This is from my blog (signature). Thought it would spark some interesting conversation. Feel free to Digg It!
From about 12 noon on March 2nd through 5pm, the popular social bookmarking site Digg.com was “out of service”. The following page appeared in it’s place (see eurekadiary.com):
A conspiracy theorist would look for a pattern in the blogs linked to:
Alright, so there probably isn’t any conspiracy… but it wouldn’t have been a bad idea. Digg probably could have capitalized on this opportunity by generating thousands of dollars of revenue. If this down time had been “planned” and each of these text links were sold to clients, how much do you think people would pay? Does your site have a large and steady flow of traffic? Maybe every once in awhile you want to schedule 6 hours of “down time” to place a line of text saying, “We’re performing maintenence and the site will be back shortly”. Throw down some adsense, affiliate links or sell private text links. Or take the “recommended sites” approach, as Digg did, and link to some of your lesser known sites to filter traffic and attention their way (subtly).
I can’t speculate on the actual reasons why Digg was down. It was likely, as they mentioned, simple maintenence, updating and security issues. Still, it’s interesting to think of the possibilities and how Digg could have turned this small negative into a really big positive (monetarily speaking). Challenges are opportunities in disguise.
What do YOU think?
From about 12 noon on March 2nd through 5pm, the popular social bookmarking site Digg.com was “out of service”. The following page appeared in it’s place (see eurekadiary.com):
Digg recieves an inexorbitant amount of traffic each day and sites making it Digg’s front page can experience hundreds of hits each second! While they claim to be making some “changes”, could there be alterior motives?
Whether or not there are alterior motives or even a conspiracy is subjective, but one thing is for sure: the 19 blogs listed during this significant amount of Digg Downtime are sure to experience an immense amount of traffic! The way these blogs are listed would make one believe that each Digg Staff Member was able to recommend one website which recieves a link.
A conspiracy theorist would look for a pattern in the blogs linked to:
- Official site for the band Oasis
- Official site for the band They Might Be Giants
- Suicide Girls (a risque site of model photos)
- Ask A Ninja (Ridiculous Humor)
- BBC News
Alright, so there probably isn’t any conspiracy… but it wouldn’t have been a bad idea. Digg probably could have capitalized on this opportunity by generating thousands of dollars of revenue. If this down time had been “planned” and each of these text links were sold to clients, how much do you think people would pay? Does your site have a large and steady flow of traffic? Maybe every once in awhile you want to schedule 6 hours of “down time” to place a line of text saying, “We’re performing maintenence and the site will be back shortly”. Throw down some adsense, affiliate links or sell private text links. Or take the “recommended sites” approach, as Digg did, and link to some of your lesser known sites to filter traffic and attention their way (subtly).
I can’t speculate on the actual reasons why Digg was down. It was likely, as they mentioned, simple maintenence, updating and security issues. Still, it’s interesting to think of the possibilities and how Digg could have turned this small negative into a really big positive (monetarily speaking). Challenges are opportunities in disguise.
What do YOU think?
