@Pinyo – There is no accounting for taste, posts have got on Digg that I had no clue people would consider earth-shattering, friends posts have failed to go anywhere that I thought were certain to do well, I have lost subscribers on posts I thought would rock and gained tons of links for posts I thought were pretty niche … all we can do is our best and hope people like it

Pinyo, I’ve experienced that same thing with an article I think is no big deal turning out to be fairly popular (though not so far as to get anywhere on Digg). Sure is a curious thing!

I had several posts on my blog that turned super popular. Usually, (1) I spent very little time writing them, and (2) I didn’t even try to promote them.

Go figure.

@Tad – No but I will

@Mitchell – At my school the bullies would have big gangs, kind of enforced popularity

Chris, you have written a great essay, here.
I think that each of us has tried different tactics to get attention to our articles:

E-mail: “Hi mom! Read my article!”
Google: “a href = yada-yada.com/blog”
Social: Hey, everyone, look at what I found on yada-yada.com!

In each case, as in high school, there is a widening circle of influence. Bullies are shunned (except by their mothers). Nerds are ignored, except by teachers and other nerds. Prom queens are loved by all (well, you know what I mean.)

Only in the case of the Prom Queen do we see the lack of self-promotion. (Obviously, that the Prom Queen voted for herself is not common knowledge!)

Cheers,

Mitch

@LaurenMarie – There are people who complain rightly about their good stuff getting buried but yeah it is often like that

@HMTKSteve -

referrer appears in the server logs to a “digg3.crawl.internal”

So people are misusing the term, right? Can you explain more? Looks interesting but I don’t know what that about the server logs refers to?

Anything other than that is not auto-bury.

I was half popular and half original in school. I think popularity can lie on either side of the spectrum. Totally original or totally playing the game.

@LaurenMarie – Good point about gaming the system or playing the game, and there is likely a fine line between the two

@Max Pool – Heh, yeah a friend of mine calls the lazy stuff “brain candy” I guess we all like that every now and then but sometimes you need something more substantial otherwise you get scurvy

In opposite, lazy Top 10 lists and flame posts get more attention on Digg or SU.

I am calling this the ‘Dan Brown’ affect. It seems few people have the stomach to read great literary authors like Dostoevsky, but Dan Brown well…a crappy book, 50 million copies, and a movie…

Blogs are a lot like HS, but they are also meant to be enjoyed by the author not just the readers. Don’t be somebody you don’t want to be just to be popular.