How to use Digg?

Everyday there are new websites that are being created & many of those do not get any visitors, as there is no promotion done for the same. While most of the people are aware of sites like Google, Yahoo, Rediff, there are sites like http://digg.com which people are not aware of. Here we would take a look at what this site is all about and how one can use it?

What is Digg? This website was started in November 2004. Digg is a website that includes everything under the sun from blogs, jobs, to general news and discussion boards. While this may seem like just another website, the feature of this site is that the content of the site is totally owned by the members i.e. the content of the website is contributed only by the members. The most read articles or blogs are featured in the top 10 articles of Digg. The rest are removed from the home page. Apart from this other members can view your profile and you can be invited to be their friends. To be able to use Digg, you need to join in as a member. There are no membership fees for the same. Once you join in, you will be sent a verification email and after the verification you can start looking at the stories.

Not only do you get to read the content, you can also express your opinion about the same. The stories are displayed on your home page and after reading it you can either click Digg it or bury. The more number of clicks or Diggs that an article gets, the more popular it becomes. On the contrary if you feel that there is a certain article which is not worth reading or is being posted again, then you can click bury and the same will be out of the system. This is another way of making Digg spam free. The flip side of this system is that if there is a particular article which is good but it did not get many readers, then this would just go out of the hot favorite list, which means that if someone wants to read that article they have to make use of Digg Labs where they can find these old articles. Sounds confusing, it is simple. The most popular stories will go up the order on the homepage and the less popular ones can be found in Digg Labs, which is like archive.

Within Digg Labs there are different options wherein one of them shows the visual representation of the stories, and then there is one option of showing stories in real time. Also there is an option of latest activity around stories and topics.

Furthermore, at Digg you decide the topics that you want to read and don’t want. You can customize your homepage according the topics that you want to read. If you don’t want to read about certain topics then you can even delete them.

You can also submit your own stories in Digg and see how many people view it. You can submit a news article or video or an image. To do so you need to click on Submit New on the homepage. It is advisable to submit articles on the topics of Digg. The stories that are being submitted are generally found in the upcoming section and the number of Diggs that the story gets determines whether the story comes up on the home page or does it get buried. While submitting the stories one needs to provide the link to the original source. Digg does not encourage duplicate stories.

If you thought that Digg is all about serious stuff then you are wrong. This is a site where you can also invite friends and share emails and photos. When you are on the home page you just need to click on add a friend. You can check if your friends who are with you on Google, Yahoo or Hotmail are already logged on in Digg. Each of these messengers will give you a prompt and you have to enter your user id and password and then the site will throw up the names of your friends from those lists, who are also members in Digg. Here you can also come to know your friends’ activity that they have done on Digg. A feature that is unique in Digg is the shout activity. When you want to get in touch with your friend quickly you can click shout on the friends’ profile and send a message. Likewise you can also shout an article to a friend. For this you need to click on share icon below the story and send the story to your friends. in the same way you can also get these shout messages.

For the regular users of Digg, there are another add on in Digg. The Recommendation Engine is a process where this engine observes the digging activity of its members. Based on the kind of stories that are being dug, the users are compared and a category is made which is called as Diggers like you. The benefit for the users is that the engine then highlights the upcoming stories based on this.

Digg doesn’t encourage Spam. To the extent that the system deletes the users who continuously send copied stories. Digg encourages only original stuff or stories, which have a link to the original work.

There are also sections on the meet ups that are organized Digg. it mentions the place and the time when the crew of Digg would be available. For those who are constantly on the move, Digg is also available on the mobile. The official mobile site of Digg is diggriver.com

Apart from all this, you have all the common things like ads at Digg and also a Digg store where you get T-shirts, Gift certificates etc. Gift certificates can also be redeemed for cash, and doesn’t have any expiry date. Also you can find job openings also, if you wish to work for Digg.