Neil Patel and Todd Malicoat are active in the Digg community (SEO consultants) and have some perspective on the market.  How will businesses take advantage of Digg? For those already in the game, the question is what’s being done correctly or incorrectly?

Like search engines Digg supposedly uses custom algorithms. But there have been some manipulations of this system.  It’s old news now that there are groups of croneys “digging” each others articles for placement on the list of most popular articles.  These articles of course get a lot more readership - along with black hat practices and spam.

Neil Patel has been quoted - “I think, right now, what a lot of people are doing wrong is that they’re joining Digg crews, or groups.”  Anybody that takes a hard look at Digg saw these same old authors TOP the charts.  This kills the idea of “social” and any possible spontaneity.

“It’s really fascinating to see how quickly the Digg algorithm is evolving compared to search engines in the past. They’ve really caught on to a lot of the things that took Google, Yahoo and MSN a long time to catch on to…”  I don’t think it’s hard to catch on to somebody else’s ideas after they have done all the work.  But, I don’t have a lot of respect for Google’s algorithms anyway.

Aside from that, I think that people selling altruistic and natural systems have automatically got problems.  “Natural” and “Altruistic” are seldom cooperative and never synonomous.  Without checks and balances, an opposition party, or some objective judges, nature goes the way of natural selection - the strong survive.  This ends many other good or not so good things, including: diversity, equal opportunity, new technologies, progress, etc.

Founded on the ideals of democracy? Digg may suffer the same problems as a democracy.  It can only survive when there is a general desire for law and order, which can only happen when people are free from want and fear.  The predators are still there, they just don’t get unlimited power.

Digg however, risks itself to inbreeding by excluding or allowing the exclusion of divergence.

You talkin’ to me?
Arthur Browning