TechWinter

Using Digg for web PR is dangerous according to Gareth Knight, Steve Rubel, and E-Consultancy. I disagree.

I have posted about this myself and have tried Digg as a promotional tool and can’t say enough great things about doing just that. Both Steve and e-Consultancy sound like they are towing the party (geek) line not leveraging new technology to its greatest potential.

Joey Marchy points out (see comments section of Steve’s post or below for Quote)

……..I thought it would be a good idea to start digging our blog posts as a way of gaining exposure and contributing to the Digg community……

Ryan (see comments section of Steve’s post or below for Quote)

………..A good point, but if one has a story that would be interesting to consumers, as long as it is appropriately transparent, how can that be considered spam when the content is created by a community of which you are a part?……..

Jordon’s views differ from Ryan’s but ring true for me about how one goes about ethically promoting one’s self.

……….What I find is that people that are self-promoting their own stuff find themselves blocked from my inbox. Once that happens they no longer exist to people which doesn’t help anyone sadly…….

For more great comments check out the comments under Digg Value? The reality is that Digg is a pipe/channel/billboard to the rest of the world community, missing the opportunity to promote yourself or your work is a mistake - plain and simple. Now where I see an important discussion is how and when to use Digg.

In the traditional media world we have an expensive system of promoting corporate news, release a ‘Press Release’ let the ‘Press’ read and decide whether its news. If the news agency believes it’s news worthy then a story will get written about it. Sounds like a great idea, well yeah if you like the fact that someone other than yourself just decided what you would find interesting.

Digg allows for anyone (not just corporations with deep pockets) to release information to the world and for the world to decide (peer review) whether they find it interesting. Its an egalitarian system, which is good for society. We should make sure original (and hopefully worthy) content gets submitted regardless by whom.

With all the upgrades Digg has done over the last 12months I am shocked people still disagree with this standing.

Is this not why Digg instituted ‘undugg’, voting, etc? This was done to improve the system, to ensure you don’t get spam. Having those new features in place helps ensure that valueless post/article/etc doesn’t get any prime time viewers and to me that is great.

By the way for the record I would like to make clear, I don’t support unethical behaviour of any kind regardless of the context (Digg or otherwise) e.g. gaming tactics.

What do you think?