In fact, in March, Richard MacManus detailed the kind of traffic-licious bounty that many “mainstream” blogs were enjoying thanks to getting Buzzed. 

*  Salon.com reached over 1 million uniques in one day for the first time in the company’s 12-year history, after Yahoo.com linked to one of their highly “buzzed” stories (they issued this press release)

· US Magazine: In part due to a Yahoo.com link, February 27th was the second highest day in overall Usmagazine.com traffic since its launch in June 2006. Referral visits from the Yahoo! homepage accounted for 32% of total visits that day.

· When Yahoo.com linked to one of their stories, The Smoking Gun received approximately 1 million additional page views over their average traffic, with over 275,000 visitors coming from the Yahoo! homepage.

· Portfolio.com (part of Conde Net) received over half a million referral visits from a Yahoo.com “Buzzing Now” link.

· HuffingtonPost received over 800,000 unique visitors from Yahoo.com in one day.

To other fans of social media, however, the *real* interesting metric wasn’t just the raw levels of hot unadulterated traffic, but also the level of the *engagement* of such traffic.  After all, its been argued (by me) that without engagement, social technologies that push traffic are somewhat questionable in their legitimacy *as* a “social” tool (cough, cough MIXX HAS AN ANEMIC NUMBER OF COMMENTS cough, cough).

To wit, Om says that not only did they get 200,000 additional page views, but that they got over 300 extra comments (!)  This is completely inline with TechCrunch’s experience when they got Buzzed earlier in the year, when they got over 1000 comments on the slowest day of the week, and an almost crippling level of traffic (luckily MediaTemple was girded real strong).

So is is Yahoo Buzz’s strength a new story?  Not really.  But I think its an important one to remember in the social news drama, and particularly every time we think / hear about Digg getting acquired.  By some numbers, for example, Yahoo’s Buzz eclipsed Digg *months* ago in terms of raw traffic it gets.

Perhaps the reason why it never gets as much “buzz” as Digg got is because — as far as I can tell — not just anyone can be included in Yahoo Buzz.  You might get a chance to vote or Buzz up a story … but unlike Digg, or Reddit, or Delicious, or StumbleUpon, users *don’t* get a chance to submit stories — i.e. submit their *own* blogs.

My understanding is that this may change this summer, as people who purchase ads with Yahoo might get a chance to get their stories Buzz’d. 

And if *THAT* gets to happen, you start wondering a) why kind of rush there’ll be to start using Yahoo’s ad service b) if Google would ever consider that for Google Adwords c) if that would dilute Yahoo Buzz’s appeal (or increase it) and d) what implications, if any, it would have for other social news sites.

There are a few (tech) blogging topics that are eternal. Comments vs. no comment.  A-listers vs. non-A-listers.  Techmeme sucks vs. Techmeme is still teh hot.  Also, for those in social media: Digg is pwned by a small number of diggers.

Yes, in a bit of unverified research that would have fit in the tech scene in 2006, popFail has “dugg up” (sorry, couldn’t help myself) some data that confirms what Digg management has furiously tried to avoid over several iterations — that a few individuals pretty much own the front page of Digg (specifically, 10 users have submitted over 30% of front page views).

In Digg’s own defence, those that make up that top 10 are quite different than what I remember in the past, so perhaps its efforts at “democratizing” digg has had some effect (although perhaps not in the way it was originally intended).

At any rate, I’m not sure if this “problem” will ever really be solved, as there will clearly *always* be a hierarchy of activity on social media sites, and there will, for any given activity, and there will likely be some kind of unequal power / logarithmic distribution of said activity.

That is, folks at the top are probably *WAY* at the top in terms of activity, “friends”, or whatever metric you’d like to choose.

If that’s the case, there might be algorithmic ways to change smaller details around it, but if this is indeed the nature of the beast, then there will *always* be diggers (or reditters, or mixxers, or propellers) that are more active than others, and always at the top of any “list”.

While its features are not tremendously unique — you get gigabytes of storage, you can install a little program on your computer which auto-syncs so that a special folder “auto-syncs” with getdropbox, you can “share” different folders and files in a fairly granular fashion, and so on.

Rather, what really works for me is how simple and elegant it is.

{actually there is two other features that are also pretty nifty: how it keeps different versions of files every time they are changed, and its auto-gallery feature}

There are, in fact, many online solutions, but what sticks out about DropBox is that its interface is very clean, very fresh, very simple, and very fast. Unlike its competitors, the online interface isn’t trying to mimic your desktop, and as such, isn’t full of fancy AJAX (or Flash) tricks. It has a very simple interface, and its a joy to use.

This latter fact is important to me, because — and perhaps you’re like me — you bring data between computers of varying ages and processing speeds. AJAX and Flash are fine when you’ve got a relatively “new “machine, but in the places that I work (hospital), I’m often faced with old machines, or machines that have miniscule amounts of RAM, or computers that are just plain slow. Using other online storage solutions make no sense in this environment because they’re slow and cumbersome to use.

But this is where DropBox sails, as it requires very little of the host machine to work … which is just as it should be.

On the other hand, its not a perfect product by far. One thing about DropBox that needs work, for example, is the downloading interface. There is no easy way to download more than one file (if you’re at a remote machine and don’t want to install the remote “drive” on it), and obviously this is an important feature if DropBox is meant to be more than an archiving tool (which presupposes that you won’t be downloading much).

This feature can’t be all that difficult to implement, so I anticipate that its one of those things these guys are working on.

Bottom line: DropBox is pretty awesome and given its simple interface, very usable even in fairly primitive computing environments. I’ve been using it almost daily in the past two months, and its one of those services that goes above and beyond any superlatives that I’m going to use — and that you really just going to have to try for yourself.

Ok, so it need not be Digg, but really, all of the online social communities need to rally behind this poor guy, Chris Avenir, who is at a local Toronto university. The poor guy is facing expulsion and has already gotten a B grade turned into a failing grade in a first year chemistry course. Why? Because he administers a local Facebook group on some homework topics. Flabbergasted? I was. Turns out that said Toronto university, Ryerson, has a very liberal academic misconduct policy, which describes such as “any deliberate activity to gain academic advantage, including actions that have a negative effect on the integrity of the learning environment.”

Obviously, as Michael Geist says, sharing answers or plagiarizing is an obvious academic offence. But virtual study groups?

Come on!

So, let’s review the major criteria for creating a movement to help a brother out on Digg.

• Dude is a geek* … check!
• Involves web 2.0 / social media / Linux / Gaming / Apple / technology / Facebook … check!
• Dude is wrongfully targeted because he is a geek and is using one of the above … check!
• Dude facing tragic / legal / funny / sad consequences of his actions … check!

Mr. Avenir clearly meets all of the major criteria to get some tech support / love (but not all minor criteria, which might also include, but is not limited to, posting for your favourite Democratic nominee, sending up some hilarious pictures referencing your 733tness / geek cred, and composing a top 10 list of Terribly Obvious Things).

Seriously — this issue needs to explode across the blogosphere, and folks like Corey Doctorow (of BoingBoing) — who is also a local Torontonian — need to step in, particularly if the worst does happen ( he gets expelled?!). The story, as its been reported, is an absolute anachronistic disaster, and I think Ryerson needs to step up and explain how things have gotten as far as it has, and reassure the city, its students, and the world at large (if their reputation means much), that it isn’t out of step with Progress and how important these new Teh Internets are.

Update: The Facebook group that Chris Avenir was a part of may have had a description that suggested that people were merely copying answers, and this was the thrust behind all of the drama above.  I think that it raises the larger issue of how legitimate it is to having “homework” or “assignments” to be done which “count”, and whose answers are easily copied, in this day and age.  As I wrote over at Mat Ingram’s blog, all this does is drive those seeking to trade in answers in the social “underground”, or via private online groups, and you’ll never find them.  Answers to old tests and exams are a part of university life, and academia has to rise to the challenge of this reality in 2008.  Hammering students into apparent submission, because they’re using existing tools to propagate a very old practice hardly seems fair, insightful, or forward-looking 

* not yet indepedently verified
** photo courtesy of SuperProm

Nevertheless, what I got out of it was a few things:

1. Catching spam is a big priority: Digg is putting a lot of cash and resources into hiring people who can find algorithmic ways to tackle this stuff. And Kevin and Jay are keenly aware that the integrity of their site hinges on being able to catch spam — so much so that they self-censored themselves when trying to describe exactly how Digg promotes stuff, because they don’t want spammers using that information against Digg. One of the more interesting stories I heard was how one blog would pay a top Digger to submit stories — often good stories, quality stuff — have it promoted to the front page, and then weeks later, have that URL re-direct to another URL (or another page), thereby increasing traffic to that other page. Pretty crafty / black-hat stuff! Anyway, that’s just one example of the stuff they’re trying to fight off. Another one that they described was one enterprising guy hiring dozens (hundreds?) of people in eastern Europe (Romania?), and they caught the spamming as they were all from the same region (caught by IP address) which looked pretty suspicious.

2. They will never disclose their exit strategy: People ask them “all the time” whether Digg is going to get sold. They never talk about it, and probably never will talk about it. Rather, they want to invest their time into improving features with the site, such as the comments section and searching, and duplicate checking, which they readily admit, is something that they’re trying to fix.

3. Their emphasis is on improving Digg’s features — not its customer support: Ok, that’s not entirely true, because one of the things that’s coming in the pipeline (or so we’re told) is a forum of some kind for people to ask questions and have their questions answered; apparently there’s going to be two broad categories … one for general user type questions, and another for technical questions (how to get the Digg badge to work, and so on). What I actually mean is that there are a small but vocal (and important) group of Digg users, some of whom are considered the Digg elite (top Diggers, etc etc), who are pining for a way to get their emails answered in a personal, timely manner, about questions that probably have nothing to do with not understanding the FAQ. Questions around why people were banned, how they can get re-instated, blacklisting of URLs and the rationale for why that might be happening. These are all legitimate concerns, but it seems like Digg’s big focus is on features, and in spite of Jay’s reassurances (”we don’t just ban anyone; there’s a back and forth … a dialogue, before someone gets banned” for example), unconfirmed reports suggest that for many Diggers, that just hasn’t been their experience.

Other miscellania that I remember:

• There is no auto-bury function, rather just a sophisticated algorithm for judging which stories get promoted
• there is probably *as* a sophisticated function for burying just as their is for promoting
• “diversity” of people digging clearly has some importance (and weights each Digg differently, is what I got out of it). What diversity means exactly, they didn’t want to reveal.
• Kevin gets together with the guy from Delicious, and the other guy from Reddit (don’t know their names) to regularly commiserate over the never-ending battle between spammers, trying to game these social sites, and the kind of solutions they have to come up with to detect it, and then end it.
• There is only one guy “moderating” at any one time
• They don’t like to call him a moderator (they used another name, like “sys admin”, or something)
• They rely quite heavily on focus groups to help them decide which features suck, which ones they introduce, and to test new features.  There is a way to get into these groups, but by that time, either my own connection conked out, or they merely decided to pull the plug on the presentation.

The bottom line that I got out of it was they gave the appearance that they were trying to make Digg better — and that it takes time, and that they actually get most of the feedback that comes to them, positive and no.

Lastly, for the vocal Digger / social media crowd who are keen to get some better answers to their questions, unfortunately, while the mechanism that currently exists to get in touch with them is probably lacking (and sorely, from the sounds of some Diggers), its clear that this aspect of Digg isn’t something that’s a priority for them to fix — improving and adding new features to Digg is.

It’ll be interesting to see how that part of the debate evolves from townhall meeting, to townhall meeting.

More:

• Mat Ingram’s wrap up
• Social News Watch’s thoughts on the auto bury denial
• Mashable’s embeded Ustream of the entire Digg Town Hall
• CNet who thinks there was too much navel gazing