As regular readers know, we’re writing this book about social media marketing. I’m currently working on the chapter on social news and bookmarking. As part of my research, I’m gathering some real-world numbers about Digg, and just how big the Digg Effect actually is.
To that end, I’m running a survey. Has your site ever been ‘Dugg’? That is, has it ever been featured on the front page of Digg, and suffered a torrent of visitors as a result?
If so, please consider taking three minutes and filling out this very short survey.
Site Crashes Welcome
It requires you to look in your stats program (Google Analytics or whatever), and determine just how many visitors arrived from Digg on the day you were Dugg. I’m also asking for the URL of the page on your site that was Dugg, to confirm each entry. If you don’t know how to do this, send me an email and I’ll explain.
As an example, Get a First Life was Dugg on January 21, 2007 and received 10,829 visitors from Digg.
I plan to publish the results (though not your name or email address, obviously) on this site and possibly in the book. So you’re disclosing this data point for the world to see.
It’s okay if your site crashed–I’m interested in how many visitors you actually captured and reported in Google Analytics or your stats program of choice.
UPDATE: I’m only going to accept five submissions per website, to ensure one particular topic or site doesn’t bias the results too much.
And There’s a Prize
As an enticement, one lucky submitter will receive one of the brand-new iPod Shuffles I’ve got kicking around the house. They’ve become a common speaker gift, so I’ve got two or three of them at the moment. I probably won’t get more than 20 or 30 submissions, so your odds of winning are excellent.
If you don’t want the Shuffle, I’ll give $50 to the charity of your choice.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
I crashed like a madwoman the day I got Dugg, and I still get traffic from that entry to this day:
http://digg.com/tech_news/How_not_to_be_an_asshole_or_encourage_assholism_on_the_net
http://www.megfowler.com/2006/12/13/how-not-to-be-an-asshole-or-encourage-assholism-on-the-internet-a-handy-guide
It clocked past a thousand diggs and was on the front page for about five or so hours? I might be wrong about that. But it happened 150 days ago today.:)
However, the article was more than a year old, and not likely something I’d even write today.:)
All told, I got in excess of 25K before and around my site crashing that day.
Anyway, that day I got
And you can tell I left my previous comment in the wee hours — nice unfinished sentence and overuse of the word “day”.
Cool idea, Darren.
I look forward to seeing the results.
(unfortunately, I don’t have any good Digg data to share).
I’m excited to see the final data once it is put together.
I can’t speak for digg, but if you want any data from smaller social communities, such as http://www.sphinn.com (which uses a digg style site for search related information), just let me know. A large portion of SEM Insights traffic comes from articles in Sphinn (and the community is awesome).
Cheers,
Mike
No, my site has never been Dugg to the front page, but I don’t find that surprising. My content is fairly regional in nature, and that which isn’t regional (the underground music) doesn’t match psychographics with the typical Digg user.
news + tech = digg
Everything else appears to be tertiary.
My site has not been dugg to the front page either. StumbleUpon might be another story though! lol
Well, my particular site didn’t get the Dugg, but my content did! Earlier this week, a photo my girlfriend and I took on vacation in Vancouver (circa 2002 before we moved here) ended up as one of Digg’s Top Stories.
Thing was, someone picked it up off our Flickr page or one of my old galleries, cropped the image, and posted it elsewhere, and *that* link was what was posted on Digg. I was kinda surprised to see it when I pulled up Digg that morning.
Here’s the original photo on my Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dr_fyzziks/1734618602/
and here’s the Digg story:
http://digg.com/comedy/Please_Help_Find_Steve