digg’s Walls Come Crumbling Down

For some time now, digg.com has been the Holy Grail of social network marketing. Get your site/article/feature on digg’s home page, and watch the traffic and links roll in. Only six weeks ago or so, I wrote here on SBS about the power that the digg crowd has in this age of buzz/viral marketing.

More recently (about 10 days ago), I joined a discussion about Social Marketing over on the SEOmoz.org blog, but my main point in this case was that digg just isn’t a realistic marketing tool for most businesses, and that a place like Flickr holds a lot more general promise. Why? Here’s what I wrote:

Digg, in particular, seems to be a “boys club” of sorts where there’s already a power clique in place and good luck trying to break into it.

How right I was: News comes out this week about how the top diggers are gaming the system to reward one another. And so, digg founder Kevin Rose promises to change the system.

But will it matter? I’ll give it a chance, but skepticism seems to be the healthy choice here. Any system where the masses are in control is bound to face this kind of problem. I’ll stick by my assertion that places like Flickr, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, etc., are much better social marketing options for small businesses — they’re places that offer a genuine opportunity to connect with customers. digg and its kind may be great for a burst of traffic and links to your site, but I think you can get more long-term bang for your marketing bucks elsewhere.

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On a related note, the SEO/SEM industry has its own niche version of digg now … have a look at Search N Sniff, just launched this week.