Review of Literature: Power Users and Central Hierarchies

Since its inception in 2004, Digg has been studied extensively in the computer sciences field. In this body of research, multiple studies have suggested an exclusive set of users (known as power users) dominating Digg’s front page; these studies have also concluded what sort of criteria are to be in place in order for these users to maintain such a hierarchy.

In guiding the research performed over the one-year analysis of Digg, three main tenets of the ‘front page hierarchy’ were established:

1. The more friends a user has on their friends list, the more front page stories they tend to receive; having a large friends list is almost always necessary in having multiple submissions to Digg make the front page. The reason for this is that a user can summon their contacts to vote for a submission right away, gaming the time-based requirement’s of Digg’s submission algorithm and receiving more exposure in Digg’s “upcoming” section (Lerman, 2006, 2008, 2010).


2. Users tend to prefer to read short and succinct stories as opposed to longer stories with more material, and are also more likely to vote for shorter stories (Khabiri, Hsu & Caverlee, 2009 & Jamali and Rangwala 2009).


3. The majority of users that browse Digg are either unregistered users, or registered users that read and vote infrequently on stories. Complimenting this is a small amount of users that vote for hundreds of stories a day, suggesting inequity in the Digg voting system (Zhu, 2009).