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Quantifying the digg Effect

I’m a huge fan of Digg Logodigg.com, it provides me, and millions of others, with a constant source of interesting content to ponder. And for many sites around the internet, it can provide a much valued boost in traffic. Of course, when you start talking about digg.com and traffic the infamous digg effect always comes up. Put simply, this is the latest take on being slashdotted. When a popular site allows for user generated content, specifically links, there will no doubt be a surge in traffic to that site. In many cases this results in that site becoming unavailable. I’ve recently fallen foul of the digg effect myself, with a site becoming unavailable until I moved hosts. It turns what should be an exciting time into more of a worrying one. On digg itself there have been numerous comments mentioning that a large number of sites seem to be going down. So, given these two factors, I wanted to see for myself. In this post you’ll see what I found out by recording some important data regarding the stories that make it to the digg.com front page over the course of a single day, thats 24 hours and EVERY story that made it to the venerable homepage spots. Read on for what I’ve discovered so far.

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Is YouTube aquisition an admission of failure?

So, by now, everyone on the entire world knows that Google has bought YouTube for more than one and a half billion dollars, in shares.  That’s an awful lot of little pieces of paper that say “1 Google Share” on them, no doubt there multi-coloured with a bit of AJAX thrown in.

So what does this mean for the internets, that great series of tubes we all know and love.  Obviously it seems like a huge amount of money, and it is, so why now?  And what’s the future for Google Video?  Many people are pointing to a potential bidding war for YouTube prompting Google’s action.  With Yahoo, MSN and Google all launching video services and none coming close to the success of YouTube, its not a bad call actually.  With YouTube’s huge popularity, eclipsing all similar sites it offered the possibility to capture a massive market share in one foul swoop.  Its a very tempting proposition, even considering the numerous legal issues that are constantly hovering around.

There is another possibility of course.  Many have suggested that the purchase of YouTube by Google is an admission of failure, they are admitting that their own Video service hasn’t worked.  And you know what, there not that far off the mark.  Google Video is clunky and hard to use.  For a company known for usability, they’ve really dropped the ball on Google Video.  This is something YouTube just nails.  Its easy to find, view and upload videos.  There’s one thing that seems to have bee overlooked, and that’s the target audience of the two services.  I may not be a typical user of the internet but I tend to see completely different types of video on Google Video to YouTube.  Videos on YouTube tend to be short and dirty, usually not the greatest quality and typically reasonably short.  The videos on Google Video tend to be longer and of a better quality.  This seems inevitable really.  YouTube was based on MMS messages, the short, low quality videos that people take on their mobile phones or digital cameras.  The videos you take without planning, when you see something you’ve just got to record.  It seems obvious that Google video is set up a little differently.  The player, by default is bigger, and the way you find content is different, you have to really know what you’re looking for.  This lends itself more to higher quality, paid for content, such as TV shows.  While its true that Google launched without any paid for content, it came quickly and was widely predicted, for obvious reasons.  Also remember that Google video moderates video allot more tightly than YouTube.

So what will come of this?  It seems like a fair bet that Google Video and YouTube will polarise in terms of content.  You can quite easily see a future where Google Video provides promotional and high quality paid for content and YouTube keeps well away at the other end of the market, sticking with videos the kids are uploading.  That way Google corners two opposing ends of the market.  If that is their aim, its a very clever tactic.

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