Well, it’s been about a week now since I started using Digg. I’ve had some good experiences and some bad experience. I have tried to post a variety of items from posts off this blog to news stories from Gizmodo and CNet. Here is a list of things that I found while posting:

• Posting from your own blog, while not technically against the TOS of Digg, is generally frowned upon. For some reason, even if you write your own story, it will only be respected if someone else Diggs it.
• Having friends on Digg is kind of pointless. The “elite” Diggers out there already have too many friends as it is, and most people who are willing to add you as a friend don’t have any “power” on Digg anyway.
• Don’t choose close to the same username as your brother. Chances are that you will post on similar things, like friends would do, but they get mad at you for it and accuse you of having two usernames.

So the main thing that I have learned is unless you have been Digging for a really long time, or you just hit it lucky, it’s almost pointless to post anything on Digg because frankly, nobody is ever going to see it.

Have you ever wondered why it’s so freakin’ hard to get people on Digg to add you as a friend. Unlike MySpace and other sites where it seems like more friends is always a plus, on Digg.com users may feel the all important ad revenues that can come through getting stories on the homepage are too important, and they guard that money-making potential by not adding friends. There are ways to gain power on Digg, for instance if you have made several stories popular others feel like they can use your power to boost their Diggs and will therefore add you as a friend. Some Digg users even join alliances like the Digg Alliance Network in order to participate in making stories popular, and they even get a piece of the ad revenue the alliance generates. So, if you aren’t into Digg for the money and you truly care about quality news be free in adding friends and maybe the little guys can finally win out over the Digg elite and the Digg alliances.

Here is something hilarious that everyone should experience for themselves.

read more | digg story

Unless you’ve lived under a large object with no internet connection, you know that the iPhone is one of the hottest items on the internet right now. I went to iPhone.com, thinking that I would probably be directed to Apple’s iPhone homepage. I was not. Instead, I found myself staring at probably one of the ugliest websites I have ever seen. You would think that this company must have heard about the iPhone and would like to make good use of this domain name. I would. They could make a fortune! As good as the “Internet Phone Company” is, there would be hundreds of ways they could utilize this page. Here’s one example:

Put up a page that says, “Let’s start the bidding!” with a nice little ebay link underneath that points to the eBay auction.

Yesterday I posted a post about this page here. It was climbing up the “charts” quite happily and then it was no longer on the charts. It had 39 Diggs. What happened? I’ll tell you what happened. They didn’t consider it news. Well I’m here to tell that it is real news. It just goes to show you the power of people with weird ideas. That page would have received tons of hits from Digg. They could be famous. But Digg wouldn’t stand for it. No, they had to ruin the fun. So if anyone sees this story, go check out the blank page and Digg it!

What would it take to completely overrun Digg with a alliance of members who would digg eachother’s content in such a way that nobody would be able to detect it? I think it would be fairly easy. Here’s how it would work:

1. We would need about 200 - 300 alliance members.
2. Each person submits there Digg username and email address to the alliance council
3. Each person on the alliance would be alloted a set of days on which they could submit items to Digg
4. Each day a rotating set of alliance members would Digg the post at a specific time, thereby making it popular.

I therefore suggest that an alliance like this should be set up. If anyone is interested in forming such an alliance, add a comment to this post and supply your Digg username and email address. The comments are moderated by me. I won’t share the usernames or email address with anyone. The council will be chosen from those who send in a response.

Thanks

I spent part of today at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA talking to some of the folks behind Google Docs & Spreadsheets, part of Google’s Web-based office suite. One of the things I was itching to know about were some of their favorite features that often don’t get the limelight, or that people simply didn’t know about.

read more | digg story

They look really stunning… Must have taken many weeks to complete each of them.

read more | digg story

Mitchell Silverman, an attorney in Florida, noticed in a recent news-story that GW Bush’s twin daughters presented him with a mix CD of exercise music for Father’s Day. Since the record industry maintains that making and distributing mix CDs is a copyright infringement, Silverman sent their legal offices a letter on letterhead asking them to sue.

read more | digg story

I recently came across a website called sneegg.com. What they do is post one website a day, everyday. The layout of the site is very simple, but its main focus is on the single page that is on the front. They pick a different website from the ones that are submitted and post them for an entire day.