Is there Evidence of DriveBy Digging?

X Close this window There has been considerable speculation accusing Digg users of DriveBy Digging -- digging without actually reading the stories that are linked to. We co... http://www.wisegeek.com/is-there-evidence-of-driveby-digging. ... more

There has been considerable speculation accusing Digg users of DriveBy Digging -- digging without actually reading the stories that are linked to. We conducted a little more research, and you may be surprised what we uncovered. We know of one webmaster who says that even after his website crashed from the Digg Effect, his post continuted to receive Diggs. His site was completely inaccessable for over an hour, but his Digg-count was still increasing rapidly. He interpreted this as proof that many Diggers digg stories even though they haven't read them. While this is probably accurate, we decided that we needed a little more evidence of DriveBy Digging. To gather the required data, we spent some time with Digg Spy, monitoring real-time Digg activity. We unchecked all the checkboxes except "show dugg stories." Even with these restrictions, new rows are added at a rate of about one per two seconds (even faster at busy times of the day). While this might not qualify as absolute proof, we th ... more