A second home to millions of people from around the world social networks such as Digg has exploded onto the scene offering the online community an opportunity to organize the information online usually through bookmarking or voting on content that has been published somewhere else on the Internet. Members of these social networks are encouraged to make new friends and share their discoveries with rest of the community for further scrutiny of the content.
If the content is accepted and receive a predetermined number of favorable votes from the network members, then the content eventually will move up the ladder of success and will become popular content that could in reality generate thousands of readers and/or visitors to that particular content. However, if the network members deem the content unworthy, then the content being scrutinized will be buried and eventually will be purged out of the network altogether.
Now the question enters a new phase as to what makes good content that will become popular in social or bookmarking networks and there is not any one perfect answer to be given. Sometimes the craziest content is made popular at the social network called Digg, but most importantly the content is written and organized well. Generally content that is hastily thrown together is not made popular, because the content has too many grammatical or spelling errors that will cause the readers to stumble through the content. Sometimes it has more to do with the personality of the writer themselves and how they express themselves through their content that they create.
The Digg effect as it is generally referred to, can create a tidal wave of new visitors to the websites or blogs that have been made popular, but with instant popularity comes the real possibility that the extra traffic could overwhelm or max out the bandwidth allotment of the website host. In other words, the website could experience a blackout and be temporarily taken offline until either the Webmaster purchases additional bandwidth or waits until the website host allots more bandwidth at the end of the month. Either way the popularity of the content could be sniped out as quickly as it achieved its popular status within the network, because the website and the content cannot no longer be accessed.
Digg and other social networks like it can make or break the successfulness of any given piece of Internet content through an intensive protocol of positive thumbs up or negative thumbs down administered by the network members. The members will visit the website and read through the submitted content and afterwards cast a ballot (vote) for or against the content in question. If the content is well written and organized and any links are embedded with the content and they all work, then it stands a better overall chance of becoming popular. Of course, the content still must be interesting to the reader, because if it fails to keep the attention of the reader, then no matter how well-written the content is it does not stand a chance of becoming successful in this network or any other network online.
The definition of success is different for different people, but there is something to be said about receiving thousands of visitors in any given day compared to double-digit visitor traffic that the vast majority of websites and content receives. Success is in the eye of the beholder, but once a writer or Webmaster has had a taste of the Digg effect, then it becomes an obsession to repeat that success with new content created.
Yes, literally an addiction. Once a writer or webmaster experiences what real success is, then that success will become encoded into the expectations of every article, story or photograph that the writer or webmaster chooses to publish. Sure not every piece of content that will be created even by a popular writer will achieve popularity online, but after achieving the highest status one time, then at least the writer has something real to use as a template to refer to while trying to repeat the success of the first and parlaying that into the success of that which follows.
Digg is the biggest bookmarking network of its kind on the Internet and has the most active community that I have personally found so far. While there are other bookmarking networks such as Stumble Upon and Delicious and they too can generate quite a stir in the popularity of content, it still is no comparison to that that Digg can generate in a single day.
Of course, all of this extra attention can cause a new dilemma for the writer, because now not only does the writer need to up his/her game, but it will be expected by all of their new fans. The failure of accomplishing this task may cause the fans to flee and abandon the writer or the website altogether. It is much harder to regain the trust and the interest of the people who become turned off by a particular writer, because of poor content being created than to just take the time to create new and interesting content.
One of the biggest problems that I experienced when I first joined some of these networks was that I had no idea what to do. Reading through the “How This Stuff Works” section(s) that these networks provide to new members isn't always comprehensible, because the sheer complexly of the network is consistently in improvement mode, so to make the community participation better coherent. Unless a new member plans to spend some quality time building a solid reputation within any given network, then the possibility of drowning in the ocean of new content and changes that consistently pours into the network on any given day will overwhelm the novice.
Shakespeare once said “To Be or Not To Be, Now That Is The Question.” But if he were to have lived in the age of computers and the World Wide Web, he might have asked “To Digg or Not To Digg” but who's to really know what the great writer would have really thought about these things that many of us considers to be the greatest achievement in communication since the beginning of time itself.
