In a previous post, I stressed on how you can find some very valuable information in comments, especially on big social media sites. Well, If you know what to look for, reading comments can give you free access to advice from actual working professionals. I consider this priceless information, don’t you?

I’m going to use Digg.com as an example because it’s my favorite, but this applies to any other social site with discussion/commenting. There are well over half a MILLION registered users on Digg. I think right now it’s around 800,000, but the point is that there are a huge number of people visiting the site. The whole concept of the social media structure is that the content is voted on by the users and therefore the best content rises to the top. The large number of voters gives this theory a lot more credibility than say, a site with 100 users voting.

To begin, let me say that my opinion as to why people disagree so violently on wether or not the “best” content actually hits the front page, is simple. . . They are looking at the front page.

800,000 users will obviously never agree what is the “best” content, and the front page is a melting pot of the sub-categories. This is why, as a Professional Graphic and Web Designer, I tend to hover around the “Design” category. I find the stories I’m most interested in easier this way, and I’m sure I’m not alone. Working Professionals are part of that 800,000 and there are some good reasons why a professional would use a site like Digg. Personally, I like to keep up to date with new software releases, which diggers are VERY good at finding. I also use Digg to get access to stories that involve web design hints or design inspiration, as well as tutorials and freebies. So, in a nutshell, using Digg helps me become a better designer ( I wish I could convince my boss of this! ) by allowing me to find the best (and newest) stuff on the web for what I’m looking for that is design related.

Where the professionals come into play:

Since working professionals are also Digg users, they are also some of the ones leaving comments. In fact, some comments are even better than the actual story. What! Yes. Comments can be more useful than the actual story because (believe it or not) people actually LIKE to help each other. If you aren’t reading comments, you need to. Diggers don’t just post links to mirrors in comments, sometimes they post links to additional resources, which can be extremely valuable! Here’s an example I used in a previous post with a story about Mac freeware apps.

Even better, some of these comment easter eggs are coming strait from a Working Professional in the story’s respected field. There’s no real way to tell who’s a professional and who isn’t, but if you know what to look for you can pick up on it over time, and get more out your favorite social media site.

How to find “Working Professional” Commenters:

Like I said, there’s not really a way to tell but here are some tips and trends that I use:

1. Pay close attention to commenters who try to respectfully review, approve, or disprove a given story. These are helpful because, sometimes a story will get popular, but a comment from a professional can warn you on why it’s a bad idea. Not all stories are submitted to Digg (and other sites) because the user knows it’s a good story. People will submit just to try and get their stories popular, no matter the content.

2. Look for comments with links to rare freebies on highly specialized topics. Chances are the professionals have spent way more time searching, and are more likely to know about these links.

3. Pay attention to commenters that form an actual opinion based on facts and offer advice or links to a better story, freebies, tutorials, etc. If they can back up an opinion with facts, and know about a better tutorial, they just might know a little more about that profession than the story submitter.

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Unless I’m a total idiot, the ONE thing that really ticks me off about digg is having to hit “back” in my browser twice, after leaving a comment. Don’t get me wrong, I love digg, and I digg on a daily basis, however, Digg’s latest feature release is a slap in the face.

Be honest. How many of you are actually going to use “BigSpy?” Yeah, me neither. The one feature I have been waiting for from Digg for some time now is a “Keep Digging” button after you leave a comment. I’m not sure if I’m alone on this concept, but as a daily digger, this is my #1 complaint. I don’t know about you, but when I find a problem with Digg or have a suggestion, I send them an email. I respectfully provide feedback, and follow that with praise for the site. I find it hard to believe that BigSpy is a feature that many diggers have been wanting for a long time, or find very useful.

Digg prides itself on being all about the “community” and the users. Well, how many users do you honestly think were bitching because there wasn’t a Dynamic Undulating Title Cloud to accompany Digg Spy? I don’t think the numbers are great.

Come on Digg, For Real. This is dissapointing. I just posted a story earlier today about how Digg is all about the community, but this is the first time Digg has gone down a notch in my book.

On to the Keep Digging Button:

If you are a regular digger, you’ve probably seen this:

Once again, I don’t know how many of you agree with me, but I find this pretty annoying. You click on a story. You like the story and want to leave a comment, so you comment, and digg the story on your way out. You hit back in your browser twice, and accidentally digg a story you’ve already dugg (because you honestly can’t remember, and it still says “digg it!”) and then you get the error. This drives me nuts. I want a “keep digging” button. So I made a mock up. It doesn’t have to be like this, I would just thoroughly enjoy a feature like this anywhere on the comment page. And if Digg could make their script remember which stories you have already dugg, that would be a bonus. But I think that has to do with having to hit “back” to begin with. Correct me if I’m wrong, I really don’t know anything about PHP.

Glad I got that out of my system, even though it probably won’t happen

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With all of the rumors and controversy involving “gaming” surrounding the Digg community lately, I found this particular story rather refreshing. An obvious mistake was made in this story’s title “Unlocks Your Car Using A Tennis Ball,” yet it not only reached the front page, it made it to the “Top 10″ list. Proof that the Digg community values quality content and digg the most relevant and interesting stories.

To even further shatter the common “top digger” rumor, this story wasn’t submitted by a “top digger.” The digger that submitted this story was ranked 1,396 the day it was submitted to Digg. Hardly a number that has any amount of “control or influence” (as critics like to put it) on what appears on Digg’s front page. You can read every Top 10 list on how to promote yourself in the Digg community, and correct spelling will most likely be on every list. So maybe we touched on 2 rumors here, but either way, I like the fact that this story did so well, because in my eyes, it proves that quality content rules in the Digg community. It’s easy to criticize Digg, but this story’s success was a breath of fresh air.

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Yes, Digg produces the majority of the traffic resulting from a front page Digg story, but is Digg the only reason servers bite the dust when a story is popular on Digg? Or are Digg Leechers helping out?

When a story makes it to the front page of Digg, the result is a feeding frenzy of readers from across the planet trying to access the stories contents. The result, often times is too much traffic for the unsuspecting site of the original story, and quite frequently the server goes down, AKA the Digg effect. But how much of the blame should Digg really take for all these spontaneous server bombs? I’ve seen numerous stories hit the front page of Digg, and show up within minutes on a variety of other sites that leech stories from digg’s front page.

Front page Digg stories that show up on parallel social media sites could be the result of a lot things. There could be (and probably are) users out there that contribute stories to more than a few social media sites, resulting in the same stories submitted to multiple sites almost simultaneously. There are sites that hang back and only post Digg’s most popular stories as they make the front page. Some even in an almost real-time fashion. The fact is, the front page of Digg is a perfect SOURCE for sites to retrieve urls to popular stories. Why? Not only are they after traffic, but If a story makes it to the front page of Digg, it has been put to the test, and it’s proven to be quality content. Think of it as a real-time 800,000 person poll. “Do you think this is good content? Yes or No?” If it lands on Digg’s fron page the answer is Yes, and other sites realize how valuable these stories are, even if they have to wait a little longer than a Digg user.

Some sites that leech popular Digg stories:

Reddiggulo.us
Digglicious.com
Doggdot.us

Notice the “live” feature on Digglicio.us. (just like Digg Spy)

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Comment Jewels: Where the Real help is at.

In the world of social media sites, and the blogosphere, I’m sure you’ve read your fair share of very helpful stories. There are tons of helpful blog posts, tutorials, and stories out there, but if you don’t read the comments posted at the bottom of these posts, you may be passing up a treasure chest of helpful information. There are many reasons why a story will recieve a comment, and equally as many types of comments as reasons. However, the blogosphere has a unique characteristic that I have come to enjoy very much, and pay close attention to: Random Acts of Kindness hidden away in comments.

I know comments can seem overwhelmingly negative at times, but not all commenters are birds of the same feather. Some will leave comments for the sole purpose of trying to make the author feel stupid. Some will gladly say thank you for the information provided. Some will be experts on the topic at hand and offer more accurate details. These are the ones we like. A comment saying how stupid a story is can often times be just as useful as one that praises the story, if it provides details to back up the claim.

Take advice at your own risk in the comments, but remember that every once in a while you’ll stumble across diamonds in the rough. These are the comments I especially love to find. I’ll give you an example. There is a post on a blog that you come across and the story is about free icons. You read the story and find 5 links, kinda lame, eh? Well if there are 50 comments under that post skim through them and see if someone has posted links to more freebies. It only takes a few seconds to skim given the fact that most links stand out because of color.

I find comment jewels to be most prominent in large social media sites sites like Digg, and well known blogs with a large amount of regular readers. If you ever read a story about a collection of free-anything on a social media site, and there are a lot of comments in response to that post, skim and you might be surprised at what you find. And one more thing, props to all of you comment superhero URL-pasters out there.

Examples:

Freeware Comment

Free Font Comment

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Finding your old stories with Digg’s Search vs. Google. Guess who wins?

Some of you already know this, but if you don’t it will save you a lot of time. Digg’s Search Could use some improvements, I try looking up old stories I’ve Dugg, and end up using Google instead, almost every time. I use Digg on a daily basis, not only to read interesting stories and important news, but sometimes to look up an old story I Dugg and reap its benefits. Most of the time, I’m looking up an old story to find a link to a free download I found on Digg while I was at work and want it at home, or a Photoshop tutorial, CSS tips, etc. Useful stuff. What bugs me is you can’t choose the time period or scope of your search at the top of the window. The default time period when you search from the top of page is the “Last 7 Days.” 99% of the times I search, I’m searching for an OLD story, imagine that. If I wanted to find a story from the past 7 days, it would be a lot easier to find, and I might not even need to use the search, especially if it was a popular story. Some of you may think this is ridiculous, but for those of us who digg a large amount of stories, a search feature should be the easiest way to find dugg stories. In Digg.com’s case this just simply isn’t true.

One other thing: Do you ever get the error message saying digg is experiencing high traffic, try your search later? NO! I want to search RIGHT NOW! That’s usually when I go to Google.

I chose an old story I dugg and tested this theory to illustrate how Google finds Digg stories Faster than Digg.

I remember a cool story I saw on Digg a while back with a 360 degree underwater panorama that I thought was really cool. (Notice that it was made popular 17 days before this experiment). So Lets try to find it on Digg first, then Google.

I searched from digg using the search term “underwater panorama”

This is what I got as a result:

So I changed the scope of the search to “Last 30 Days”

And . . this is what I got as a result:

Now lets try Google, Shall we?

I used the same exact search term “underwater panorama,” except I added the word “digg” in front. This usually finds the story you are looking for every time, with Google.

When it comes to search, Google is still King.

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I thought this was kinda funny so I grabbed it for all of my fellow Diggers to enjoy.

Someone should tell these people what “Dugg” means.

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