Digg is banning users because they digg too often

DiggA member in one of my discussion lists just got his account banned by Digg.

What was the reason you say ?

Your account was banned for the rate of Digging activity you’ve engaged in. We’ve determined that the time in which your Diggs happen, it isn’t possible to actually read the stories. Please read each and every story before you Digg or bury a story. Once you agree that you will Digg/bury more responsibly and read the stories, we will unban your account.

Recently, the Digg staff, trough their automated algorithms, is watching if a user is reading a story, by counting the time the user stays on that particular page, and the time it takes him to press the Digg button.

As another member in the discussion list said :

That’s funny. I have a feeling this is going to bite them in the ass.

I agree … This algorithm tweaking and fear of SPAM is going way to far … I mean, come on guys, banning users for voting stories too often ?

I would really love a response from someone at Digg.

PS: Noupsell has a really good personal explanation and clarification for this situation, at the Digg page.

PS2: Apparently, the Digg community catalogues this post of mine, as SPAM :)

“dig_count”:”31″,”area”:”Upcoming”}, {“type”:”report”,”itemid”:”2071615″,”date”:”2007-05-23 13:41:42″,”timestamp”:”1179927702″,”reason”:”Spam”,

The Digg Algorithm – Unofficial FAQ

DiggA few days ago, Digg changed their ranking algorithm (I noticed this immediately since I am an active Digg member, but I didn’t wanted to blog about it), in such a way that now upcoming stories need even 100+ diggs to make it to the frontpage. And since Digg doesn’t offer an official FAQ (the reasons are the same why Google doesn’t offer an official algorithm FAQ – so people can’t abuse), I decided to write a few of my findings along the way. These are unofficial, unsupported points and are purely my personal ramblings. So if someone has any objections, please do comment.

Continue reading The Digg Algorithm – Unofficial FAQ

Who will buy Digg and how powerful is Digg ?

DiggMichael Arrington just gave the news about Digg being in recent acquisition discussions with a number of companies, including News Corp. This had to come for some time now, simply because of Digg’s inability to monetize the website and/or keep up with the bandwidth costs. They supposedly use 75 servers that do the work of what 25 servers should do.

Continue reading Who will buy Digg and how powerful is Digg ?

Digg banned Text-link-ads.com

So I wanted to Digg this great blog tool that Patrick and the rest of the guys at Text-link-ads came up with, the Blog Juice Calculator, and Digg tells me :

Digg banned Text-link-ads.com

How not cool is that ? I really don’t think that these guys spammed Digg. And if Text-link-ads’s users spammed Digg with their USEFUL tools, why should they be blamed ?

Update: It seems that Digitalpoint and other websites are banned too.

StumbleUpon goes social

From the StumbleUpon news:

You can now integrate StumbleUpon with your blog, letting your visitors submit new articles directly from the page if they have a StumbleUpon account. This helps you get more traffic to individual articles, so they will spread faster within the StumbleUpon community.

So right news Digg it and del.icio.us, you can have your StumbleUpon social bookmark. Rand from Seomoz has some great info on what StumbleUpon trafic does for you.

If you’ll have a look at the social bar below, I have already integrated the “Stumble It” button.

The Digg effect

StuntDubl just wrote an absolutetly wonderful article: 18 Questions Your CEO Forgot to Ask When Building Your Website.

This article ended up in Digg, with 251 Diggs after just 1 hour 33 minutes and still counting. Off course, Stunddubl.com is now DOWN :)

The Digg/Slashdot effect people. It happens to bigger houses too.

I recommend the article to anyone at DuggMirror or after he gets his website back up :)