Want to vent your Digg mafia frustrations? Caution: Venting Can Be Harazrdous to Sensitive Ears!

[Chris Lang]

This person admits publicly to burying others Digg posts just because.......

It is on Shoemoney's blog but he is not the author, read the intro first. Then read my comment at the bottom. It was Sexy Social Marketing that brought this to my attention.

I have to go now before I tell you how I really feel about this person. Works in the SEO industry no less. I want to know who it really is. I can speak my mind, I am already banned by Digg and the button clicking bastards. Then I got us all kicked of for good, but that is another story I am trying to live down.

I can't wait to see what JohnT has to say about this...... Get 'em John.

[Chris Lang]

I totally agree, John. I could not have said it better.

[Richard Klagsbrun]

I don't know - Digg is what it is and we all know what that is. I agree with most of the venting here, but on the other hand, for those of us now familiar with Digg, complaining about the jerks, the pseudo-populism, etc on Digg is kind of like going to North Korea and complaining about the lack of night life - you knew what it was going to be like before you got there. The temptation is that it's a popular venue and is great for marketing, when it works. The trick is to negotiate the landscape there the way it is. Although for the purposes of reasonable discourse, I far prefer a site like this which , though much smaller, has intelligent, thoughtful exchanges.

[Chris Lang]

What is the most tried and true marketing 101 pillar to success? Most people do not try to be proactive and head off problems. They react to problems after they occur. Andy Beard told me Internet marketing articles do not do well on Digg.

Did I bother to search "why don't internet marketing articles do well on digg." No I did not. I am a bull headed, know it all, dumbass.

If someone had said watch out for the Digg mafia because they will FRAK you over and get you banned, I might not have published my Digg privacy article.

If someone had told me that the little band of Kevin Rose poster boy bitches would come after articles about email marketing because they are SO FRAKIN STUPID that they think anyone that publishes an article on how to avoid spam filters is a spammer I might have gotten so pissed off that I took this next step.

If anyone had told me this in the words that I telling you all on SMC here, maybe it would have saved me having to finally telling digg to Digg this!

So, in response to your comment, yes, I did know that North Korea is an unfriendly place and no, I did not know the bury brigade existed on Digg. LOL

If I had known to search "digg mafia" then I would have not called Digg out so prominently. It was after the fact that JohnT, my next door neighbor, emailed me saying that others have had this problem, especially SEO sites.

[Jack Humphrey]

Howie Schwartz might say to all this hubub over one site on a web of millions "What does your bank account say?"

The best thing I ever did once I "got" social media is go totally Zen on it. There are tons of sites that can get you BETTER traffic than Digg (I know, no one here is after traffic, just pagerank, lol)

If you start thinking like water and just flow around the obstacles instead of banging your head on them I guarantee your entire life marketing on the web will change for the better.

I haven't visited digg in awhile and I only go there now to see what's up in news I care about. i.e. - I'm merely a casual user of the site.

I spend my marketing time elsewhere now where it really pays off.

When Digg was the only game in town I could understand people having this much of a talk about how to dominate there. But now with thousands of sites of all kinds to take advantage of, it seems kind of pointless to see you guys spending so much time worrying about Digg.

I like a good fight, don't get me wrong. But I don't get paid as a rabble rouser or fighter. I get paid to research and teach.

I highly doubt anyone is making any money from the downside of Digg actually. Not the kind of money I personally think is significant.

I see a lot of time being spent here on this and I worry about all the traffic and links that have gone by for everyone involved, now including me, in this thread.

[Chris Lang]

Jack, I love the fact that you can bring the successful marketer to the table here.

One reason I talk so much about Digg is that it is a site being abused by uninformed people. The more I know about what they are doing, both right and wrong, allows me to learn from them.

I was a chef for 20 years and I owned a catering business that was very successful for the last 7 of the 20 years in the business. How did I make the leap from soux chef to Caterer?

I learned more from seeing how people did it wrong than I did from seeing how they did it right. By learning what people are doing wrong in Digg and other social sites allows me to teach removing the negatives from these blogger's use of social bookmarking.

On Searchles there is a guy that goes by the moniker of Alex Mandossian and uses his headshot. He submits every last thing that is posted on http://www.alexmandossian.com/ and that is all he submits. I do not know if it is Alex or not.

He does not interact with anyone, no comments, no votes, just submits every blog post every day. How much good is that doing him?

[Jack Humphrey]

Probably just getting him banned and hated by social site users. Probably the goal of the guy claiming to be him. Probably someone who feels it is Alex's fault he's a loser.

Hard to tell. It could ALSO be Alex not understanding social marketing and having it outsourced. Can't leave out that possibility.

No matter what, that clearly ain't the way to go.

[Chris Lang]

That's way I figured.

[JohnT]

Chris said:

One reason I talk so much about Digg is that it is a site being abused by uninformed people.

One interest I have in Digg is a thing I call "The Digg Phenomena". Digg has to be the largest Social Bookmarking Site on the net and it became like a beacon to people of many different interests. On Digg you have the Internet Marketer, Social Marketers, Social Media Marketer, the Sports Fanatic, the News hound, the Entertainment enthusiast, etc. There are people on Digg who try to use it to benefit themselves, as well as people on it who really would be better off on a Message Board or Chat Room. It's really a melting pot, but many on Digg seem to treat it as if Digg made them... not them making Digg. I've always enjoyed watching that happen, a thing became more important than the parts of it which made it. It almost seems as if very few on Digg realize they could make just about any social bookmarking site as valuable as Digg... or more valuable.

I've been reading a lot concerning Google and Digg and I can see that Digg either will be bought by Google or it won't be bought by Google. If Google buys Digg then I don't see them keeping Digg the same. I foresee changes occurring, which is not an earth shattering vision in the least. Take a look at businesses through the course of time... when a new person or company buys out an old, in the vast majority of cases changes occur with in the company bought. The bottom line is that Google will change Digg to benefit Google, they aren't going to buy it to benefit Digg or it's members. Now if Google opts not to buy Digg, or the deal falls through, then I can see Google changing in order to devalue Digg. Digg will become a competitor and it makes no sense what-so-ever for Google to do anything to help out it's competition. Therefore, once again, I see Digg being affected. I can see one or the other happening as clear as a bell, almost to the degree of sitting and watching it happen now. It's always a possibility that the status quo will be maintained, but at this point I don't give it good odds. We live in an ever changing world and while other Search Engines are going off into Social Marketing and Social Bookmarking, Google really has nothing in place to be competitive. Has anyone thought of why this is? Think on it for awhile, Google is playing with things like Friend Connect and other things, but they really are not branching out into the Social Bookmarking and Social Marketing field. Google did not become what it is today by acting like Sgt. Schultz in Hogan's Heroes ('I see nothink, Nothink!!!). They became the top corporation that they are by seeing the trends and acting on it. So why have they seemed to not act on things in this direction?

The bottom line is this, even if nothing happens... then what harm is it to avoid becoming a Social Bookmarking Site spammer by finding alternate ways to reach the same goals?