New York Times Best Seller List and Billboard Top 40 were the Original Digg Homepage
October 24th, 2007 by Michael Gray in Social MediaIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
I was reading a post earlier this week by Seth Godin about the New York Times Bestseller List and was reminded how social media sites like Digg, Reddit, Propeller really aren’t a shift in the way of thinking and doing things, they are just a shift in the places it gets done.
Book authors and publishers all want to be on the New York Times Best Seller List, the simple act of being on the list is going to guarantee you have book sales. Artists and record companies used to strive to be on the Billboard Top 40 (now the billboard top 100) for the same reason. Getting yourself into the list, got you into the playlist rotation on top 40 radio stations, getting you exposure and guaranteeing you sales.
The problem is of course the lists are lies. They aren’t accurate, they are biased by sampling and reporting stores. Knowing which stores are included in the polling statistics allows you to influence the purchase data, artificially skewing the results whichever way you want, you become the ultimate self reinforcing authority.
Social media sites like Digg don’t represent the paradigm shifting user democracy that it’s founders claim. It has been shown time and time again that Digg power users control the homepage. Regular people are often lured in with the goal of driving thousands of visitors and links to their websites only to see their stories flounder repeatedly getting less than 20 votes and twice as many user. The only real change here is if you are willing to invest the time and effort over a few months you can become a Digg Power User. You have to decide is it worth getting through the dip to become a power user. If you’re only running one website or two websites, and not working for multiple clients, it’s often not worth the time/energy/effort investment to do. If you need a real life example of the influence a power user wields within any system, look at Oprah and how everyone wants to be featured in her book club. Talk to any power user ask them how many shouts or emails they get each day from people who want to show them their stories and get them to vote on them.
What’s the takeaway here, to make they system work for you, you need to understand how it works, and how to optimize your actions and behavior to get the best results. Does that represent “gaming the system”, it does if you’re the kind of person who thinks memorizing hundreds of chess openings is “gaming the system”. Knowing how the rules work, and how to use them to your advantage isn’t gaming the system, it’s optimizing your performance within the rule set. Social Media just like book stores and top 40 lists isn’t fair, it rewards those who come with a plan and are prepared to win.
Sphere It
October 24th, 2007 at 9:25 am
Great post Michael.
You make a wonderful point that I’ve tried, less eloquently, to make in the past (most specifically relative to “link-baiting”.
Ain’t no new ideas, just new forms of expression.
October 25th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Good one. Makes sense.
October 25th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Another takeaway is that Digg is nothing more than a “top X list” with a different name.
October 26th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
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