A miiiiillion users… screams the headline of a post by Kevin Rose, the co-founder of social news site, Digg.com. A million might be a reason to celebrate (and we all love a good party), but it is also time to ask the question: only a million!
Given how much influence Digg has had on the whole media space - everyone from the might The New York Times to Washington Post to lowly folks like us have added a Digg This button - I had thought the number of Digg users would be much higher. Much much higher, justifying close to $11.5 million in venture investment.
Now, I love Digg like any other geek, but one has to wonder how many of these “one million” users are duplicates or fake accounts. A million-user mark is also a sign that Digg has a long way to go before it overcomes its geeky roots and not be another TiVo.
All right Kevin, time to get back to work. Don’t let me catch you at some Web 2.0 party!
Photo by Thomas Hawk, hosted on Flickr
20 comments so far
9:32 AM PT
Om, I believe it’s registered users. I can guarantee for every registered user there are at least 10 who just view the news on Digg. A million registered users is quite a lot when one considers this.
9:41 AM PT
That’s what i understood, because only registered users can vote. I am pretty clear that it is not the visitor - I think the power is in the userbase because that’s what ensures the visitors keep coming back to read the stories. my two cents
9:43 AM PT
Is it? Netvibes, for example, has over 5M registered users.
I too was surprised to hear Digg only has 1M registered users. Given the fawning in the press claiming Digg represents a fundamental shift in how we consume the news, given that sites like USA Today and Netscape are imitating Digg, I would think there would be more evidence of mainstream interest.
10:09 AM PT
That’s a lot of YOY growth. But I’m curious as to how much of that is pure growth and not spam related. There have been several sites that have cropped up in order to “game” Digg and a lot of advertisers have tried to use it to promote their products/services/websites.
There has to have been a good amount of new accounts created for these purposes.
Micah
http://foodforethought.wordpress.com
11:05 AM PT
I think this is just the beginning for Digg… Especially if “the first million was the hardest” proves to be true. Does anyone know information about the geography of their users? I’d be interested in knowing what percent are from US and what their largest foreign users are.
11:06 AM PT
Greg,
Not buying into the Netvibes numbers as well - there is a lot of data being thrown around without any validation.
I have to commend Kevin for being open to the idea of making the numbers public and being open to ridicule from pissants like myself.
Anyway, I do agree - Digg is a game changer in terms of media consumption.
11:07 AM PT
Brian, they don’t seem to have released that information - though I can ping Kevin and find out for you?
11:23 AM PT
Wow, yeah that would great… If China or India, for instance, likes to Digg, that might prove to be a valuable source of future users as broadband access increases there and more internet users come online. This first million users Digg has now might just be a drop in the bucket.
1:19 PM PT
Digg’s “bury brigade” is ruining what could be an excellent site, but now is somewhat worthless.
1:22 PM PT
You don’t need to be a registered user of Digg to access the content though. Sure there may only be a million registered users but how many more regularly visit Digg just to find stories?
1:50 PM PT
Om,
I’m one of the regular user of digg and in every machine I don’t logged into my digg account. So, sometime I’m passive user. I would guess, lot’s of user are just passive user. May be 20:1 :-)
More than the registered user, how much traffic they are on the site that matters. For example, Google didn’t had any user user before they started the Gmail and personalized page. But, their traffic was tremendous. One can consider it as Google for news.
Go Digg, Go!!
2:19 PM PT
I tend to think that it’s a “true one million” users because it seems low.
Why does it seem low? Because other social sites report so many more users, but I often wonder if they count cookies (not registrations) as users.
Cheers to Digg’s one million users!
7:10 PM PT
The ratio of participation to readership is generally tiny. I took a look at one site that offered a lot of stats and to get to the top of the top commented, it only took 4% of what it took to get to the top of most viewed. To get to position 10, less than 2%.
All the stats here:
http://blog.agrawals.org/2007/03/08/hard-numbers-on-reader-participation/
7:12 PM PT
[...] the same question, noting that Digg should have had a higher amount of users, justifying the $11.5 million investment. So, I think the real question is to ask now, what will Digg become? Digg evidently is [...]
8:29 PM PT
What’s interesting is that as popular as Digg is, the number of voters is actually quite small.
It reminds me of U.S. Presidential elections. Only a fraction (of even registered voters) actually vote; yet look at the popularity.
9:44 PM PT
Guys,
I am with you - like most I love to discover stories there, even if i don’t digg them. I just think they need to get more people involved and become users so the site reflects even more mainstream choice.
6:54 AM PT
1 million users? That’s it? http://www.cavengernews.com has been around for a much shorter time and has more users than that…..are you kiddding me?
3:11 AM PT
Yahoo’s official Blog (which has just been redesigned) has just added a Digg button -
They normally only promote their own properties - so the Digg button is right along side the Yahoo Bookmarks Delicious and MyBlogLog
11:01 AM PT
[...] recently announced an open API, and has spawned mashups like ‘Who Is Digging You?’. Another geeky tool for Digg’s 1.2 million users! Share/E-mail | Sphere | Print | Topic: Web | Tags: [...]
1:01 AM PT
[...] comments from Digg users who “digg” themselfs like crazy, up and down. They are called the Digg army. Like a real army, they have commanders who order to their troups to digg a certain article they [...]
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