THE DIGG ALGORITHM HAS CHANGED

Digg went down today for a short time. The results may be that many diggers will go down for a long time. It could be just a glitch as the algo is tweaked. We’ll know more over the next day or two.

Here are some things that seem to have changed since the site was brought down for maintenance:

  • This time yesteraday, 6 stories were promoted in 20 minutes. This seems to fall into the norm for a weekday around 4pm PST. The relative high traffic brings more stories to the front. As of the time of this post, 12 stories have been promoted in the last 4 hours — an average of 1 every 20 minutes.
  • Normally, stories would go popular in 10 minute intervals with occasional variations. Now, it seems that stories are promoted in real time, as there is no rhyme or reason to the timing of promotion to the front page.
  • Currently, there are 10 stories that are over 100 that aren’t buried from the upcoming but still haven’t been promoted. This isn’t brand new, but has been happening for a couple of days now. The real change lately is that it isn’t just top Diggers…
  • oboy has never had story go over 80 without hitting the homepage and DigiDave hasn’t had anything recently do the same. Today, both hit over 125, were not buried off of the upcoming list, but didn’t make the front page. One was from an established website, one was from a new one.
  • The “Hot in All Topics” section has some new names on it. Actually, almost all are new. Some are very new, having joined today, submitted something, and left. No Avatar. No comments. 1 other Digg. As of the time of this article, Pizzler is the only recognizeable name on the list. In fact, the other nine submitters who are on the “Hot in All” section have a combined 7 stories that have hit the front page before.

There is more data, but it will have to be verified tonight. In the meantime, everything listed above is fact, and clearly points to a change. I will discuss this with others and do more research, but one thing is clear.

There’s a glitch in the Matrix.

The real question is, why?

(we have some theories on that as well, but we’ll post them tomorrow at soshable)

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