of the Digg front page comes from 50 websites, according to data accumulated on di66.net. To combat the “algorithm gamers&# and “power-users&# on the site, Digg has launched several measures to discourage the practice of blind digging where users digg hundreds of stories quickly in hopes that others will reciprocate.  The most recent restriction allows users to Digg approximately 200 stories in a 24 hour period before getting a “Whoa Cowboy&# message.  Once the limit is reached, they cannot Digg again until they go below the 24 hour threshold. MORE >>

I am one of the few people who didn’t throw a huge fit when the new version of Stumbleupon left beta. In many respects, it’s much changed from the Stumbleupon the community had grown to love. The developers at Stumbleupon attempted to make the site more social, adding in a bit of Facebook, a  bit of Twitter, and some minor changes to the navigation options of your home page. While this may have been a great idea, providing Stumbleupon users with a dynamic and unique page of popular content (it is based on your subscriptions, right?), Digg this! MORE >>

Like Twitter and Facebook , social bookmarking sites such as  Digg , StumbleUpon , and Reddit have one significant advantage over search engines: Robots aren’t very good at assessing relevance or content. Social Media carlo pandian Digg reddit social bookmarking stumbleuponToday’s guest post is written by Carlo Pandian. If you belong, like me, to a generation that considers it normal to actually have met most of your friends in the flesh you may be a little wary of all things techie; especially techie things which involve the word “social.”. Can you? MORE >>

Most people who submit content to social media websites like Digg, Reddit, Mixx, or Propeller do so because they believe what they are submitting is worthy of making it to the front page where it can be viewed by a gazillion people.  At Digg, they might click on Suxmonkey , a front page regular.  34,000 Diggs! On Digg, it’s almost impossible to make it to the front page simply on merits of the story.  An exclusive interview with Jimmy Hoffa coming out of hiding may not make it to 10 Diggs if submitted by the wrong user.  StumbleUpon and Newsvine. MORE >>

The news of layoffs at StumbleUpon reminded me that in compiling some year-end social media referral data I’d noticed that a number of sites had experienced declines in StumbleUpon traffic. To get a better sense of the situation I pulled StumbleUpon referral figures from 2010-2012 for a group of 47 news and content sites that we work with at Define Media Group , primarily magazine brands. One thing that is important to point out is that some publishers participate in StumbleUpon Paid Discovery which has an impact on their traffic figures. Social Media MORE >>