Every so often, one of our employees will roll into the office and announce, “I’m going to get on Digg today.” Said employee will sit down, write something and then nervously monitor the server as predicted Digg occurs. I can only remember one instance in which this tactic has failed. The post does not always come from SEOmoz; in fact, it’s often posted elsewhere. Sometimes, some Diggers will catch on to the fact that the submission came from someone affiliated with SEO and the comments will get nasty, but still the diggs keep going up.
And yet. The Diggs keep going up. Below is the number of Diggs for the post that generated the above comment thread. Four-hundred and eighty one is hardly a great number, but it (obviously) hit the homepage and wasn’t buried.
My point is that Digg’s hatred of SEO can’t compete with their liking of good, interesting or controversial content. They remind me of people who profess to hate all things French and yet can’t refuse champagne. People who say they can’t stand the USA but who can’t get enough of American T.V. Dogs that are scared of vacuum cleaners but that can’t stay away from them when you’re cleaning.
I don’t like the juvenile, snotty culture that Digg seems to foster. However, it makes me smile that every day I see linkbait on the homepage. Do Diggers not realise that they fall for cleverly crafted viral marketing campaigns all the time? Is my Digg account about to get banned?
