Digg Redoes How Articles Get Promoted

Digg is changing the way it elevates popularity of it’s entries. This is proving quite controversial!

Digg overhauls its definition of ‘popular’ articles

“The social networking and news sharing site has always kept the precise details of its popularity algorithms a secret. But today, Digg did announce the nature of a change which could alter the entire meaning and purpose of the site. Up to now, the way any online news publisher got one of its articles publicized through the Digg social service is by hoping enough people were interested in it to vote in favor of moving it up the Digg scale — of giving it enough ‘Diggs.’ Starting today, however, that changes: The secret to a heavy publicity on the Digg service won’t be having enough people, but having the right kind of people. And how Digg determines the right kind has already become a subject of controversy among its community. This morning, Digg founder and chief architect Kevin Rose unveiled the key to its new popularity algorithm. Described as involving ‘diversity,’ it apparently involves an unusual way of determining whether recommending members are diverse enough from one another: by ascertaining just how much they don’t get along with one another. ‘One of the keys to getting a story promoted is diversity in Digging activity,’ reads a statement Rose posted to his corporate blog yesterday evening, whose text was also added to the site’s FAQ. ‘When the algorithm gets the diversity it needs, it will promote a story from the Upcoming section to the home page. This way, the system knows a large variety of people will be into the story.'”

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