Digg Gaming is Easy

Frederic    Uncategorized    

At least according to this Wired article. The author hired User/Submitter (no link for them) to get the most horribly inane blog on the digg front page (pictures of crowds – how exciting). And indeed, that’s where his blog on pictures of crowds ended up very quickly. Now we all know that Digg can be gamed, but what I found most interesting is how the gaming goes hand-in-hand with the natural votes that slowly accumulate once a story gets some traction:

Despite their doubts, Diggers kept digging my blog. There’s a perverse
incentive here: Diggers who vote early on stories that become wildly
popular become more “reputable” in the Digg system. If you’re trying to
move up the Digg ranks, it’s in your best interest to vote on anything
that looks like it’s gaining popularity. And my blog, with its flurry
of paid votes, fit the pattern.

So it is in the diggers best interested to vote early (maybe before even reading the article) and the gamers can use that to their advantage. It only takes a relatively small amount of bought votes to gain some traction and gather organic votes from there on.

The author’s blog got buried after a while, probably because the content was just too bad, but two things stand out here:

• Digg isn’t able to control bought votes automatically
• there are incentives built into digg itself that allow these systems to work

Technorati Tags: digg, gaming, social networks,

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