Digg Shrugs, Confuses; Reddit Ramps Up

Today was the first day without a Digg button featured on the site, and, of course, Digg traffic went through the roof thanks to this post.  Wait.  What?  How?  You’re kidding?

No, not kidding, and I don’t really get it.  However, it points to the absolutely baffling structure within Digg — it’s not what you Digg, it’s who Diggs you. Buttons don’t matter.

Reddit also took a step up.  And that makes sense.  I hope it continues.

So what’s the lesson?  Seems to be to promote what you can promote but don’t clutter things up with what you can’t.  We have a wildly cluttered site, and we need to trim it down.  Reddit stays, Twitter stays, Facebook stays … we’ll see about StumbleUpon.  Interestingly, of the 4 share buttons that were present when I started, all but StumbleUpon have been scrapped (anybody actually ever use Del.icio.us?).

Reddit has also been good to my blog recently — thanks to the Digg is Dead post.  ArtDamage, yes, that was indeed me that posted it.  I am a karma whore.  That post has had more views that the Blake Lively post.  Nerds triumph again.