Getting to the top of Digg

Stan Schroeder reveals the life cycle of a Digg story. The post is a fantastic analysis of how a story on Digg gets to the top, while others fail to do so. The key element to Digg's algorithm seems to be not the number of diggs, but the velocity of them: how many diggs a story gets per hour. Additionally, the diggs in the earlier part of the story's life cycle count for more than those in the latter part. Who has dugg the story is also important: the top users have higher influence.