When Digg first rolled out “Staff Picks” late last year, I was extremely excited. Here was an opportunity for Digg to use their front page real estate to highlight stories that were not getting the traction that they would be able to get on other social news sites like Reddit or StumbleUpon where quality matters more than promotion. I thought, “Now, let’s get some unique, viral material on the front page.”

I was wrong. It has proven to be a wasted ploy to try to get the attention of sites that not only don’t need the traffic but who consider Digg a minor blip on their radar (if they even consider them that anymore).

An average Digg front page gets sends around 3,700 visitors, while an average “sidebar” top news story gets around 14,300.  For the mainstream publications that Digg staff is promoting, it’s possible that these “spikes” in traffic will go completely unnoticed. As embarrassing as it is, Digg is irrelevant to sites like Telegraph and NYTimes.

The bottom two stories on the list, one for BoingBoing and one for Discovery Magazine, are legitimate picks, albeit to domains that may or may not notice the spike. When the top 3 on the list hit, nobody at any of the three publications will notice or care and are not the type of viral stories that need to be promoted by Digg staff ahead of more interesting articles, pictures, and videos that are flying passed the promotion threshold and not making it to the Top News page.

A story about the French cheating at chess? Really, Digg? That’s more viral than this? Or this? Or this? Or this?

Would you have selected the chess story if it wasn’t on NY Times? Of course not. Apparently, Digg staff believes that the NY Times needs 4,000 more visitors. Keep in mind – being a Staff Pick is all but a guarantee that if the story gets enough Diggs, it’s going to “pop.”

Changes are coming. The Matt Williams tour is rolling and seems to be picking up steam. These changes will likely include some redesign work, improved features, and a shift towards a stronger community. These will be great changes.

Until they roll out (and after they do), Digg MUST start paying attention to smaller publishers who will actually notice Digg bumps in traffic. Mainstream media has forgotten about Digg. The last story from a major publication that I interviewed for is scheduled to run today on Reuters about the death of Digg. I was complimentary, almost apologetic, and definitely hopeful in my comments, but it was hard. I so desperately want (need) Digg to succeed, but it almost felt like lying when I told the reporter that Digg had a bright future.

The clock is ticking. By the time Digg gets around to implementing their new identity, it’s possible that nobody outside of the hardcore Digg users will even care anymore.

Update: Shortly after this story was published, 3 of the Staff Picks were promoted to the front page simultaneously.

Update 2: … and the other 2 Staff Picks were promoted to the front page as well. Five for five. There was another story that hit in between – an NPR story. More mainstream. More “blah.”

Update 3: For anyone who believes that Digg is fairly picking out quality stories, just take a look at the most recent “Staff Pick“. It’s an AP story posted on CBS. Looks legit, right? If you search for “Pope” and open up stories that were submitted before it, you’ll see that there were several stories on the subject submitted ahead of it including 3 that were THE EXACT SAME STORY, VERBATIM, submitted ahead of CBS news. One even had the same headline, leaving an “_2″ at the end of the CBS version.

Over the last week there has been a lot of criticism aimed at Digg.com and some of the publisher accounts and celebrities who are getting their news to the Top News section of Digg ahead of higher-quality content. Leo Laporte has been at the center of much of the criticism as his Google Buzz updates and podcasts have flooded the front page over the last week.

Mr Laporte, I owe you some kudos.

Today, Laporte switched his feeds of podcasts and Google activity to his Delicious feed. While this may not seem as natural as manual submissions, it’s a huge step in the right direction as he must actively bookmark stories to his Delicious account for them to appear on the page.

In other words, he is manually vetting and selecting stories that he finds interesting rather than feeding everything that Leo likes about Leo.

The result? A digging and submitting pattern much closer and more manual than anything other major recommended accounts are doing. Did Leo Laporte just go from public enemy #2 (sorry, Reddit is still #1) to hopefully the trendsetter that other major accounts should follow? We’ll see soon enough.

If you’re a publisher who doesn’t hate the New Digg, chances are you’re already getting enough traffic to where a Digg front page is barely a blip on your radar. You’re being rewarded for being huge. Digg needs you more than you need Digg.

Sadly, that’s where Digg has gone.

The fact that Digg has been mostly a failure from a business perspective over the last 5 years prompted the dramatic and (almost) universally hated version 4. The idea was to put the power that Digg wields (for now) into the hands of the big publishers. If you generate tremendous traffic, you’re Digg’s new best friend and will have the best opportunity to be rewarded with more traffic.

It’s just business. It’s nothing personal. Digg was born based upon Kevin Rose’s desire to “give the power to the people.” Unfortunately for Digg, “the people” were AdBlock+ using cynics who scoff at attempts by websites to make money. It’s not an insult to the Digg community. It’s simply the truth.

Firefox and AdBlock+ are used on Digg more than most sites. Statistics show that over 50% of the Digg community is using Firefox and likely AdBlock+, a revenue-killer that has hurt tech sites for the last couple of years.

Believe it or not, it makes sense for Digg to appeal to major publishers. Digg has been the sender of traffic for years. Why not be the recipient? That was the premise.

The problem (which will hopefully be fixed this week) is that Digg users generally do not like their content to be auto-submitted. The idea of human curation is the premise upon which Digg was built. Things become popular because the right submitter found the content and the community liked it.

That isn’t the case with the new Digg.

The decision to appeal to the big publishers, to allow them to have publisher accounts and auto-submit their RSS feeds directly to Digg is, in itself, not a bad idea. Digg wants and needs that traffic and that mainstream adoption if it wants to survive in the competitive world of “getting social media attention.”

It was simply a business decision.

Unfortunately, it simply wasn’t handled well. Not only are certain accounts given huge advantages under the new rules, but it’s also likely that Digg is either blocking or greatly impairing individual non-publisher accounts from being able to hit the front page.

How We Know

There have been 3 non-publisher account stories that have hit the Top News section in the last few days. Three. One of them does not seem to be a true publisher account, but because they are submitting Engadget and getting dugg by that account, they have been able to get 4 front page stories.

More importantly, we asked.

After an exchange of rude tweets (on both ends, with the rudest of them all subsequently deleted by Rose) between me and Kevin Rose, we “made up” and he added me as a friend, posting this:

Ready to give Digg some feedback, I sent one DM:

A short while later I went back to Twitter to see the response. There was none. He had also removed me as a friend.

I thought it was a simple enough question. I wasn’t being rude. I didn’t necessarily expect the “secret sauce” to be DMd to me, but I also didn’t expect to be removed hours after being told that he “would love” my feedback.

Sour grapes aside, the reality of the situation is that Digg needed a change badly. They needed to appeal to mainstream media and get mass-adoption similar to what Twitter and Facebook have received. They needed to become something that even the tech-unsavvy crowd could embrace.

Twitter reached its tipping point in early 2009 thanks to adoption by major media and celebrities. Digg wanted the same thing and took the same approach (almost identically). It won’t work, however, because of 2 or 3 simple things and a couple of major issues.

The path to getting mainstream adoption, increased revenues, and an exponentially growing user base is something that I would LOVE to show Digg. I’ve been on the site daily for 3 years and have a history of advising web properties on the best way to maximize their traffic and profits.

Of course, I haven’t met the criteria that Rose requires from someone to accept their advice.

Rose deleted the tweet after a couple of hours, but thankfully Patrick Smith retweeted it to keep it “on record”.

Despite the jab, I would still be willing to consult. All he has to do is ask.

But of course, he won’t.

*** UPDATE: Digg is back up, now ***

After reports yesterday that Digg has ceased taking new registrants and speculation that Digg v4 was on its way, the site went down today with an error.

In past instances of planned an even unplanned outages, Digg has always put up a “be back soon” page with links to other sites. As of now, that is not the case. Instead, it’s showing an error that reads, “Http/1.1 Internal Server Error 11″.

A source at Digg confirmed yesterday that the New Digg would not be going live this weekend so it is likely some sort of unforeseen error associated with testing or migration.

We’re still waiting to hear from Digg via email, but they posted this to their community Twitter account:

We will update this post as more information is available.

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Read more Digg News on this blog.

Two sites, Reddit and Digg, went into emergency mode today as Reddit had technical difficulties preventing users from submitting new content to the site.

reddit is in “emergency read-only mode” right now. you won’t be able to log in. we’re sorry, and are working frantically to fix the problem.

Other social news sites such as Digg experienced a drop in the quality of content as one of the primary sources for content, Reddit, went into “read-only mode” making it challenging for many top Digg users to find content. The front page of Digg has not yet experienced the fallout as most of the top images today were from yesterday’s Reddit front page, but tomorrow is expected to be a low-Digg-count-day with Redditors unable to supply Digg users with content to submit.

Many Redditors were seen outside today. Some made their monthly trip to the grocery store, barber shops, and liquor stores early, while others simply experienced external weather conditions for the first time in ages.

“I’m glad this happened,” said one top Reddit user. “It gave me a chance visit my girlfriend at her house rather than having her come over to mine. I had no idea she was such a slob!”

No word from Reddit about what caused the outage or when it will be fixed, but updates will be posted as they come available. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Reddit appears to be up and working (somewhat) properly again as submits can (somewhat) be made again. Digg power users have ceased their search for fresh content and have returned to their favorite source.

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Read more social media satire on this blog.

Are big changes being rolled out at Digg? Is it a glitch? Why can’t we Digg stories?

These questions have been rolling over to me all afternoon and at this point, I have no idea what the answer is. Something glitchy is happening at Digg.com right now. Some stories need to be refreshed several times to get a valid “token” to digg it. Other times, pages load up and show that you’re logged off altogether.

An email to Digg support received a form reply about the item being looked into by the development team.

UPDATE: Submissions seem to be affected as well, as I have tried in vane 14 consecutive times, including attempting it after a restart and a clearing of the cookies, as has been suggested by Digg. This was the result:

With upcoming major changes and recent tweaks allowing newer accounts to hit more easily, it’s clear that something is going on. Whether or not this is a symptom of changes (in other words, if they’re going to be rolling out beta testing soon) is a mystery.

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Read more social media news on this blog.

Digg co-founder and CEO Jay Adelson stepped down after 5 years at the social news giant. He did this not too long after taking his company into the world of potential profitability. He did this after buying a $3 million house in the area.

Regardless of why he stepped down (and the speculations, accusations, and rumors are flying) one thing is clear.

He took the company as far as he could.

That is both a compliment and a knock against him. It’s a compliment in that he was able to lead the company through tough times and turmoil and not go the way of other social news “dodo birds”. He kept the site as the dominant leader in the world of traffic-driving social news aggregation despite competition from larger entities such as AOL, Google, and Yahoo.

It’s a knock because, while the site is heading in the right direction, the personality and star power of Kevin Rose is the best thing that can happen at this stage. With changes coming that will change the complexion of the site forever after 5 years of minor tweaks, the company needs a little charisma to help it hit the tipping point that so far as eluded Digg.

Kevin Rose is probably not the long term solution. He likely doesn’t want to be the long term solution. He lacks the business acumen to truly guide the company through the minefield that mainstream popularity will bring to the site if it becomes a household name, a brand that is spoken about on news channels the way Twitter made its splash last year.

While he isn’t the best choice to get through the minefield, he’s definitely the right person now to lead the company TO the minefield.

Digg needs the pizazz and personality that Rose brings to the table. They need someone who mingles with Hollywood stars and Playboy bunnies. They need blunt decisiveness, a trait that Adelson has stifled in Rose for the last couple of years.

The changes that will be happening to Digg are going to be massive. They will change the way that Digg interacts with its users and publishers. It will either make or break the website and therefore the company itself. There will be roadblocks, hiccups, and bashing from bloggers and journalists who like the status quo.

For Digg to break through and make it into the big leagues to mingle with Facebook, Twitter, and other powerhouse Web 2.0 sites, it will need to be aggressive through the leadership and public persona that only balls of steel and a pretty-boy face can supply.

Kevin Rose is the right man for the job. Once they get there, he can go back to having fun.

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Read more about Digg on this Social News Blog.

When a story hits the front page of Digg or Reddit, most of the time the users or site owners enjoy the influx of traffic it sends.

When this story hit the front page of Digg, the reaction was a bit different from the norm. Click it to see the statement in its full-size glory.

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Read more about social media on Social News Watch.

Following last week’s secret alpha testing at Digg headquarters, today’s front page went crazy.

In the last 10.5 hours, there have been over 150 stories that hit the front page. To put that into perspective, there are normally between 80-120 stories that hit the front page in a full day.

Last week, several Digg users were invited for NDA-protected alpha testing of potential changes to Digg. Today’s acceleration may be connected. More likely, it’s a tweak to the algorithm that will be corrected soon (if it isn’t already).

Digg moves quickly, so if this continues for another day or two, we’re probably looking at a glimpse of the future.

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Read more about social media on Social News Watch.

When I first saw the advertisement that Toyota had placed on Digg.com, I was skeptical. After all, Digg and most social news sites in general are not considered a “PR venue” to help in times of crisis.

After reviewing their landing page and seeing exactly how they have integrated, I have to say that I like it.

With the recent Toyota recalls putting a major blemish on the formerly-bulletproof automaker, they have begun an aggressive campaign to regain the trust of their loyal consumers.

The Toyota landing page rests on the Digg.com domain and highlights stories broken down into three categories:

1. About the Recall
2. Toyota Responds
3. Featured Toyota Articles

Stories that are posted to Digg.com are classified under these categories and presented for people to refer to, Digg, or bury the stories. There are no instructions, no prompting, just a place to learn more. That part, I like.

The recent Digg Dialogue with Toyota US President Jim Lentz is also on the page, again a plus and a good move.

The only part I don’t like is not having a contact stream. It would have been nice for Digg users to leave comments directly for Toyota. While this may seem dangerous, it appeals to the open form of communication that Toyota has adopted over the last week. They have issues, and they’re willing to talk through them. Not a huge deal, as there are plenty of ways to contact Toyota, but that would have been a nice addition to the landing page.

Digging deeper, you’ll see an ad on the landing page that goes to Toyota.com itself, specifically to another landing page that has a way to get all of the information anyone would need regarding the recall. The look and feel of the page is nicely structured for Web 2.0 and demonstrates a change in the way the company engages with its customers. It’s a shame that it had to come at this time based upon a need rather than before when it could have been used for marketing, but better late than never.

I look forward to seeing what Toyota is going to do next. This is their darkest hour, and despite a few miscues in the beginning, they’re coming on strong with these recent additions to their PR machine.

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Read more about social news on this blog.