Over the last few months we have seen a lot of change in social media. Especially amongst the two social powerhouses Reddit and Digg. (I’m not even going to mention Propeller because it’s recent redesign was an utter failure. Oops!)
Throughout the changes, we have seen a large number of top Digg users moving over to Reddit. Where you still have an avid userbase on Reddit who will kill the every mention of Digg, you can actually get Reddit stories to the front page of Digg now with the majority of the comments pro Reddit and anti Digg.
This might be the cause for one of the biggest changes I have noticed over the last month or so… Traffic.
Believe it or not, I have had numerous occasions over the last month, where Reddit has sent more traffic than being on the front page of Digg.
This last week we published an interesting offbeat story on one of my blogs that typically does well in both Digg and Reddit.
The story never actually made it to the front page of Reddit, but it did make it to the front page of Digg. What was amazing was when I took a look at the traffic both had sent, Reddit actually sent more traffic to the story and it was on the the front page of Digg, not Reddit.
Reddit sent around 5,000 visits with Digg sending around 4,800 visits.
Now I know the numbers above might not seem too impressive to some, but if you are familiar with the traffic trends on both site then you will find this quite impressive.
I have talked to many other site owners who are finding the same thing; Reddit is sending about the same, if not more traffic than Digg is for front page stories.
Of course there are always other factors in play so I waited until I had confirmation from other major sites and had seen it happen multiple times personally, before blogging about it.
So where once Digg was the top name when it came to social communities, we are finding Reddit to be stepping it up and possibly overcoming Digg as the top social media community.
Do you have some similar or different results? If so, please comment about them in the comments below.
In some instances now, Reddit is indeed sending more traffic than Digg … maybe in 10% of cases. I’ve also noticed though a general upward trend in traffic sent from Reddit, and a downward trend in traffic sent from Digg.
very interesting! I’ll definitely be watching this. So far I haven’t seen it yet, but we’ll see..
People are getting sick of looking at the junk that is on the Digg front page. I think that Digg has done themselves a great disservice by playing around with their algo too much. People are starting to realize that reddit breaks news faster and has higher quality content on the front page.
I’d say that if a story gets to the top of the front page of reddit around 11am Eastern and hangs around through the evening it will send more traffic then a digg that hits too early or too late. So unless your digg has its 25 minutes of fame between 11am Eastern and 5pm Eastern, there’s a good chance that reddit will send more traffic.
At least that’s been my experience.
Ok. Brent took out the whipping stick and told me that I was wrong about time of day.
I will acknowledge that there has been about a 50% drop in digg traffic over the last month. It is true. But it still rocks reddit’s ass as a distribution point for the big boys of MSM.
I have seen a huge increase in traffic from reddit as well. And coming from a die hard digg fan… it sucks now.
reddit will prevail. How do you like them apples Kevin?
With digg, you have to work a lot for something you’re not really sure you’re gonna get: traffic. The story has to be really good to get hot in all, otherwise it will be pushed to the second page. With reddit, the system is different: faster frontpage, the time it stays there is determined by the number of votes.
All in all, I’m leaning more towards reddit and I’m guessing it will continue to grow.
wow. that’s crazy.
It used to be that Digg’s Front Page was the ‘Holy Grail’ of web traffic. But, as we all know too well, if you don’t hit the Front Page… the traffic from Digg is minimal. I suspect from all the blind-digging that’s going on.
Lately, I’ve been on Reddit more & more. I’ve grown quite bored of digg. But StumbleUpon is still my favorite… the traffic from there just never seems to stop.
Is it subject matter related?
For example if it’s politics more from Reddit and if science more from Digg?
I have also found myself using Reddit far more as of late than Digg. I prefer the way it presents the stories to the users, although it still has the problem of having too many duplicate stories, especially that reach the front page. Luckily they come and go pretty quickly.
Another site that I've started checking in with is called Folllow. They've sort of attacked the social news genre from a slightly different angle. http://www.folllow.com
Amazing! I would have never seen this coming. However, did you say the front page of digg only sent 4,800. That number seems very low.
@ryan – hehe.. Also note that Reddit has been doing a much better job of turning into links. I have seen a steady increase in that regard as well..
@george – I actually would not publish this article if it was possible to be something that simple. I have over 10 examples of various content types and various domains.
It has also been reported to me, before even doing this, from many other very reliable sources that this is happening across the board.
@Utah SEO – Yes I did brother. When i first had this happen I immediately added 2 other forms of tracking to my sites because I thought it was an error on Google’s part. A month later and numerous examples… there is no error.
Those are popular but I like http://www.mixx.com and http://www.subbmitt.com too.
I think it’s on the kind of story you are posting. Both social sites almost have the same members so I guess the difference is not really that big.
Thanks so much for this post and information about Reddit. Up until now, I have never really given reddit a chance…I think now I may start adding it into the mix…thanks!
totally right. for me, usual rate is like this: for 100 visitors from reddit, i have about 50 from stumbleupon, 30 from mixx, 10 from propeller before redisign, i have no enough data now) and 5 from digg. this is many-months statistic.
I’d be pretty upset if a front page Digg article drove less than 100,000 visitors. How did you determine ‘front page of Digg’? ColonelTribune has had quite a few hit the front page of Digg and . . . they drive a hell of a lot of traffic.
Anyway . . .
I’ve just had 2 stories FP on digg and reddit. Digg got me about 37k, reddit about 3.7k, slashdot about 6.5k. Can’t say I’m too impressed with reddit but it is easy to work with for the most part.
Brent,
Yes I have noticed that Reddit often times send more traffic than Digg.
I haven't been experiencing much of difference between the two, but then again, I've only recently started using them and the traffic is till pretty low.