Sunday, June 1, 2008

Let's Talk About Your Digg Friends




Hello friends of the Digg Nation.

I hope your day is going well. Let's talk about your Digg friends for a moment. Digg is all about having friends right? The more friends that digg your stuff, the sooner you get to the front page right? Everyone wants to get to the front page and will live by the digg code and digg everything you send them right?

Not so fast lizard breath.

I hate to break this to you, but there are people out there that claim to be your friend, and could care less about digging your submissions. And oh by the way, there is NO SANTA CLAUSE either. Face it my friends, there are people who claim to be your friend and I'm certain they have the best intentions, but for whatever rhyme or reason, they just can't seem to digg your stuff. Hey, don't get mad at me for telling you the truth, check for yourself here at this site.
With this tool you can separate the pretenders from the contenders. Now that you will soon know the truth about your friends, you are going to have to show some really true friend characteristics. You can bring this wealth of knowledge to their attention and hope they change their ways, or you can simply remove them as a friend. The choice is yours and you are in the driver's seat. I always like to give "friends" a chance and show I do have some compassion and frankly, maybe they've just been busy or on vacation or whatever the reason. But the fact of the matter is, you will now have proof who's digging and who ain't.

There are a few procedures that I do occasionally that helps get the best possible friends as possible to digg my stuff. I think I have the best friends ever (which is subject to change on a weekly basis). What I do is periodically go through my friends list and find the friends that first of all are mutual friends. This is important because if you are just a fan of some one's it could be they don't want to be bothered by getting shouts from you. And by the way, why would you want to be just a fan of someones instead of a mutual friend. Don't you think you deserve to be mutual friends with someone? Don't you think friendships should be mutual? So if I am just a fan of someones I withdraw my half of the friendship. There is no reason to waste having them as a part of my 200 friends.

200 friends

Have you ever sent a shout to all of your friends at once? You will notice when you send a shout to all of your friends, Digg only will send out shouts to 200 friends max. Let me clarify that. You could possibly have 300 friends, but only 200 friends allow shouts from you. You probably need to pay close attention when you send a group shout to read the temporary read-out from Digg on how many shouts actually went out. If you have 300 friends and only 50 are getting your shouts, well, you need to go in and review your friends. See which ones are getting your shouts and who isn't. The reason I have the best friends on Digg is because they withstand all of my shouting. I know I can be a pain in the ass, but that's where true friends come in. They put up with my shortcomings, and I put up with theirs if they have any. It's a true give and take, just like in a true friendship. Let me give you an example of that. One of my best friends is Brian Cuban. I am very glad he's my friend because he knows me as far as how I work Digg. He will ask me sometimes to shout his story, and he in turn will shout mine. We've had a great Digg working relationship and it's been tons of fun. I stop and think if it weren't for Digg, i would have never had the honor and pleasure to meet him and I am very thankful for that. I have lots of good friends in that category. So the bottom line is, find your friends, see how they do, and then after an amount of trust is built you won't have to monitor that specific friend so closely (hopefully) and you can go on about your business of Digging. Just remember, you get 200 friends. Choose them wisely. If you notice one of your friends hasn't been active for 2 weeks, why waste a shout on him/her? Get a more active friend on Digg.

For Digg Newbies

If you are new to Digg let me try and give you some pointers. Everyone that's been on Digg recognizes there are new friends joining every day. All the Digg veterans know that you are going to need new friends. Trust me, if you have been on Digg for longer than a month, you will see the same thing. My suggestion is for you to work slowly and methodically to be friends with someone. Don't ask 30 people to be your friend at once. Remember, us old vets will go to your profile page and can see what you have done recently. We vets don't want to be part of a cattle call. We think we have deserved the right for you to approach us and ask to be our friend on an individual basis. You want to be my friend? I'll check your profile page first. I want to see if you've dugg any of my storeys. Do you just digg popular storeys? Because if you do, that leaves you out of my circle as I only submit new articles. Why would I add you as my friend if I see you only digg from the front page?
So digg some of my submissions then ask to be my friend. Make sense?
And oh by the way, if you become my friend please know i will be watching you closely for awhile. I want to make sure you warrant being one of my 200 friends.

I hope all of this makes some sort of sense. It's just an opinion on how things go for me. Maybe you have other ideas you can comment on? Take care, and if you are my friend, Thanks YOU!












6 comments:

Soge shirts said...

Hey Lew good article. I hope someday to be considered a good enough digger to be your friend. Your post here made a lot of sense. I have too many digg friends on most are worthless. I have had the pleasure of making bcuban a digg friend and he is a great dude.

LewP said...

Sogeshirtsguy, send me a friend request, I bet we can make friends. Thanks for the comment.

Anonymous said...

Quite the article. Just wait until the Googlebots find it....

Anonymous said...

I wasn't aware of Digg's 200-person shout limit, but I have been working on weeding out the good from the bad 'friends' lately. The ones that frustrate me the most are the ones that send me two or three shouts a day but won't digg my stuff - even though I only send shouts out two or three times a week!

Gasent said...

I like this article, LewP. It is very informative and well written. But as a Digg user, I find it hard to get Blogger posts dug. Solution to this?

Anonymous said...

This all makes sense to me. I have worked slowly to build my Digg friends, choosing content and people with similar interests. I really enjoyed reading your article!