Boost Traffic by Slamming Digg 3.0

Posted on June 28, 2006

ZDNet's Richard MacManus has a post about how to obtain traffic by blogging something overly negative or positive about Digg (or any other popular tech service or company). Think of it as a more sophisticated more of linkbaiting. MacManus has a link to a post by Marc Fawzi, who explains how he was able to generate considerable inbound traffic with his sensational post, Wikipedia 3.0: The End of Google?. MacManus explains how bloggers can game the blogosphere using Digg or other popular tech websites.

What Marc did is no different to what a lot of bloggers do to gain attention and page views. Digg is in fact an easy target, because if a blogger writes a post about Digg that takes one of either extreme (i.e. praises it, or attacks it in some way) - it's got a very good chance of making the Digg homepage. Slashdot on the other hand is much harder to game, because its editors (i.e. gatekeepers) are very strict on what stories make it onto Slashdot. Blogging about how Slashdot readers suck won't make it onto Slashdot, but blogging about how Digg readers suck almost certainly will make it onto Digg.

A similar formula applies to the blogosphere, no matter what part you come from - tech, politics, etc. You just need to identify the hot topics and then game away. In the tech blogosphere for example, Google is a hot topic and almost guaranteed to bring in the hits. Especially if you are controversial and/or pick an argument with other bloggers. That's why the snarky or cynical bloggers are so popular - because it's easy to gain attention by dissing something. It's also why there are so many extreme, black/white opinions amongst bloggers. It's like politics in a way: pick the right or the left and try to shout down the opposition.

If you are looking for a traffic boost you could try saying something awful about the new Digg 3.0. By now everyone is aware Digg has relaunched with new categories. In fact, most of the blogging about Digg's relaunch occured before it ever happened. There was considerable activity about Digg 3.0 over the weekend but less now that the relaunch has actually occured. Perhaps that is the future of tech blogging. Everyone jumps to cover a new launch before it happens and then gets bored and moves on and so less bloggers are actually discussing the new site once it is finally online. That is until someone blasts the new Digg 3.0 or says Digg will overtake Google or Myspace and then the discussion builds once again.



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