How much for a front page on digg?
New media consulting is wrong in so many ways
The idea of this through analysis of the social media phenomenon and the dirty little secrets behind some of it came to me during an instant messaging conversation with a great friend of mine who happens to be one the proud and famous top 100 diggers. According to him (and I do trust the guy one hundred percent), he was offered a ridiculously high amount of money by a certain online entrepreneur for each story he manages to promote to the front page of digg, thus bringing all those social media blessings upon the guy’s site. This is terribly wrong in so many ways, but I will manage to break it down into two different perspectives: why the online entrepreneur is ill-advised when he decides to take such a step and why the whole concept behind this idea is corrosive for the world of social media itself.
Pay a guy to digg you - be a brain athlete
No doubt in my mind from my rather limited social media reach that when you are trying to rely on the traffic and recognition it brings you, you are definitely in the wrong business. Social media traffic is an overkill, it takes too much effort, time, resources, it’s server-crashing and creates fake illusions of grandeur. If you’re aiming to make money with cost-per-click ads then it’s not worth it, as the actual click through rate is averagely 10 times lower than the one you get from good old google traffic. If you’re aiming for backlinks then you have better choices, traditional blogging choices, like commenting, tagging, directory submissions etc. The traffic from social media is eye-catching, but useless. It’s nice to have it, as you may hope that maybe 10 out of the 80.000 hits digg just sent against your server will come back or you may hope that one of them will make that 25 dollar affiliate sell you were always hoping for. But pay money for that? Come on people, let’s use blogs as they were meant to be used, let’s use our websites to promote our services through hard work, quality and commitment. Subversive methods like paying diggers to make you famous won’t get you anywhere except from on the path to a nice and simple McDonald’s job.
Can we talk about social media corruption?
When we say social media mavens, we think about a select group of people that can manipulate millions of websurfers every day. The power of being able to send 100.000 visitors to a site of your choice by artificially using the immense reach you’ve ended up having after years of hard work and networking is truly mind blowing. It’s not gonna be long before the urge of doing a little more than having fun and promoting great content turns into a job like any other, where you manipulate, fake, fight, work hard and have no fun with it. That is when corruption sets in. If you’re offered a mind boggling 500 dollars per front page (that is a random amount, the one they say it’s the going rate nowadays is much higher), you might think why not. And that’s what’s gonna blow the social media bubble pretty soon. How many of you guys ever met people online that claim to be “social media consultants” for a living? How many came up with an honest answer when asked what exactly does a social media consultant do. They promote content. That is their job and they will promote the content that came with a high paying fee. That is true and clear and sad. Sure enough, there are still guys like my friend that denied the tempting offer under the noble claim of wanting to keep his great reputation. But how many times does that happen? How do you trust digg when you click on a front page story and it takes you to a page that has cleverly hidden affiliate links or annoys you with popups? I believe that regular users will eventually get bored with it and then there won’t be a market anymore for these kind of scams. No social media. No money. No trust.
Photo credit goes to John Suler’s photostream
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15 Comments
Can you name a site that was launched on the back of digg up until six months ago and sucks?. When you launch an awesome site, getting dugg is a natural and deserved bonus, paid for or not. But I am quite alarmed that some “entrepreneurs” take it as a work model and focus important resources into that. Content without promotion is nothing indeed, but poor or semi-poor content along with money powered promotion will be a heavy weight on the back of the whole social media concept.
Thanks for your comment,
–Ted
Oh yes. I strongly disagree with you when it comes to what makes these sites what they are. WE make them what they are and when all they serve US will be crap then that’ll be the end of that, no matter how many marketers pump funds into their asses.
Yeah I could name sites, but honestly I’m not into outing anybody.
But I agree with you, most of these sites are well done. Which is why it doesn’t bother me, I think the content is for the most part quality, but if there weren’t deals made it wouldn’t be showing up on the front page of digg, because nobody would know about it.
“Oh yes. I strongly disagree with you when it comes to what makes these sites what they are. WE make them what they are and when all they serve US will be crap then that’ll be the end of that, no matter how many marketers pump funds into their asses.”
The average Digg reader isn’t 1/10,000th as important to Digg’s success as a top 100 submitter. And a lot of those submitters are bought and paid for, at least with some of their submissions.
I just don’t think this means the sky is falling.
Hm, no one said the sky is falling. But the average user isn’t too stupid. People nowadays find that when they’re visiting a web location they should be well treated for that. And if the front page of digg serves me forex trading companies, the newest photoshop tutorial from the same guy over and over again, mixed with some funny stuff and semi-science, I might not come back and support a system like this.
–Ted
You raise some interesting points about new media consulting and digg corruption, but let’s not forget about old media consulting (PR, marketing, publicists, etc.) and the way it has manipulated the media and audiences for decades.
As long as there is value in eyeballs seeing certain types of content, there will be people out there attempting to corral these eyeballs. Some people will be open about it, others will be sneaky, and still others will attempt to bribe the gatekeepers.
“And if the front page of digg serves me forex trading companies, the newest photoshop tutorial from the same guy over and over again, mixed with some funny stuff and semi-science, I might not come back and support a system like this.”
Oh, I agree, it’ll never get that bad. Again, that’s why I don’t think this is so bad. Most of the stuff that’s bought and paid for probably deserves a fair shot at the front page anyway. It’s just getting a good push that it wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.
You won’t see top 100 users taking cash for forex trading company sites, its too obvious and it doesnt do any good for anyone.
But you know, topics that are near and dear to the average Diggers heart … those are the ones where stuff is going on.
It is wrong. The funny part is, I’m a Social Media “Consultant”. I’ll stress the word “consult”.
When websites ask me to submit their site or to get a top digger to submit their site, I have to say no. Our business model is not geared towards giving a man a fish. We teach them. We analyze a site, offer changes on design, teach them how to gear their stories and headlines to be more “social mediable”, and then we monitor and teach. That is consulting in my book.
Sadly, most “consultants” are traffic drivers. They submit and spam and get a couple of glory stories up and running. No long term benefit and not much short term benefit, either.
As Ted said, it takes hard work. Blog well and people will come. They just need the right reasons. Load a site with ads and you’re done. Give them great content and they’ll find you.
Triple Bagel, I’m glad we’re friends now, like a top digger friend of mine said (not the one in the article)… “this can not be drawn in black or white”.
JD, people appreciate hard work and quality in general. If you’re a true consultant, then consult, don’t blow some mediocre content out of proportion just because you can and just because you have a mortgage. That’s not gonna work for ever. I appreciate people like you. Keep up the good work.
–Ted
Triple Bagel,
Your right, It will never get that bad. But, thats only because we (bloggers like us who have an influence in the community) can bite back just at the hand that feeds us.
You and Tedd are both right.
Different perspectives but ultimately the same conclusions.
But…, remember those sites are only still popular cause we (the social media junkie) are the site. Let all the friends in the top100 diggers lists dissapear. See how great their diggs do then. I agree the average digger isn’t very valuable at all that’s why in 3 months and 5% popular already I only have 54 friends and that number could drop any second I review my friends activity. A good digger only needs a few of me and you and tedd, and we can propel a story through our contacts alone.
The social media junkie who is on the top100 digger friends list, is an invaluable tool the top digger cant afford to loose. Just like the Great Wall of China was one mans dream built by great engineers on the backs of nobodies to one of mans greatest achievements. The Top diggers would be NOTHING without us, they just couldn’t exist its a self feeding chain of life. The wall couldn’t have ever been built without all the engineers, no matter how many great minds thought it up, and how many laborers they had to work it.
Cheers
Cybrspin
I have to concur with what Ted has been saying — well put, and non-sensationalist. I’ve found in my life that that which I give energy to persists. I am not AGAINST Social Media corruption, I am simply and honestly FOR Social Media self-correction. I believe I can trust Digg. I have NO IDEA who the top “Diggers” are, and I don’t care — I was a Senior Lead at PC Magazine (Ziff-Davis) and they had incredible integrity around NOT letting ad sales affect the content of an article. The greatest influencer on our social and political views, and thus how we present ourselves to The World and how we Play in it than does our basic Belief in Humankind. I author a set of blogs I call “The Human Being Project” — The most basic guiding principle of my blogs is that “Our _Primary Role_ in creating the world all of us hope for is simply to have unshakable faith that there is no other path.” All the hate, sexism, pessimism, racism, homophobia, pessimism, lack of faith (did I mention pessimism?) is all just noise and its only distraction. The World IS Just Awesome.
Love,
Rob
“It is wrong. The funny part is, I’m a Social Media “Consultant”. I’ll stress the word “consult”.
When websites ask me to submit their site or to get a top digger to submit their site, I have to say no.”
Didn’t I see you getting banned from Metafilter the other day for a self/client link? :p
This one here is of course not true: “If you’re aiming for backlinks then you have better choices”. Buying your way to the top is wrong but paying somebody to write viral content or link bait is not. Some of the best performing Digg stories or written for clients.
@Triple Bagel –
LOL - yep, that was me. The funny part is, I wasn’t thinking of it as a self/client link. It was a story I posted on NowPublic.com about saving endangered species by creating a culinary demand for them. It wasn’t my site, nor was it a client. I hadn’t spent enough time there to understand the tabooness of what I was doing. $5 down the drain, I guess.
Leave your comment:
May 13, 2008 | 2:30 am
You are terribly, terribly naive. This sort of thing goes on all the time, and has been going on for years. Seems like Digg, Reddit, and Stumble are all as popular as ever despite the gaming.
In the end it’s the marketers who make these sites what they are. Most of the non-breaking news stories you see on Digg are created specifically for social media consumption, and I don’t really see why that’s a bad thing. People want something to read while they’re bored.
And the benefits go well beyond a $25 affiliate conversion every now and again. How many fairly massive sites have been launched in the past three years 95% on the back of Digg? I’m not going to run through a list, but there are literally dozens (if not more), people who got their site in front of hundreds of thousands of eyes because of repeated social media front pages and popularity. And now their sites have become their full time jobs.