Digg Recommendation Engine Enlarges the Gap between the Top Submitters and the Other Millions of Users

A Digg Analysis post on popFAIL reveals an alarming “widening of the gap” between the top users and the middle users. In the report, an analysis was done of the last 500 stories to reach the front page of Digg, a period that encompasses the lifespan of the Digg Recommendation Engine. The results are probably not what Digg had in mind.

31.4% of the stories that have hit the front page of Digg were submitted by 10 users.

Let me repeat.

Digg, the most visited social news voting site on the Internet with 26 million monthly visits has nearly one-third of its front page content submitted by 10 people.

Digg Front Page

Let’s take it a step further. Checking the current statistics, it shows that 50.6% of the front page was submitted by 28 users.

I would repeat, but it makes me ill to think about it.

The real problem has very little to do with the users. The major flaw in the recommendation engine as it stands (and I’m sure it will be fixed eventually) is that to get recommendations, you need to get dugg. The more you get dugg, the more you get recommended, which means that you’ll get more diggs, which leads to more recommendations…

You get the picture.

The Digg button above links to the original popfail story. You can always read more about Digg on this social news blog.

Please buy me a cup of coffee.

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July 5, 2008 | Filed Under Social News Sites, digg, social media 

Comments

5 Responses to “Digg Recommendation Engine Enlarges the Gap between the Top Submitters and the Other Millions of Users”

  1. Tomboys on July 5th, 2008 22:39

    Wow! You just made this loud and clear. Now I know what’s going on.

  2. Ivan Brezak Brkan on July 6th, 2008 10:12

    This could get on the Digg homepage. ;) The title should have been along the lines “Over 30% of Digg Frontpage Articles - Submitted by only 10 People?!”

    Nice article.

  3. casinomy on July 15th, 2008 14:40

    ??? ????????????, ????? ? ???????? ?????? ??? ?????? ???????. ??? ?? ”??????????????” ??????? ???? ? ???????, ? ???????????? ?? ??????????? ???? (???? ? ????????????? ??????). ?????????????? ??? ???????? ????????? ?? ?????????? ????? ???????? ? ?????.

  4. Newsflash: Relevent Social Media News and Resources for Entrepreneurs « BusinessCast Podcast on July 31st, 2008 17:53

    […] Digg. A very cool idea. Imagine you’re surfing the web and you find a site or story that you’re genuinely interested in. How exciting would it be to be able to ‘flag it’ so that other people could see it and get excited about it too? Now, imagine that functionality promoting your product, service, newsflash or cause. There’s the potential power of Digg. The potential is so vast in fact that Google almost invested $200 million dollars to purchase Digg. But, according to a recent article, Digg - a ‘poster child’ for social media may be less social as most everyone thought: Digg - One Third of the Most Successful Social Media Site is Actually Dictated by Only 10 People. […]

  5. LJ Jones on September 9th, 2008 7:49

    Most social bookmarking and social news sites have this problem to some degree or another. The truth is the more active users submit most of the content, while the majority of people submit no content at all and are merely readers . But to have 10 people post 30% of the content that makes it to the front page is extreme. It will be interesting to see what Digg does to change this.

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