chrisg.com

It is well known that the top Digg/Netscape/Reddit/etc members can make a story. Their stories get front page status more than any others and they wield masses of influence. Want to see who the social media power-users are? WSJ.com has the details

A look at some of the hidden influencers deciding what is popular on the Internet.

To find the key influencers, The Wall Street Journal analyzed more than 25,000 submissions across six major sites.

Though it can take hundreds or thousands of votes to make it onto the
hot list at these sites, the Journal’s analysis found that a
substantial number of submissions originated with a handful of users.
At Digg, which has 900,000 registered users, 30 people were responsible
for submitting one-third of postings on the home page. At Netscape.com,
a single user named “STONERS” — in real life, computer programmer Ed
Southwood of Dayton, Ohio — was behind fully 217 stories over the
two-week period, or 13% of all stories that reached the most popular
list.