Do Digg & Del.icio.us Buttons Work?
by Patrick Ruffini :: February 3rd, 2007 12:17 amTodd Zeigler over at Bivings has a post up on the media’s adoption of social bookmarking tools. It seems like more and more media sites are adopting buttons to Digg, del.icio.us, and Facebook it, not to mention every blogger looking to bling out their sites in 16×16 goodness.
Still, I wondered just how effective the Digg and del.icio.us buttons are. So I looked it up. Since launching this site about a month ago, I’ve gotten about 21 referrals from del.icio.us and 3 referrals from Digg. (Yeah… not exactly Earth-shattering.) Only one article has been Dugg, with 10 total Diggs. By contrast, a smallish but still greater number of pages have been del.icio.us’d, from a combined 24 bookmarks on the 2008 Wire main page to 12 to my homepage to 4 posts from the new version of the site.
I think this speaks to the effectiveness of these tools. Frankly, I’m not sure a tool like Digg can work as a major political portal — the quickest way to rise in the politics section is to say “IHateBushitler” because in the political world (unlike technology), there isn’t really an objective measure of quality or coolness, just partisanship. Digg is also a crapshoot; maybe one post in 1,000 has a chance of making it to the main page. And if it’s that good, I suspect people will find a way of Digging it without the embedded button on your site.
Meanwhile, a tool like like del.icio.us which isn’t intended to drive oodles of traffic, gets more traction and probably generates more quality hits than a social news site like Digg. That’s because it’s a very useful tool no matter what field you’re in. While Digg is plagued by a low signal-to-noise ratio (even on the home page), you know that if someone has del.icio.us’d your content, it’s important to them and they will refer to it and keep coming back to it.
Bottom line: Because of this fact, I’ll probably keep the del.icio.us icon, but will look to junk the Digg icon at the first opportunity.
With all sorts of widgets and badges popping up all over the place, some more useful than others, it’s important to have metrics that tell us which of them (if any) actually work. What I don’t understand is bloggers who do this:
Wired News has dubbed this phenomenon “Iconistan” and for good reason. Not only have you thoroughly confused your readers, but you’ve spread whatever meager traffic these social bookmarking sites would generate over 10 sites instead of two. Thanks, but I’ll stick with the frontrunner, del.icio.us, if only to make all the icons go away!
Tagged: del.icio.us 
digg icons social bookmarking
Comments (52) 
Trackbacks (16) 
del.icio.us 
digg it 
subscribe
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
On our blog for a long time we included email, del.icio.us and digg buttons. By far the most used of the three was the old fashioned email this story function. Bloggers fixate on these social bookmarking sites, but I think for most folks a simple email this function is the most effective way to encourage people to share your content.
I love Digg but I’ve never placed a Digg icon on a site. I don’t think they have much value for webmasters.
In addition to the low signal to noise ratio, I doubt Digg users can be induced to stay. It’s the nature of the community to pop in, read one article, and go back to Digg to look for the next interesting link.
I use Digg frequently and can’t remember the domain name of a single site I’ve visited from Digg.
information …
breast augmentation atlanta breast augmentation new jersey
information …
houston breast augmentation houston breast augmentation
breast augmentation southern california san diego breast augmentation
Thank you for your site.
arizona augmentations breast breast denver reduction
Thank you for your site.
salmon fishing+/ whittier alaska
interesting thank you…
alaska fishing+ salmon southeast sport
interesting thank you…
alaska charter fishing+ king salmon southeast
And I cannot find… Send the information! To whom is the link to the necessary?
cialis comparison levitra viagra http://pharmap.yoll.net/cialis-comparison-levitra-viagra.html
buy 30mg phentermine no prescriptions
buy 30mg phentermine no prescriptions http://www.xanga.com/qaswde/618320850/buy-30mg-phentermine-no-prescriptions.html
buy 30mg phentermine no prescriptions
buy 30mg phentermine no prescriptions
phentermine online pharmacy no prescriptions
phentermine online pharmacy no prescriptions
enterprise car rental coupon codes
enterprise car rental coupon codes
affordable car new rental zealand
affordable car new rental zealand
Thanks for this. It’s given me food for thought. 
prescription no cheap phentermine month prescription no phentermine
[…] What about those pesky social bookmarking icons on the bottom of every post hereabouts? I provide some metrics. Q. What does it take to set up e-mail for a new small business involving a mobile device and legacy Gmail accounts up the wazoo? A. Lots of banging your head against a wall. Plus, why those Snap preview icons are a bad idea, and I peg the total RSS reading universe in the United States at 3.5 million. […]
[…] Patrick Ruffini is going to junk his digg icon (like mine below) because it’s simply not producing traffic, e.g., results. This space shares that same traffic pattern. […]
[…] more quality hits than a social news site like Digg. (tags: delicious bookmarking tagging) permalink | categories: All other | Time posted: 12:20 am on Sunday, February 4th,2007 […]
[…] Ruffini is no great fan of the social bookmarking buttos that litter the bottom of many a blog post, but if the Giuliani campaign is using these ones, he must have decided these are the ones that work. That, or he was overruled. Regardless, Giuliani site is the only campaign to make these tools standard across the site. […]
black jack for…
Lots of free casino cash bonus party casino…
poker anleitung texas holdem…
Ironically poker in tour casino avec bonus…
poker en ligne paypal…
As the casino online bonus casino on net…
apprendre poker gratuites…
Furthermore faxless cash advance sistemas ruletas…
texas holdem all in…
Atmen mobile phone ringtones virgin giocare a poker…
poker spiel download texas hold…
Lots of free poker free casino gambling…
poker regeln de…
As shown in live action poker free omaha poker…
jeu jack black…
Never free 2 pac ringtones free phone ringtones…
play blackjack online play blackjack online free blackjack money online play…
In need of strip poker party 1000 advance cash faxing no…
free info personal remember ringtones voice free info personal remember ringtones…
Do casino internacional portal web ringtones for lg verizon cell phone…
poker en ligne arnaque…
For poker 100 gratuites poker online texas tour de poker jeu poker texas jeux de voiture gratuites…
regle du poker…
An telecharger world poker jouer online poker tour jeu video poker jeux noel de jeux…