I’ve recently had the joy of experiencing both the front page of Reddit and the front page of Digg within hours of each other.  The Reddit spike was welcomed warmly, pumping throughput from  about 10Mbps to 80Mbps, the highest that Fliggo had seen to date. Three hours later, the same video made an appearance on the front page of Digg, blowing up throughput to roughly 230Mbps.  Traffic subsided as people went to bed, and then picked up again the next day to about 180Mbps until its reign as the top story on the site had expired.

This is just an interesting note for people who are closely following either or both sites and their progress.  Here’s the visual aid:

The spikes correlate well with Alexa’s reading of their reach:

For those of you who are curious as to how to penetrate into Digg and/or Reddit, here’s the breakdown: To get your story onto the frontpage of Digg, it must almost always be submitted by a reputable Digg user.  This Digg user may often find your video on Reddit and then bring it over to Digg.  Though vice versa, from Digg to Reddit, is something that can be done by you yourself.  Your story has more chance of being seen by more people on Reddit as opposed to Digg if you submit it yourself.  Though, when your content is featured on Digg it hauls in massive traffic, whereas Reddit will almost always bring in about 5-10k views.  Digg should bring in a handsome 50-60k.

In the end, both sites are good tools for propagating your content to the internet, but remember, both communities are different and are interested in different things.  Digg generally harbors more videos and stories about video games, for instance, while Reddit is a good place to find political stories.  This is just one example.  Keep playing your cards and playing them right and eventually you’ll get a big hand.

On a side note, the best traffic comes from StumbleUpon.  They stay the longest, have the lowest bounce rate, and they come in consistent numbers.

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