Digg Power Users would wait, refreshing the page constantly in hopes of being the submitter, knowing that there were several others trying to submit it at the same time. Much like sperm trying to penetrate an egg, once one got in, the others were locked out.

Other sites such as ArsTechnica, Wired, TorrentFreak, and TIME could hit the front page regularly because the combination of bulk and content made them a favorite of Power Users. These and others were the go-to sites, the ones that were plugged into feedreaders that updated every few seconds and alerted the Power Users when a new story was ready for their consideration. While there wasn’t as big of a rush on these ones, a Power User would often have to decide in seconds whether or not the story was worth submitting.

At the height of Digg prior to the launch of Version 4 in August, 2010, there were about 70 consistent Power Users who hit the front page regularly and another 200 who could get more than 2 or 3 on the front page in a given month. Tens of thousands of stories were submitted daily. Hundreds of thousands of users tried to get their stories to the front page every month. The Power Users had the market cornered.

This upset parts of the community. It is partially to blame for why Digg was never sold during the height of its reign over social news. The love-hate relationship between Digg staff and the Power Users was palpable at times, particularly when changes were made that hurt the Power Users. It was a formula that had all of the workings of utter failure except for one glaring fact…

It was working.