Analysis: Top 100 Digg Users
Glen Allsopp / 
52 Comments / 
September 10th, 2007 / 
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I recently took a look at the top 50 StumbleUpon users but now it’s time for the Top 100 Digg users, the sample was taken from a look at the Top Users available here, having been removed from the Digg site a while ago the API is used to build that data.
This time I won’t be giving commentary on each item so that it’s easier to digest (and quicker) but I will say this:
Where Kevin Rose was the top result I also showed the top result of someone who isn’t the site owner and their stats. I wanted to make clear aswell that 1 Top User had their profile removed so Friends, Active and Profile views may vary slightly.
Hello Digg Users, Sorry for the Slight Down time
Number of Stories Gone Popular (Hit the homepage)
- Highest: 1421 (MrBabyMan)
- Lowest: 90
- Average: 281
- Median: 176.5
Number of Stories Submitted
- Highest: 6744 (Bonlebon)
- Lowest: 201
- Average: 1369
- Median: 1051
Percentage of Submissions that Hit the Homepage
- Highest: 100% (Kevin Rose) / 67% (WebTickle)
- Lowest: 3.3%
- Average: 25%
- Median: 20%
Number of Stories Dugg
- Highest: 75,111 (Zaibatsu)
- Lowest: 758
- Average: 13,486
- Median: 10,821
Number of Profile Views received
- Highest: 665,162 (Kevin Rose) / 115,682 (DigitalGopher)
- Lowest: 6,788
- Average: 34,522
- Median: 21,920
Number of account Friends
- Highest: 1001
- Lowest: 4
- Average: 261
- Median: 162
Number of Top Users Still Active (In the last 30 days)
Please note that 1 Top User had their profile removed, hence the results for only 99 users.
Membership Length (In Months)
- Highest: 33 Months
- Lowest: 4 Months
- Average: 20 Months
- Median: 21 Months
Stats Totals
- Profile Views: 3,452,267
- Dugg: 1,348,604
- Submitted: 136,996
- Gone Popular: 28,186
- Profile Friends: 25,935
- Referrals: 21 - Only 9 Members had Referred anyone
Why Did I Do this?
I did it for a number of reasons. Firstly because I was interested, how many of the top users were still actually active on the site and how many stories had they really submitted overall, I think the results for that are pretty incredible.
There will always be haters who ask ‘Whats the point’, as I always say I make these for my own personal knowledge and to have something to look back over. Most of the top users have been members for nearly two years so thats a lot of dedication to one site.
I hope you found it as informative as I did!
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What’s also interesting about Digg is, that this top 100 really dominate the community along with Kevin Rose (who has 101% front page ratio). This blatant elitism of the Digg system is one of the reasons why I think Digg is useless for most uders and webmasters. Stories get dugg for being submitted by the right user not for being great.
Read this:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/top-100-digg-users-control-56-of-diggs-homepage-content
Completely agree Tad, that is why I added the other user’s stats in the posts because theres some serious bias on his account.
Digg is a “community” like the USSR was a free country.
It’s not blatant elitism, actually. That distribution follows something called a “power law”, and is known to arise naturally in most communities of this type. You also see it in the distribution of traffic to blogs, traffic to search engines, traffic to social networking sites, etc.
In the book “Linked: The New Science of Networks” by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, much coverage is given to this phenomenon. It’s quite interesting.
What a great point! In every market there are those that stand above the rest!
There is a class status system based on the number of Frontpage articles. The upper echelon of Digg are of course going to have more frontpaged items because the Digg algorithm increases the value of their digg, and since some of them are taking bribes or work at x blog, you’ll notice that the same 5 sites start to make it weekly on to Digg because they are in part owned, run or affiliated with some of these top Diggers. I mean many of the top diggers have blogs which they regularly submit to Digg and of course it makes it to the frontpage.
But also you have to realize that the Top Diggers submit a lot more content to digg then the average user, so it can be expected that out of the sheer volume they send, some have to make it the frontpage.
[...] have hundreds of different brands, which would make these results inaccurate. Maybe if I had some spare hours left… Push my Buttons! submit_url = [...]
Great post. It’s about time someone did an in-depth on the Digg top 100. Stumbled and Sphunn
Thanks matt, glad you liked it
When all the stats were tabulated I was expecting an “AH-HA moment”, but it never came
In any case, nicely done and appreciate the hardwork.
Like I say, it was more out of interest than to find anything spectacular. Thanks for stopping by and thanks for the kind words!
Nice work Glen.
A lot of hard work… keep it up buddy.
Thanks PPC, I’ll do my best
It would have been interesting to see how many fans each digg user had, rather than just how many they had befriended.
I guess there are a couple more things you could have put into it, including comments like someone mentioned on Digg but maybe that would have been going a bit too far. Definitely something I will think about Anita if i ever make a revision.
Thanks for stopping by as always!
great stuff Glen. Did you create the wordpress mirror ? Congrats on the digg traffic
Becky
Hey Becky, thanks. Yeah I created it…Noo my Digg identity is revealed ;). Guess it doesn’t matter now because the host said the server is fine
What a load of anal-retentive crap.
There is absolutely nothing of interest in this… i want my 2 minutes back
Why thank you Sir. You’ve given me a great example of how Social Media is a two-way conversation so I’ll let the criticism stay.
I told you so, you get on the Digg front page and you get the most obnoxious mob on the face of the earth.
haha i was expecting it, but i was also expecting a lot more
I like how the SEO con artist are all over this - go do something useful….
You two Sir, I like how the two negative comments were left by two people who don’t reveal their info
Something useful like leave comments on a blog?
Thanks for stopping by!
Now you can also link my SEO haters post
I will on my weekly round-up
405 diggs and two bitter people who have nothing nice to say. i’m glad you handle this very professional glenn. Great post man you deserve all the attention with this one
you put more effort into your posts than most other bloggers your great 
haha thanks mate, much appreciated
Wow…thanks for revealing this about digg. It looks like the “devil is in the details” ! One top user was axed ? Thanks for doing this work, and I will consider this in the future. Best to ya…
yep, according to another top user I speak too it was because they created a lot of ’sock puppet’ accounts
Thanks for stopping by
… and I was banned by Digg for much less
LoL, didn’t know you were banned mate
Are there stats available for who the top diggers digg?
Also, who diggs the top diggers?
How many stories submitted by the bottom 80% of tge diggers make it to the front page? This can also how many stories the top 20% of the diggers submit and the top bottom 80% submit. By submitting more stories, there may be more chances of the story being dugg.
The top diggers will digg anything that they want to Digg, submissions for friends, upcoming, random strories they have seen. Just like anyone else, or did you mean submit?
The top diggers submissions are initially dugg by their friends and then others get to view them as they make it onto upcoming pages, links on the initial website or homepage etc.
Funny they took my story offline digg as expected. And still users like to use Digg, just like chef said ” Its not the content that digg cares these days about but by who posts it ” sheesh .
You can read full article i have also now attached screenshot that it was actually posted on digg :).
http://www.bookmarkmyservices.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94
Cheers
Sadly you have to log in on that page…
They must have changed it, I viewed it OK yesterday
Just to add, you were quoted a couple of times and there’s a bit of a rant about Kevin Rose
Actually story was removed/moved to staff members section as on digg users thought it was a big list of complaint and burried story. So it served no purpose. But Glen you said you visited and read, what was your take on the story?
I definitely think Digg should respond, no longer is Digg about the members (all members) but Kevin has some serious leverage over the community, it is his site though.
Google have been knonw to rank their services very highly and very quickly on their search results
Hey,
Digg banned me for unknown reason. I added 10 stories in a day. I haven’t got any digg too. Not sure why they banned me.
What kind of stories were they? All from the same site? Anything porn related?
Hi
Very interesting information! Thanks!
Bye
Stats are interesting - to a point. To think people can submit stories and get thousands of diggs is an interesting phenomenon I’ve yet to experience. With anything, time and dedication is probably useful, no?
Giving something to the site is always better than just trying to receive
I like to think that you get out of something what you put in
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cool statistics