User Participation in Social Media: Digg Study

TL;DR

This study analyzes user participation patterns on Digg, revealing a spike in activity linked to controversy and a subsequent decline, with participation driven by social factors rather than ranking.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of user activity over a year, highlighting social influences on participation beyond ranking mechanisms.

Findings

User activity spiked in September 2006 due to controversy.

Post-controversy, user participation declined gradually.

Participation was motivated more by social factors than by ranking.

Abstract

The social news aggregator Digg allows users to submit and moderate stories by voting on (digging) them. As is true of most social sites, user participation on Digg is non-uniformly distributed, with few users contributing a disproportionate fraction of content. We studied user participation on Digg, to see whether it is motivated by competition, fueled by user ranking, or social factors, such as community acceptance. For our study we collected activity data of the top users weekly over the course of a year. We computed the number of stories users submitted, dugg or commented on weekly. We report a spike in user activity in September 2006, followed by a gradual decline, which seems unaffected by the elimination of user ranking. The spike can be explained by a controversy that broke out at the beginning of September 2006. We believe that the lasting acrimony that this incident has created led to a decline of top user participation on Digg.