I’m ranked within the top 200 submitters to digg. I have gotten over 50 stories to the front, some from my sites, most from random sites on the web.

Digg was originally built to spread news between users. It has evolved into a site that can be very useful to a web marketer or blogger, or very wasteful for a random site.

I like to use it for LinkBaiting, which is very taboo on digg. But if you know what you’re doing, it’s absolutely worth it. If you get one worthwhile story to the front page of digg, you will get TONS of links pointing to that specific article. This will be discovered by Google and you will quickly start to climb in rankings for every keyphrase you rank for.

So, while the traffic is pretty much useless, and sometimes just annoying, it’s the links that are valuable. The links & better google-rankings is why digg is still a very valuable tool.

Great article! I wish it wasn’t already submitted, Because I think I could take this to the front!

I think all the talk about marketing on these sites is a joke and you might as well go and throw your money right down the toilet because… that’s where it will end up eventually. The problem marketing to people via SM is that the buyer isn’t in the buying mode so… ROI sucks and the time invested is significant. Digg and Facebook are for amateurs the same guys who were spamming classifieds back in 97!

The only one I see as valuable to the buying process is YouTube where we’ve seen great conversion increases from displaying videos on product pages. IMO, when people display your video that is a better back link then some SM news site.

I have started to use del.ico.us as an alternative search engine to google. The way that I see it every time someone bookmarks a page on a social bookmarking system they are effecively voting on that page a relevant content.

It is fairly easy to trick Google. It is much harder to trick a social bookmarking site.

(here’s the article: http://aldebaranwebdesign.com/blog/stumbleupon-my-experiment-to-increase-website-traffic-using-stumbleuponcom/)

And it’s also interesting that you don’t even recommend adding “Digg” buttons at all…wow.

In other words, you cleverly sidestepped even addressing Facebook in your context of what makes Digg a touch sell. That is, “an audience that has no money to spend, wants everything for free, and has an attention span of a few seconds.” That’s not too far off from describing Facebook to a certain degree.

The investment type may be different (equity vs. acquisition) but interestingly enough, Facebook is in the same boat, in that it’s a social site relying on advertising. And while I think the attention span of Facebook users is probably much higher than that of Digg users, the “money to spend” and “want everything for free” factors are likely not that different across the two sites.

But let’s assume for a second that I’m way off the mark and that the equity vs. acquisition point of yours makes all of what I said above irrelevant… I’d be curious, in this scenario, if you were to analyze Digg from an equity viewpoint, if the $300M would be more palatable? Let’s say, for example, a $30M investment for 10%?

Putting it in this framework, what makes Facebook 50x more valuable than Digg (or many more times more valuable, really, since the $15 billion Facebook valuation is real and the $300M Digg valuation is apparently high)? Because using your advertising criteria (which seems most relevant), I’m not seeing why Facebook is so much better (it is better, but not to the degree that these numbers show, in my opinion).

Acquisitions are “worth” more or less to each acquirer based on what they can do with the company to leverage their existing assets. This is why I said it will take a unique acquirer to be able to leverage the “value” of Digg. I don’t see much value in Digg as a user, and have a hard time seeing where the value/leverage would be for an acquirer.

From an advertising point of view Digg is a tough sell. They attract an audience that has no money to spend, wants everything for free, and has an attention span of a few seconds.

Digg certainly has value for some unique acquirer, but $300 million?

Don’t fall into the relative worth trap. You know…Google is worth $250 billion, so my company is worth $2.5 billion. That reminds me of a story from my childhood in Maine. “I’ll trade you two of my $50K cats for your $100K dog.” That kind of “logic” works until the bubble bursts…then it looks silly.

Don

I just can’t help but point out the irony of what you say here juxtaposed with the Microsoft Facebook valuation… You probably had little to do with that (or maybe you did? I have no idea).

But it’s interesting for me to see a $300M Digg valuation being considered so far fetched after a $15 billion Facebook valuation (which to me is even more far fetched, and it’s the reality one!).

That being said, today it’s only useful if you fit into their college/tech/liberal demographic. Personally, I used it for a short time, but found the articles becoming increasingly irrelevant … not exactly the scenario I laid out above.

I have made the front page or HOT page on Digg 4 or 5 times and every time it has been a surprise to me. The topics have been random, but the traffic is an avalanche.

Digg traffic doesn’t return. That big spike in traffic lasts for about 24 hours and they never return. They stay on your site for 60 seconds…2 minutes max…and they are gone. I agree that Digg traffic has no commercial value for most blogs or web sites.

Given all this, how can anyone thin Digg might be worth $300 million in an acquisition? It would take a very unique buyer to be able to leverage the value of Digg into anything close to that number.

Don Dodge

http://www.louisgray.com/live/2007/04/googles-earth-day-logo-makes-splash.html

The most insightful posts you and I will have will not be interesting to the common Digg user, who typically wants a quick video, picture, top ten list or rant against “the establishment”.