Digg as a Game: Part Deux
On Friday, September 8 2006, I wrote a post on how Game Theory can be applied to Digg. That same day, Alex dugg that article. This post is about the Digg effect that followed.
As of this posting, the article has been dugg 724 times. I went from an an average of 680 unique visitors per day and ~1300 average pageviews per day to over 5,000 and 10,000, respectively. The numbers were constant over the weekend, but are dipping today, Monday. On the Digg page, there are 46 comments about my post and the posting page, there are 21 comments. Before the post, I had 423 feed subscribers; after the post, my feed subscriber count is over 1,600.
This was my 2nd post that made it to the Digg front page. My first one was Rejecting Google’s Job Offer. That post received less Diggs, but a lot more traffic that lasted for weeks.
The Digg Effect
It is difficult to say if an Information Cascade happened, like I discuss here. The comments made on my post and on the Digg page might be evidence that there was more than Group Think going on — I think there was real curiousity at the outset, then real interest in the post. Moreover, someone actually implemented my ideas in his own implementation of Digg, which can be found here. If what I am saying is true, then I believe that was a genuine democratization of the web that happened. The original Digger, Alex, is not a top digger; so, he had no incentive to maintain any reputation status. The title of my post wasn’t interesting or maverick, but the content probably was; so, we can’t attribute the effect to a glamorous title. I don’t know. I’ll need to think more on this one.
What I do know is that the post started an interesting conversation; applying Game Theory to Digg is novel and new. I look forward to other topics attempting to apply Game Theory to Digg.
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