Why do people contribute? (who is dirtyfratboy?)

Filed under: Business

That's the question I constantly find myself coming back to. Who are these people who spend hours a day contributing to things like DIGG and Wikipedia for no financial gain.

I've been seeing the user below on the home page of DIGG (the icon is memorable huh?), so I clicked through to their page. They've submitted 776 stories to digg over the past 278 days. That's basically three stories every single day without a day off for almost a year.

It has to take 15 minutes--on average--to find and publish a decent story to DIGG. So, this person has spent 194 hours on the site in less than a year. If you worked seven hours a day doing this as a day job this would be six weeks of full-time work. So, this person is spending around eight full-time weeks a year.

Wow. That is just.... wow, so impressive.

...but why? Do they work for DIGG?

Here is a look at the top ten digg users by stories submitted and the number of hours they've spent working on the site over the past year or so. This is based on 15 minutes to find and submit a story. I think on average that is what it takes. You could argue ten minutes or 20 I guess, but even at five minutes per story you're looking at a ton of time.

On thing I'm sure of is that some of these folks run their own websites, and as a result get value from publishing to DIGG.

Tags: digg, dirtyfratboy

May 22nd 2006 4:41AM
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1. Ah, great question. I'd like to understand it more too, and I'm not even building a digg killer like you guys :). I imagine that for a lot of hard core diggers, it's just another niche arena to compete in, like dog shows or skeet shooting.

In any case, it really appears that you can EXPECT enough such people to surface given a large enough readership, as we've seen with Wikipedia too (oh, wait, so maybe YOU are "these people"!)

It's not just a new phenomenon. Consider the case of W.C. Minor and the OED: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Chester_Minor

Posted at 5:49PM on May 22nd 2006 by Gabe Rivera

2. Just ordered the book... very cool.

Posted at 6:10PM on May 22nd 2006 by Jason

3. One could say that the next level would be tag gardening or NewsMastering - human leverage of these automated/community tools to filter out the most pertinent info to communities of interest or organizations. That's what Robin Good from maternewmedia.org advocates. (I just interviewed him at http://netsquared.org/robingood1 ) But at that point you're talking about a paid position or a few dedicated volunteers. The army of unpaid semi-casual but habitual contributors are an essential part of a really powerful news stream. What contributes them is an important question for sure. Probably unanswerable though, as are most questions of human motivation. Tends to come down to the value system of the person offering the answer.

Perhaps a more useful question would be - what best facilitates that behavior. I imagine that could be refined indefinitely. For example, the blog Treehugger has a huge audience - but their new digg clone isn't getting any use at all (http://marshallk.com/huggcom-is-like-digg-for-eco-types-but-hardly-used )

I think there are technical answers to that question, not just epistemological ones.

Posted at 6:42PM on May 22nd 2006 by Marshall Kirkpatrick

4. I am very astonished as well. Some users tend to spend quite a number hours on Digg, submitting stories and stories. It is practically almost like a full time job. I wonder how do users get to earn from this type of lifestyle, other than the fact that advertisement and traffic may bring them more income.

Also, I feel Digg is a very good website in the sense that latest content is constantly updated over at the front page. Furthermore, Digg is constantly getting more and more news each day. I cannot see it stopping.

Posted at 7:43PM on May 22nd 2006 by Keith

5. You could also just contribute to a community that rewards this kind of cosmic karma in the form of XBox 360s and 30GB iPods eventually.

http://ummyeah.com/

Geeks crave ego attention and having your story make the front page of digg hits that nerve. It's probably even more of a rush for these guys than helping a girl out with her term paper at the local computer lab.

Posted at 7:51PM on May 22nd 2006 by Fez

6. "It has to take 15 minutes--on average--to find and publish a decent story to DIGG."

I think you overestimating this considerably, I'm not a big DIGG submitter but have several friends who are and they spend less than a minute on their suggestions. People aren't out hunting for things to submit to digg, they come across them in their daily routines and then submit them. For instance, I can count how often I've sent an interesting link to a friend over IM and their reply, a minute or so later is a DIGG link where they just submitted the story.

Posted at 8:08PM on May 22nd 2006 by sean bonner

7. "Geeks crave ego attention and having your story make the front page of digg hits that nerve."

Exactly the point I was going to make. It's in fact the very reason that I too contribute to digg for no apparent reason. I don't do it as much as some of the fanatics but I still do do it for "the thrill of it" sometimes.

Kinda the same reason I started building websites too. A lot of my original websites were built just so I could become "webfamous". Oh how times change :)

- FeedBoy
http://www.feedboy.com

Posted at 8:11PM on May 22nd 2006 by Atoms n RSS

8. I as most of you know, am a long time contributer to digg and yes, I do spend many hours a day on digg submitting and digging others stories. Digg is a great place; I get more info there than anywhere else. It's almost an addiction or it probably is but it's great & many of you know that. If any of you want to add me as a friend on digg, please do. Here is my digg profile: http://digg.com/users/tysonhy
Digg On!!

Posted at 8:15PM on May 22nd 2006 by tysonhy

9. Excellent question. I guess I knew that some people were spending obscene amounts of time on Digg, but I never realized just how much time they were actually spending.

I hope that dirtyfratboy posts here and tells us why.

Posted at 8:16PM on May 22nd 2006 by GreenLantern

10. Digg is an awesoem place, I like reading and submitting stories. I will, however, say that the time you're suggesting that it takes to find a good story is really cut in half by the use of RSS technology and a Firefox extension or two. The longest part is reading over what you're about to submit. Anywho, I'm boring you, I just wanted to stop by and say hi, nice analyzing you've done, and keep digging! (as tysonhy has said).

Posted at 8:23PM on May 22nd 2006 by TheAttacks

11. "This is based on 15 minutes to find and submit a story."

I don't think it takes more then 1-2 minutes for these guys to find and submit a story. All they do is configure all of their news source in an RSS reader, quickly browse all of the stories and select only those that catches their eyes at a first glimpse. They then submit it, without even having read it entirely. They use the first paragraph of the article as the "resume", and boom, they can submit about 10 stories in 10 minutes that way.

Kiltak
[Geeks Are Sexy] Tech. News

Posted at 8:25PM on May 22nd 2006 by [GEEKS ARE SEXY] Tech. News

12. Thank you for featuring me in this story!
Why and how is it financially possible that I spend so much time on Digg (7 hours a day according to Jason)? Well, I don't have a job as I am currently a student. Even though "Jason" calculates that 15 minutes is spent on every story submitted, it's pretty much impossible to find a high amount of quality material by randomly searching through news sites. Sometimes my friends refer me to sites and other times I look through other news sites. Most of my time is spent browsing through sites on Digg, just like everyone else. I certainly don't work for Digg, but this site does combine technology and headlines news, two of my favorite topics.
As wayjer puts it: "I love the fact that any time I sign on to digg I am amazed about something I had just read."

Posted at 8:35PM on May 22nd 2006 by Dirtyfratboy

13. It appears ahat SearchEngines is just ONE person - but in truth that is NOT so - just ONE ACCOUNT.

Posted at 8:41PM on May 22nd 2006 by SearchEngines

14. How many posts a week does Jason blog, how long does each take, and what is the *direct/tangible* monetary gain?

Posted at 9:04PM on May 22nd 2006 by Dave Zatz

15. You forgot to mention the other acts of contribution.. like commenting and digging, and burying/unburying comments, typing descriptions, and reading hundreds of articles and interpreting them. And sending bug reports (which i have done a few times today).

And the reason? I'd say that for a lot of nerds, using digg is just a casual free-time activity. Entertaining. Fun. Engaging.

Posted at 9:28PM on May 22nd 2006 by Daniel (mrASSMAN)

16. I submitted one story, and it made it to the front page, and has gotten almost 2000 hits. I felt kind of famous.

Multiply that by 1000? There's a problem. You seriously need to go meet girls.

Psychiatrist: So why have you come to see me?
Patient: My wife told me I needed to.
Psychiatrist: Why is that?
Patient: Because I love pancakes.
Psychiatrist: I don't think that's a problem, I love them too.
Patient: Really? Cool! You should come over sometime! I've got a whole basement full of them!

Posted at 10:57PM on May 22nd 2006 by Dave

17. Some peope unicycle from coast to coast, some people digg, and some people build their media empires. All three of those obsessions tend not to take up that much time as an outsider might believe. And in terms of perceived time spent, digging 776 stories most likely beats counting the blinks of your VCR clock.

But even with your numbers of the time it takes to digg a bit skewed: the big why is valid. What drives participation? (especially with keeping Marshall Kirkpatrick's example of Hugg in mind - http://marshallk.com/huggcom-is-like-digg-for-eco-types-but-hardly-used). If the eco crowd can't be activated - who can?
Is digging just a nerdy past time, attracting people of a slightly different mindset than the slashdot crowd?

Anybody got some numbers on frequent wikipedia contributors (now talk about time consuming) and some insight in their motives?

PS The Professor and the Madman is a hilarious book. But be careful, it might be a bit misleading. Schizophrenia is hopefully not a prerequisite to become a heavy contributor of whatever.

Posted at 11:03PM on May 22nd 2006 by hubert gertis

18. I have spent a considerable amount of time on digg as well lately, but I look at it as research and not wasted time. I am trying to get an idea what types of things get "digged," so I can produce and promote content on my site that will appeal to the community. Of course, if you figure in the amount of time I spend on this pursuit, the payoff for me is ridiculously low. I could get a part-time job at minimum wage that would pay way more than I am making from ad revenue.

I am also trying to expand the parameters of the site by submitting satirical pieces, and other non tech-related items. Some purists may take offense to this, but I don't see any reason why digg can't be used to promote any content found on the web, tech-related or otherwise. In the end, the site will benefit financially from having a larger user base, and people interested in certain areas like tech can always stay there, while others could look elsewhere for information of interest to them.

Posted at 11:25PM on May 22nd 2006 by Rob Disner

19. Yeah, I don't know why someone would spend so much time on digg. Is it 15 seconds of fame? At least they aren't shooting people for negative attention. I would rather hack code, or something else equally lame and productive.

Posted at 11:56PM on May 22nd 2006 by Ryan Carter

20. 15 mins to post to digg? Maybe 5 at the most. I think it's a preference of what kind of news people like. Digg is fun tech news. Different from slashdot, which is obviously targeted to programmers. But there's alot of people who use computers that have no idea what slashdot means. It's not all unix/linux users out there. I know many Mac/Win users that love science, hacker stories, tech news.
I think this question can be expanded to "how can anyone 'read' 'watch tv' 'watch live bands' x hours a day/week?" Humans can't just produce/work non stop...we need to exercise the mind and body in other ways. Sometimes in passive ways. At least these digg posters aren't mindlessly watching tv 3 hours a night.

Posted at 11:58PM on May 22nd 2006 by Jesse Grayson

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