Pro-SEO

After months and month of asking the digg community have finally got what they wanted. A pic section for them to put their funny little lolcats.

When one goes to submit a story now they are offered a selection of either "news story", "video" or "image".

When the image is submitted the image is then displayed on the digg page.

But is it legal?

While this may seem like a good idea i wonder if digg have thought about the legal implications of this. If the image submitted belongs to someone else digg has no right to copy that image and display it on their site. I am assuming digg doesn't track down the owners of each image and ask their permission before copying the image and displaying it on digg.

Digg should expect to recieve a lot of angry emails from people (especially flickrers) not wanting their images to be copied and displayed on someone elses site without permission.

Labels: digg, law

If you spend any time around digg it soon becomes apparent that the community stance is "M$ sux0rz, Apple is teh l33t".

So after another one of my blogs got to the front page of digg i thought i would have a look at my visitor stats to see what operating systems are used by diggers, Surely it should be majority macs, Second Linux and only a few people using windows, Right? Well it should be if you go by what diggers say. But as it turns out most of them are frauds who either a) pretend to hate the operating system they use or b) pretend to be rich enough and cool enough to use macs.

Windows: 75%
Macs: 19%
Linux: 5%
Unknown: 1%

I don't mind people hating an operating system, But if you are going to hate it, Don't use it.

Labels: digg, operating systems, pic

If you are a user of digg you will no doubt be aware of the changes that happened recently. most importantly the introduction of "shouts".

Shouts are a way for you to talk to friends and to share stories. Good idea, Right? well it would be except for one simple flaw. The Internet and social media sites are infested with that lowly animal we call "the spammer". So as soon as the spammer finds out that he can send an article he just wrote about student loans to loads of people on digg with one click of the button, He will do it, Numerous times, Every day.

I know what you are thinking. Why not just deny friend requests from people you don't know! Great idea, Except digg didn't quite think it through and their friend system doesn't require you to accept a friendship, It just allows everybody to add you to their list and send you this garbage through shouts.

So the moral of this story is; "when you build something build it with spammers in mind".

Labels: digg, spam

15 hours ago (at the time of posting) a "story" was submitted to digg.com. But unlike most stories this one didn't intend on providing useful information, Breaking news or a funny video. the intention of this story was to initiate a DDoS attack against the site godhatesfags.com by using the digg comminuty as a botnet.

The user egingras posted this story entitled "Make GodHatesFags pay for their bandwidth" with the description "It's time to stop this shit. Feel free to use as much bandwidth as possible. Try downloading a few podcasts."

The story then rapidly received many diggs, 2139 at the time of this post, And soon found it's way onto the front page, At which point digg users started posting links to audio files in comments and soon knocked godhatesfags.com offline.

having a site which gets "slasdotted" or becomes a victim of the "digg effect" is usually a webmasters wet dream. it means a lot of people want to see something you have made or written. But when these usually innocent effects are done to facilitate criminal damage it becomes a different issue. It becomes illegal.

I am surprised, And angry, That digg should allow their site to be used in such a malicious and criminal way. the intent from the very beginning was obviously to knock the website offline by sending it many thousands of visitors, Which is, For all intents and purposes, A DDoS attack.

Labels: ddos, digg, slashdot

You may remember a while ago we made a post about spikethevote and digg fraud where we introduced you to a community site where people would digg each others stories in an attempt to get them on the front page. This service was free, Unlike others, and looked like it worked well as only 20% of the stories you dugg were user submited and the rest were random stories to keep digg off the scent.

Recently spikethevote.com went on sale at an eBay Auction where it was purchased by the winning bidder natsys for a little over $10,000, Who later turned out to be Jim Messenger of Famous Agents and a "friend of digg" who promtly went running to his "friend" digg to hand over the domain, files, images and database of spikethevote.com (this level of crawling makes you sick, Don't it?). If you visit spikethevote.com now you will see a message informing you that the site is now owned by digg and you get redirected to the digg homepage.

Jim messenger then quickly made a blog post where he took the opportunity to gloat about how he had been a good little "friend of digg" and that all the cheaters should "watch out" (anyone got a bucket?).

Now, The fact that Jim gave the site to digg and then made a blog post about it isn't anything unusual. He is a no-mark wanting to get recognision for his real estate site by looking to have done digg a favour. What is surprising though is some of the claims he makes about activities digg might be involved in. Illegal activities.

On his blog Jim claims people shouldn't use systems that cheat digg because, Among other things, "The site might have been started by Digg to gain a list of those intending to scam their network.". He is claiming it is possible that digg are taking money from people for a perfectly legal service, Not doing what they are paid for and then using the information submitted by users against them by banning them from digg. What's that called again? Oh yes, Fraud.
If i was digg i wouldn't take to kindly to the things Jim is claming we might be doing.

If you were a user of sikethevote.com you can still use usersubmitter. They deal in money though, So if you want to get diggs you have to pay, Which also means they pay you for digging.

If diggs only chance of survival is to hope "friends of digg" buy sites for them they will soon find themselves with very few "friends" and a system so easily rigged that it will become a joke. Sites to rig digg are popping up everyday and people seem to have found a sure-fire way of rigging digg by mixing real diggs with random ones.

Labels: digg, fraud, spikethevite.com

Odd, I thought... A regular reader of Pro-SEO was nice enough to email me today to tell me that when he tried to submit my blog post about SEO Myths to digg he would get the error "This URL has been reported by users and cannot be submitted at this time".

Now, I'm not that bothered about digg not wanting my blog posts, It's not like im desperate for their traffic, But it did get me wondering. The error stated that the URL (i assume they mean domain, Not URL) has been "reported by users". So why on earth would digg users report my blog to digg and why would digg want to prevent people submitting my blog posts?

I strive to produce unique content that is either useful or interesting. If i look at a blog post and it is neither interesting not useful i don't publish it.

I must admit, I have to smile when i think about the number of articles written by me which have been published on Slashdot compared to the video of a woman jiggling her boobs that made it to the front page of digg the other day.
Looking at it like that, Maybe digg have done me a favour.

Labels: digg

Sinse posting my story about Digg banning IP addresses i have been, Like i said i would, Participating in the "digg community".

After almost a month of participating in digg i have to say I like it, There have been some interesting stories posted and commenting on them is fun, Though there are a lot of obvious features that should be included.

So i thought i would post a list of features that digg should have, But don't.

1. Show Digg count for comments in profile - If you don't know, People "digg" or "digg down" comments you make, and if a comment gets enough thumbs down it becomes hidden. If you want to find out how many diggs your comment got you currently have to look at your own profile, Click the "commented on" tab and then go to that stories page. You then have to search through the comments looking for your comment. I propose that digg display the digg count of comments directly in the profile along with the number of replies it got.
2. Personal messages - Why is it you can add people as friends on digg but you can't send people instant messages? Personal messaging should be an essensial feature for any site claiming to be a "community".
3. Tags - When you submit or Digg a story you should also have the option to add tags. This will make searching and organizing stories you dugg a lot easier.
4. Email alerts - It would be faily easy for digg to impliment a system where when one of your friends posts a new story, Or someone else posts a story that contains a keyword you get notified about it via an email. Similar to what google do with thier google alerts, But for digg.
5. Advanced search feature - At the moment if you want to search a specific catagory on digg you have to navigate to that section and then use the search box. So i propose that digg has a "search page" with advanced options. A user can select if they want to search all of digg or a specific catagory. They can also select what time frame they wish to search in. "this week", "this month" or "this year". You get the picture.
6. More catagories - Digg started off as a tech site but quickly expanded into other areas such as videos and sport. Say for instance i wanted to post a video of a huge car crash, Should i put it under "funny" or "educational"?
7. Better dupe detection - I know that just because something has been posted once already doesn't mean everybody got to see it, But the amount of dupes on digg is insane. Some stories have been posted upto 10 times and sometimes people even go to google translator and post that link just because the exact same page had already been posted and digg doesn't let them post the same URL again.
8. Stop banning IPs - Sinse i blogged about digg banning IPs a lot of people have emailed me saying they have had thier company LAN IP banned from digg simply because a few people share the same IP but login through different accounts. Digg seems to have a system where if different user names appear to have the same IP that IP gets banned.
9. Burried stories - As well as showing what stories a user Dugg it would be nice to see what stories they have burried, too. And for what reason. Spam, dupe or lame.
10. Open links in new window - If a user has selected to open story links in a new window links posted in replies should open in a new window too.

If you have any other ideas for improvments to digg, post them as a reply

update:
I was just informed that another blogger, franticindustries has made a similar post about the features digg should have. (It's ok, I don't think he copied me :p ) He also has some good ideas for features digg needs.

Labels: digg

The new Digg algorithm changes may have had some rather worrying side effects which will see some Diggers having their IP address banned from Digg for doing nothing more than taking part in the "community" aspect of digg.

I was informed by a number of friends today that every time they tried to login to digg they would get the error "Sorry - bad IP address" and were offered a link back to the homepage. They are still able to look around digg, heaven forbid they not see the adverts, But they are no longer allowed to vote or submit stories (or anything that requires you to login), At least until they change their IP or use a proxy, Which will be about 30 seconds.

Here is a screen shot of what you can expect if you get your IP address banned from digg. It's not the most impressive error page i have seen.


Speculation is that changes were made to the digg algorithm which were designed to spot people who digg as a community. While this is obviously good for combating those who try to cheat digg or commit "digg fraud", Such as spike the vote, It isn't so good for people who actively take part in the digg community, digg the same stories or stories their friends has submitted.

• Say for instance, 10 people spend all day on digg, The chances are that over time they will be digging the same stories. Will the part of the digg algorithm responsible for spotting digg fraud flag them all and ban them?
• What if people are loyal members of a forum or loyal readers of a blog? If a thread on the forum or post on the blog gets submitted to digg there is a fairly high chance that the same few people will always digg stories from their favorite forum or blog.
• What if 10 people sit in IRC and share stories they have found on digg? Chances are they will digg the same stories, Will they get flagged and banned from digg by the algorithm?
  

It should become apparent now that digg can not retain it's community feel and protect against digg fraud. So what's it going to be digg? Stay a community driven site? Or protect against digg fraud at the expense of the users you so regularly thank for making the site a success?

I don't actually own a digg account myself, But i may sign up and see what i can do to get myself banned. I would like to see just how damaging this digg fraud protection algorithm is going to be. I thought digg fraud was going to kill digg, But it looks like the digg algo is pulling it down from the inside.

Labels: digg

I hate to go on about digg, i have been doing it a lot lately, but their methods and ways of doing things has become obviously immoral and corrupt. A friend of mine read my article about digg banning IP addresses and thought he should post it on digg. People should know about changes to the digg algorithm, right? of course they should. But i guess Kevin Rose got wind of this criticizm and decided he would ban my friends digg account, and the account of his room-mate who commented on the post, simply for criticizing the changes digg is making.

If you go and look at the Story (digg it while you are there) you will see it's submitted by a user called "GoogTube". Now, If you click on his profile you will see it comes up with the error "Invalid User Provided". This occurred just 20 minutes after he submitted the story criticizing digg. Coincidence? I think not.

It's bad enough that digg have created an algorithm that bans users for participating in the digg "community", We can assume it was a mistake and it's something they are working to fix. But when they start banning people simply for criticizing changes that have been made it starts to leave a really bad taste in my mouth. Funny how they don't ban the hundreds of people who post sycophantic articles about how great digg is and how much they love Kevin Rose.

Labels: digg

Most people have heard about digg. It's that place that the ill-informed hang out, Bitch about Microsoft, talk about how great Kevin Rose is and pretend they all use Linux. Having said that, getting on the front page of Digg is what every webmaster and blogger wants, It will drive thousands of visitors to your site.

having spent some time looking around Digg, Not submitting anything, Not digging anything and not commenting on anything i think i have figured out what kind of post gets the diggs from the types of people who "Digg". So i though i would throw together a list of things you can do to make sure you have a big chance of getting your articles on the front page of digg.

The main thing to remember about Digg is that it is like slashdot for kids. In fact, That could be it's tag line.

(in no particular order)

1. Write about Digg - As a whole Digg is about a narcissistic as it gets. It loves it's self and loves to hear about it's self. So if you can pander to Diggs ego the Digg drones are sure to "Digg" you.
2. Mention Kevin Rose - 99% of diggers see Kevin Rose as some kind of god. They are sycophantic no-hopers who think that by clinging to the coat tails of a man who still thinks drinking beer on a couch with his fat friend makes him "cool" they can get some kind of recognision for themselves. I have even seen a video of Kevin Rose spilling a beer get on the front page.
3. Bitch about Microsoft - Even though most of the "diggers" are sitting there using ME they like to whine on about how crap "M$" is. So give them something to chew on, Even if it's a story about a 3 year old internet explorer exploit.
4. Make your title look like it's written by a 12 year old AOLer - "Linux kernel patch released" is a bad title "OMG AMAZIN NSFW VIDEO LOL" good title. See how that works?
   
5. Make it up - If you have to, Make it up. These people aren't going to research it. Most of them can just about read.
6. Insult the pariah - Insult people diggers don't like. Write about Bill gates and how he is probably gay, how George Bush is an idiot or how Family Guy uses too many flash back scenes.
   
7. Appeal to the fanboys - Digg is littered with fanboys. Find a subject that has a big fanboy following and write about it. You can have this one for free "TOP 10 reasons Apple pwns M$".
8. Firefox firefox firefox - Firefox is better than IE right? Of course it is (though it is still just a leaky browser). For most diggers using Firefox is as close to Linux as they will get, So they grab this with both hands, Digg it and comment on your article.
9. Top 10 - Make it a top 10. Even if it's not. Make the Diggers think that by reading a simple list they will get easy to understand information on a group of items and knowledge about which is better than the other.
10. Include a graph - Images are good, It means less reading, Diggers like that. So include a few images, like a random graph you have found. They may try to figure out what the graph means but when they fail they will just assume they don't understand it because they are an idiot.
    

Labels: digg

“A Bulletproof Way To Cheat Digg.”

This post might be a little far away from the usual SEO stuff you find on Pro-SEO, But we thought it was news that any webmaster should be interested in.

Getting on the front page of Digg can give your site a traffic spike of tens of thousands, So anyone serious about their site should be looking into writing content that may get that story or article onto the front page of digg via user votes, or "diggs". It's similar to being featured on Slashdot, Which we were when kbox submitted a article about Firefox usage statistics we wrote back in July.

So it's no wonder ,And was only a matter of time, Before someone started taking advantage of this flawed and easily manipulated way of featuring stories on the front page of a highly popular news site.

This is where Spike the vote come in.
Spike the vote are running a community based free website where people digg each other stories. You earn points for digging stories and you can trade these points for diggs of your own stories.
Some people may say this isn't really fair, or even unethical, But hey, This is real life, You can't trust people to play nice when there are website visitors (and money) involved.

How it works

Spike the Vote works on a point system. Each day I give you a mission with several stories to Digg. 20% of your mission involves digging stories submitted by users in this community, while 80% of of your mission is completely random. This is to eliminate footprints and keep things anonymous.

You earn 1 point for each story Dugg. Once you earn enough points, you can trade them in for Diggs on your own stories.

At present you can only sign up, You will then receive an email once spike the vote has 1000 members and then that's when the fun starts.

If digg wants to remain a favorite for millions of web users they are going to have to figure out how to combat this type of "Digg fraud" (yes digg fraud, You heard it here first:p). It will be hard though, Because as the article says, users will be making random diggs to minimize their Digg Fraud footprint. So even if Kevin rose himself joined spike the vote to see what sites are being artificially dugg 80% of the sites he has to digg as part of mission are going to be random stories.

Labels: digg