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Digg is NOT bigger than Slashdot (but is bigger than Slashdot.org)

UPDATE:  The info below is sort of correct, but per Jon's comment below, my intended message is incorrect.  The truth is that Slashdot (which is really Slashdot.org, not .com) is #853, putting it still ahead of Digg. 

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(Original post)

According to Netcraft, Digg is the 1,943-ranked site in terms of traffic, compared to a 19,593 ranking for Slashdot.  While it's true that Digg is still ranked higher for Alexa, that's just a sign that Digg users don't download and install the Alexa toolbar.

Alexa does rank more sites than Netcraft, but Netcraft is more accurate on the sites it does rank.  For example, Alexa ranks a Disney Antenna Ball Collection site 4,572,690th, while Netcraft ranks the site's traffic as "unknown".

10 things webmasters should know about the "digg" effect

Here's a great article covering 10 things webmasters should know about the "digg" effect.  I agree with them all - especially #1 that Digg users do not click ads.  I got dugg once on one of my other sites (see "Google's Future? GBrowser, GooglePC, Google NetPC and Google ISP") and had about 5000 additional visitors per day but no uptick in revenue.  For your benefit, I summarize them below below:

1. Digg users do not click ads
2. Digg users do not use Alexa
3. Digg traffic does not generate new users, comments, or posts
4. Every site on the front page gets flamed in the comments
5. The digg effect brings in a moderate amount of traffic and uses a lot of bandwidth
6. Digg users are more polite than slashdot visitors
7. The digg effect is much less on a weekend
8. The best digg post regarding a topic is not always the one that reaches the front page
9. Digg may or may not have positive effects on your google pagerank
10. After a site is highlighted on the Digg front page, it will start showing up in the other social bookmarking systems soon

Hat tip:  Digg.com

Forbes goes anti-blog

Forbes columnist Daniel Lyons has written an anti-blog piece called "Attack of the Blogs".  In a nutshell, he raves on and on about how bad blogs are.  His tone is excessively negative.  I'm sure he doesn't mean to say all bloggers are bad, but his negative tone certainly makes readers feel that way.

Saying that all bloggers are bad because of a few rotten apples is like saying all cars are bad because some people use them to create car bombs.

Another point - Mr. Lyons has taken a long conversation with Intelliseek CMO Pete Blackshow out of context.  In the conversation, Pete said that some bloggers can be "toxic", but by and large the blogosphere is a friendly place.  You can read Pete's response to being taken out of context by Mr. Lyons here in "Forbes: Attack of the Blogs?".

Here is some of the junk that Mr. Lyons has been saying about bloggers:

Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo.

Blogs started a few years ago as a simple way for people to keep online diaries. Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns...

The online haters have formidable allies amplifying their tirades to a potential worldwide audience of 900 million: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, plus a raft of other blog hosts. Google is the largest player; its Blogger.com site attracts 15 million visitors a month, more than each of the Web sites of the New York Times, USAToday and the Washington Post. An upstart, Six Apart in SanFrancisco, owns three blogging services--TypePad, LiveJournal and Movable Type--that together run a strong second to Google...

Google and other services operate with government-sanctioned impunity, protected from any liability for anything posted on the blogs they host. Thus they serve up vitriolic "content" without bearing any legal responsibility for ensuring it is fair or accurate; at times they even sell ads alongside the diatribes...

Dude, get a grip!  Your article did nothing except to scare 1,000 people, while upsetting tens of thousands like me who will blog against the inaccurate journalism you spew forth.

Here is what other bloggers have to say about Mr. Lyons Forbes article:  Pete Blackshaw, Blogcritics, BoingBoing, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Bayosphere, Basement.org, John Furrier, Rexblog, Micro Persuasion, whatsnextblog, Jim Minatel, The English Guy, Doc Searls, Atrium, Ante Lucem, MakeYouGoHmm, Marqui, 42, VodkaPundit, Rough Type, and more than 100 others which you can find listed here at Technoarti.

Incidentally, BoingBoing points us to an excellently-written piece from the EFF on Bloggers Rights.

Yahoo's Buzz Game (pseudo-stock market)

Yahoo has partnered with O'Reilly to bring us a game where a person can "invest" in keywords that are largely technical in nature.  If more people search for these, then your "investment" grows in value.  Check out Yahoo's Buzz Game here.

Don't measure popularity/buzz via search engine "hits"

In a Wall Street Journal article called Estimates for Web Search Results
Are Often Wildly Off the Mark, The Numbers Guy points out that too many people are using web "hits" to define how popular a certain topic is.  See that article for his eloquent explanation, but a quick example will suffice.

Example:  You do a web searches for New York Yankees and Cincinnati Reds and try to determine the relative popularity of each by looking at the number of times each can be found on the internet.  What will skew the results is when all MLB baseball teams are listed on the same page, so you won't get a fair measurement.

In terms of measuring buzz for a topic, I recommend BlogPulse Trend Search.