Last week, Harvard announced that Twitter was a place for self-obsessed dudes. Less scientifically proven, but no less widely rumored, is that Myspace is full of angsty poptarts, Digg is packed with Apple fanbois, and Facebook is loaded with wasted twenty-somethings (and now, their parents). Yes, just like in the real world, internet users cling to the people they relate to. While that means the content shared on any one site can be biased towards the preferences of its user base, it does pave the way for a few awesomely good site battles. At OneRiot, we index stuff that’s being shared across dozens of social sites to build our realtime search results, sucking up the current buzz of all the interwebs, not just one service. So, we compared the data from two of our favorites for a face-off. Digg and Twitter… take your corners.
Digg and Twitter are both social sharing sites, both of which are known for their fans’ obsession with buzzy new web content. But as it turns out, while both Twitter and Digg are insanely great sources for discovering new stuff, each site’s users are distinctly better at two different things: Finding and Sharing.
Check out the above graph, which tracks the sharing of several popular articles within three different categories over time. According to our analysis, Digg users frequently beat Twitter users to the punch when it came to first discovering the top stories of the day. What this graph appears to be telling us is that Digg users are kicking the birdies tail when it comes to knowing where the good stuff is - a statement that establishes those guys (and girls) as some of the internet’s finest trendsetters.
Digg users are kicking the birdies tail - establishing those guys (and girls) as some of the internet’s finest trendsetters.
However, a story won’t just become popular after one person decides to share it – it becomes popular when that story catches fire and tears across the net like a high school rumor. Knowing that, we scoured through a second set of numbers – the ones that showed us how many people shared that link on Twitter, or Dugg it on Digg. Interestingly, that left us with another clear victor.
Yep, Twitter users weren’t just edging ahead of Digg users in the battle to share good things across the web – they were dominating. All those RT’s and @replies really were getting the word out, spreading great internet content to the world’s rarest corners with the easy click of a mouse.
Twitter users weren’t just edging ahead of Digg users – they were dominating.
So what’s the better honor – finding the stuff that everyone’s going to be talking about, or making sure that chatter actually happens? Digg users would certainly tell you that they’re of a more cultivated breed, often actually reading the articles they share with their friends (Twitter users are continuously scolded for “the blind retweet”). But in the grand scheme of things, what holds more value – finding the words, or getting the word out?
We’ll let you make the final decision about that (because at the end of the day, we’re just glad that real people are making the news happen, and very happy to provide search results that reflect that). However, if you do have a reason to fight for your favorite site, leave us a comment. We’re going to print up some posters of these Digg vs Twitter icons - cause they make us giggle (props to Cypher13) - and a good argument might win ya one.
Interesting piece. Care to share the data behind your findings?
The data came from one day’s worth of API and data ingests for Twitter and Digg respectively - we chose a few popular links within the three categories and just tallied up stuff like shares and “first founds.” If you want to chat numbers, just ping me at chagen@oneriot.com.
I like the post guys, and the images. Being a twitter user, and not much of a Digg user, I’d have to agree with the results here. It’s nice to be in the action, creating the news, rather than rehashing and reexamining it.
Brian
Twitter is getting so popular only because of real time search. Hope in future all the search engines would concentrate only on real time results. Of course, at present also, almost all the Search engines are concentrating on real time search only. However how they will reach or dominate twitter, we have to see. In future we would see so many wars between all search engines in providing the best results for real time search.
Thanks
Sankar
The images you used to simulate the fight are good enough for me, however, i hate what has happened to both of these sites. They are used for spam these days. Sick nasty, SPAM.
I like twitter better, digg just got boring for me;
I could never get ANY traction in Digg. I don’t have all day to stay on there learning how either. So after a few weeks, I just abandoned it. I would submit and things would get voted down really fast while pics of naked celebs would be #1. Go figure.
Twitter gives me instant feedback. Usually good (which i suppose is good for the old ego!) but at least it was interactive whereas Digg was just judgmental.
PS i think the graphic is missing what birds usually do when they fly overhead of your newly washed car…. lolz
This article fails to address the fact that Digg has recently abandoned their internal ’shout’ feature in favor of external sharing on services like Facebook and Twitter. There is currently no way to push articles to your friends using Digg alone.
This fact may account for why Twitter dominates so brutally on the re-sharing portion of the article. How many of those retweets are digg.com shortened urls?
Hey Mechnoch - we pulled this data in early May, pre-shout abandonment, so sharing opportunities still existed within Digg. Good point though - pretty clear “Sharing” concession by Digg by just dropping the shout entirely.
What about the fact that many people are doing both? Interesting never the less.
I twitter, but I hardly ever see blogs and forums pointing to tweets, it’s always digg that gets referenced… because Digg gets more content and digg’s less volatile. Both platforms have their niche.