5 ms·

AMA: My job was to game Digg using infographics

norki 16y ago
http://www.pzhipzf.pl http://www.pzhipzf.pl Zwierzęta Futerkowe - Skórki wiązane są po przesortowaniu, tzw. loty (np. http://www.pzhipzf.pl/pl/norki-dziko-zyjace-w-polsce http://www.pzhipzf.pl/pl/norki-dziko-zyjace-w-polsce norek po 100-120 sztuk, http://www.pzhipzf.pl/pl/dzikie-i-hodowlane-zwierzeta-gospodarskie http://www.pzhipzf.pl/pl/dzikie-i-hodowlane-zwierzeta-gospod... lisów po 20-25 sztuk), zakupowane są na pokrywanie potrzeb krajowych i na eksport. Obrót handlowy skupia się międzynarodowych targach, tzw. aukcjach futrzarskich, organizowanych raz lub dwa razy do roku w Nowym Jorku, Londynie, Helsinkach, Petersburgu, Lipsku, Sztokholmie, Oslo i w innych miastach. Dystrybucja odbywa się wg ustalonego planu, na rzecz zakładów pracy oraz instytucji handlowych. Zakupione partie skór przekazywane są do dalszej obróbki, tzn. wyprawiania, barwienia oraz obróbki maszynowej (strzyżenie, czesanie, epilowanie i inne).
ilovecomputers 16y ago
The Oatmeal responds: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d7e24/my_job_was_to_game_digg_using_infographics_voting/c0y4tip http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d7e24/my_job_was_to_ga...
- tptacek 16y ago
  And his response is (aggressively paraphrased): "it's probably spammy, but so what? they're my friends, they're a small shop, and the guy pointing it out is probably a competitor." Not very compelling.
  - ergo98 16y ago
    His response is horrendous. I've enjoyed a couple of his entries (although they get a little formulaic), but that response had him dropping several notches.
tptacek 16y ago
If this is true (and it rings truthy to me), then (a) this AMA is a service to humanity, and (b) we should start aggressively flagging these things off the site. I say this mostly because I hate those stupid infographics; chartjunk!
- _delirium 16y ago
  I like an observation I ran across (http://www.bogost.com/blog/information_is_beautiful.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/information_is_beautiful.shtml): The problem is this: infographics like this may be beautiful, but they are not necessarily informative. Specifically, pretty charts often fail to synthesize the meaning, relevance, and impact of information as it pertains to decision making. I think they're fine in the same way that comics can be fine: Dilbert is funny because you recognize things in it, not because it's giving you important new information about business. It can be nice to see something you're already familiar with presented in an eye-catching, aesthetically pleasing way, and it might even make a nice poster for the office or something. But as ways of conveying information, the vast majority I run across aren't that good. Often a boring old two-axis scatterplot would be more informative than the flashy infographics (especially if it had usefully labeled axes and quoted its data source).
  - tptacek 16y ago
    If you haven't read VDQI: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi I highly recommend it. It was written decades ago and presages all of this; it tears into this USA Today chartjunky design style with a satisfying fervor. In this case, while the crappiness of the design may be what sets me off, the license to complain about it comes from the fact that it's apparently all part of a huge SEO scam.
mattmiller 16y ago
I don't see how this is spam, and I am surprised that people are offended that the authors of these info graphics are trying to make money. They drew up an info graphic that you thought was entertaining. In exchange you show your friends by linking that site. This is no different than any other type of link bait, be it an inflammatory article or some sort of interactive map you would see on the New Your Times website. Spam is different. Spam is junk blog comments with a link to another website. Those comments bring no value and diminish the value of the site. You would never link to one of those comments to show your friends like you link to these info graphics.
- tptacek 16y ago
  Not complicated! They are asking you to repay the favor of creating the infographic by lying to Google and claiming that a site that paid them is the best resource on the internet for mesothelioma or college textbooks or whatnot.
  - vinhboy 16y ago
    This is no different than a startup paying an SEO company. In the end, both places researched and surfaced something that the end user will find interesting. I dont see anything wrong with that. I think it's Google's job to decide what is relevant or not in the search result. Personally for me, I am waiting for the day when Google decides to de-list sites like eHow. PS. sorry mattmiller, I accidently down-arrowed you, and I can't undo it. I meant to up-arrow you.
    - mattmiller 16y ago
      I don't think Google will do that. I think one of two things will happen: -A lot of smaller vertical search sites will pop up. MedicalInfoSearch.com will not show entertainment or economics info, and its ranking will not be based on backlinks from entertainment or economics sites. I think we are seeing the beginnings of this with Blekko. -Or, and I say this at the risk of sounding like one of those social media people, the link graph will start to give more and more weight to Facebook Likes and link sharing and twitter sharing and any future social network sharing. If you think about it, this was the reason Google went with the backlink strategy to begin with. Back then they had no social networks, so they only way someone could vote for a site was by putting a link to it on their website. If you did not have a website you did not get a vote. Now almost everyone has the capacity to vote on a websites quality, but for some reason only website owners are allowed to. Social networks love info graphics, in this future you are going to see a lot of them.
zhyder 16y ago
This graphic, mentioned in the comments (but not created by the OP), is a pretty good example: http://www.onlineeducation.net/bottled_water http://www.onlineeducation.net/bottled_water Note url and anchor text.
marknutter 16y ago
This isn't surprising at all. In fact, I met and worked with someone on an unrelated contract who ran a small shop that did just this. It made me happy I stopped using digg years ago. Digg could have solved a lot of these problems early on by introducing a couple very simple features: first, allow users to block domains, and second, allow users to block users. I can't remember how many times cracked.com or holytaco.com would show up on the frontpage and make me cringe. Reddit is starting to suffer from the same thing. The fundamental problem with Digg and also with Reddit somewhat is that nobody wants to sit and curate the upcoming stories, and upcoming stories require far too many votes to catch steam and have a chance at hitting the front page. So it falls to a small handful of power users who have a network of friends built up who are willing to vote on their stories. Digg essentially became an aggregator of cheap, popcorn content; the kind of stuff non-tech savvy people forward around on email. Hacker News is still good because it's a small niche of highly tech-savvy people, but if it gets to popular it will run into the exact same issues. I think the new Digg is actually a good step in the right direction. The truly best way to get good content is to decide yourself where it comes from. I get my best links from Twitter because I follow people who are interested in the same stuff I am. If I could define my network, the content would remain relavent. I think it would take around 500-5000 people to really generate great content, provided those people are all people you align with well.
- MC27 16y ago
  Digg's main problem is it left the technology niche and became mainstream. The same thing has happened with lots of forums I used to frequent - for example, one broadened their focus from a highly technical media broadcasting community, to a TV entertainment and gossip portal. The traffic increased dramatically, yet the quality of the posts dropped. Hacker News will be fine so long as they keep things controlled and avoid the pull of the mainstream.
scrrr 16y ago
People will always try to game the system. I think it's merely a matter of elegance on how you do it. Your style will decide whether you will be called a spammer. For example dropbox.com became a huge success because Drew Houston started serving Digg-"Easter Eggs" inside of dropbox to the Digg crowd that in turn gladly upvoted him. I find his approach very smart (they came out of nowhere) and I think dropbox would have not taken off without it. It's always the same. When you think it's spam, it's spam. It is like in that youtube video that was passed around some time ago: It's only sexual harassment when you aren't attractive. Otherwise it's charming.
infographics 16y ago
This is an anonymous account for obvious reasons. I also did the same job as the AMA OP, used this linkbaiting technique for over a year. Posting as I think HN would be interested in the results. Tens of thousands of optimised backlinks, Quality trusted links from major news publishers (almost all of them), Search traffic up from 30k a month to 200k, 800k to 1mill visitors a month. The infographics game is almost up for linkbaiting. Most of the people using this technique are now moving on, including myself. Expect some interesting innovations in this space.
- yuntao 16y ago
  Expect innovations from Google and other search engines too.
- lliiffee 16y ago
  I couldn't quite understand how it works. Was the idea as simple as just creating the infographic, then putting it somewhere on the site you want to juice up? (There were details about links I couldn't really follow on Reddit...)
bediger 16y ago
Interesting and inflammatory, but I want to see some Wagg-Ed refugee admit that they've had a special office full of people baiting slashdot, groklaw and other sites.

norki 16y ago

http://www.pzhipzf.pl http://www.pzhipzf.pl Zwierzęta Futerkowe - Skórki wiązane są po przesortowaniu, tzw. loty (np. http://www.pzhipzf.pl/pl/norki-dziko-zyjace-w-polsce http://www.pzhipzf.pl/pl/norki-dziko-zyjace-w-polsce norek po 100-120 sztuk, http://www.pzhipzf.pl/pl/dzikie-i-hodowlane-zwierzeta-gospodarskie http://www.pzhipzf.pl/pl/dzikie-i-hodowlane-zwierzeta-gospod... lisów po 20-25 sztuk), zakupowane są na pokrywanie potrzeb krajowych i na eksport. Obrót handlowy skupia się międzynarodowych targach, tzw. aukcjach futrzarskich, organizowanych raz lub dwa razy do roku w Nowym Jorku, Londynie, Helsinkach, Petersburgu, Lipsku, Sztokholmie, Oslo i w innych miastach. Dystrybucja odbywa się wg ustalonego planu, na rzecz zakładów pracy oraz instytucji handlowych. Zakupione partie skór przekazywane są do dalszej obróbki, tzn. wyprawiania, barwienia oraz obróbki maszynowej (strzyżenie, czesanie, epilowanie i inne).

ilovecomputers 16y ago

The Oatmeal responds: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d7e24/my_job_was_to_game_digg_using_infographics_voting/c0y4tip http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d7e24/my_job_was_to_ga...

tptacek 16y ago
And his response is (aggressively paraphrased): "it's probably spammy, but so what? they're my friends, they're a small shop, and the guy pointing it out is probably a competitor." Not very compelling.
- ergo98 16y ago
  His response is horrendous. I've enjoyed a couple of his entries (although they get a little formulaic), but that response had him dropping several notches.

tptacek 16y ago

If this is true (and it rings truthy to me), then (a) this AMA is a service to humanity, and (b) we should start aggressively flagging these things off the site. I say this mostly because I hate those stupid infographics; chartjunk!

_delirium 16y ago
I like an observation I ran across (http://www.bogost.com/blog/information_is_beautiful.shtml http://www.bogost.com/blog/information_is_beautiful.shtml): The problem is this: infographics like this may be beautiful, but they are not necessarily informative. Specifically, pretty charts often fail to synthesize the meaning, relevance, and impact of information as it pertains to decision making. I think they're fine in the same way that comics can be fine: Dilbert is funny because you recognize things in it, not because it's giving you important new information about business. It can be nice to see something you're already familiar with presented in an eye-catching, aesthetically pleasing way, and it might even make a nice poster for the office or something. But as ways of conveying information, the vast majority I run across aren't that good. Often a boring old two-axis scatterplot would be more informative than the flashy infographics (especially if it had usefully labeled axes and quoted its data source).
- tptacek 16y ago
  If you haven't read VDQI: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi I highly recommend it. It was written decades ago and presages all of this; it tears into this USA Today chartjunky design style with a satisfying fervor. In this case, while the crappiness of the design may be what sets me off, the license to complain about it comes from the fact that it's apparently all part of a huge SEO scam.

mattmiller 16y ago

I don't see how this is spam, and I am surprised that people are offended that the authors of these info graphics are trying to make money. They drew up an info graphic that you thought was entertaining. In exchange you show your friends by linking that site. This is no different than any other type of link bait, be it an inflammatory article or some sort of interactive map you would see on the New Your Times website. Spam is different. Spam is junk blog comments with a link to another website. Those comments bring no value and diminish the value of the site. You would never link to one of those comments to show your friends like you link to these info graphics.

tptacek 16y ago
Not complicated! They are asking you to repay the favor of creating the infographic by lying to Google and claiming that a site that paid them is the best resource on the internet for mesothelioma or college textbooks or whatnot.
- vinhboy 16y ago
  This is no different than a startup paying an SEO company. In the end, both places researched and surfaced something that the end user will find interesting. I dont see anything wrong with that. I think it's Google's job to decide what is relevant or not in the search result. Personally for me, I am waiting for the day when Google decides to de-list sites like eHow. PS. sorry mattmiller, I accidently down-arrowed you, and I can't undo it. I meant to up-arrow you.
  - mattmiller 16y ago
    I don't think Google will do that. I think one of two things will happen: -A lot of smaller vertical search sites will pop up. MedicalInfoSearch.com will not show entertainment or economics info, and its ranking will not be based on backlinks from entertainment or economics sites. I think we are seeing the beginnings of this with Blekko. -Or, and I say this at the risk of sounding like one of those social media people, the link graph will start to give more and more weight to Facebook Likes and link sharing and twitter sharing and any future social network sharing. If you think about it, this was the reason Google went with the backlink strategy to begin with. Back then they had no social networks, so they only way someone could vote for a site was by putting a link to it on their website. If you did not have a website you did not get a vote. Now almost everyone has the capacity to vote on a websites quality, but for some reason only website owners are allowed to. Social networks love info graphics, in this future you are going to see a lot of them.

zhyder 16y ago

This graphic, mentioned in the comments (but not created by the OP), is a pretty good example: http://www.onlineeducation.net/bottled_water http://www.onlineeducation.net/bottled_water Note url and anchor text.

marknutter 16y ago

This isn't surprising at all. In fact, I met and worked with someone on an unrelated contract who ran a small shop that did just this. It made me happy I stopped using digg years ago. Digg could have solved a lot of these problems early on by introducing a couple very simple features: first, allow users to block domains, and second, allow users to block users. I can't remember how many times cracked.com or holytaco.com would show up on the frontpage and make me cringe. Reddit is starting to suffer from the same thing. The fundamental problem with Digg and also with Reddit somewhat is that nobody wants to sit and curate the upcoming stories, and upcoming stories require far too many votes to catch steam and have a chance at hitting the front page. So it falls to a small handful of power users who have a network of friends built up who are willing to vote on their stories. Digg essentially became an aggregator of cheap, popcorn content; the kind of stuff non-tech savvy people forward around on email. Hacker News is still good because it's a small niche of highly tech-savvy people, but if it gets to popular it will run into the exact same issues. I think the new Digg is actually a good step in the right direction. The truly best way to get good content is to decide yourself where it comes from. I get my best links from Twitter because I follow people who are interested in the same stuff I am. If I could define my network, the content would remain relavent. I think it would take around 500-5000 people to really generate great content, provided those people are all people you align with well.

MC27 16y ago
Digg's main problem is it left the technology niche and became mainstream. The same thing has happened with lots of forums I used to frequent - for example, one broadened their focus from a highly technical media broadcasting community, to a TV entertainment and gossip portal. The traffic increased dramatically, yet the quality of the posts dropped. Hacker News will be fine so long as they keep things controlled and avoid the pull of the mainstream.

scrrr 16y ago

People will always try to game the system. I think it's merely a matter of elegance on how you do it. Your style will decide whether you will be called a spammer. For example dropbox.com became a huge success because Drew Houston started serving Digg-"Easter Eggs" inside of dropbox to the Digg crowd that in turn gladly upvoted him. I find his approach very smart (they came out of nowhere) and I think dropbox would have not taken off without it. It's always the same. When you think it's spam, it's spam. It is like in that youtube video that was passed around some time ago: It's only sexual harassment when you aren't attractive. Otherwise it's charming.

infographics 16y ago

This is an anonymous account for obvious reasons. I also did the same job as the AMA OP, used this linkbaiting technique for over a year. Posting as I think HN would be interested in the results. Tens of thousands of optimised backlinks, Quality trusted links from major news publishers (almost all of them), Search traffic up from 30k a month to 200k, 800k to 1mill visitors a month. The infographics game is almost up for linkbaiting. Most of the people using this technique are now moving on, including myself. Expect some interesting innovations in this space.

yuntao 16y ago
Expect innovations from Google and other search engines too.
lliiffee 16y ago
I couldn't quite understand how it works. Was the idea as simple as just creating the infographic, then putting it somewhere on the site you want to juice up? (There were details about links I couldn't really follow on Reddit...)

bediger 16y ago

Interesting and inflammatory, but I want to see some Wagg-Ed refugee admit that they've had a special office full of people baiting slashdot, groklaw and other sites.