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Official Publisher Profiles on Digg One Year Later: Followers up 720% But Have They Died on the Vine?

August 10, 2011 by Adam Sherk

Time Digg profileIt has been a year since I took at look at the followers and activity of News Sites on the New Digg so I thought I would see how those official profiles are faring today.

When I did my original post Digg v4 was just about to come out of alpha so there has been a significant increase in exposure for the profiles and many more publishers have created them.

However once Digg discontinued the ability to automatically submit content via RSS after negative feedback from users, activity on the official profiles dropped off considerably. So where do things stand today?

For comparative purposes I will stick to the 30 mainstream and business news profiles that were examined in my original post.

First a look at follower counts one year later:

ProfileFollowers 8/10/11Followers 8/4/10Increase
Time63,9047,842715%
The New York Times58,40110,225471%
Telegraph.co.uk58,3965,621939%
The Wall Street Journal52,0319,546445%
Huffington Post45,4354,773852%
The Daily Beast37,93630012545%
Breaking News31,2721,6951745%
BBC News25,6019,222178%
Yahoo! News24,2191,2121898%
CNNMoney19,2971,0241784%
CNN19,1759451929%
CBS News18,8831,1821498%
USA Today16,1791,874763%
MSNBC15,2191,573868%
United Press International11,4440N/A
The Economist10,6345212580%
Forbes10,4763,661186%
The Washington Post9,2871,941378%
Slate Magazine8,4451,537449%
Bloomberg Businessweek8,0941,085646%
Los Angeles Times7,7561,899308%
AOL News6,880739831%
The Atlantic6,530761758%
Fox News - Business5,9954671184%
Reuters5,4091,531253%
NBC Nightly News4,4422371774%
Chicago Tribune1,937364467%
NBC Meet the Press1,818449305%
Boston.com1,307173655%
The Christian Science Monitor884661239%
TOTAL587,28671,588720%

Not surprisingly the follower counts for all of the profiles are way up. The YoY increase for the collective group is 720% and quite a few profiles have much higher increases than that.

In terms of total following Time jumped from #4 in August 2010 to take the top stop from The New York Times today. The Daily Beast also had a large jump that puts it in the top 10.

How about user interaction and engagement? Most of the publishers continue to follow very few others:

 ProfileFollowing 8/10/11Following 8/4/10
1Time962964
2Los Angeles Times9595
3Telegraph.co.uk8468
4Breaking News8350
5Forbes6152
6Bloomberg Businessweek5251
7The Daily Beast510
8Yahoo! News4424
9The Atlantic4039
10Slate Magazine3718
11CNNMoney3434
12United Press International2928
13AOL News260
14The Wall Street Journal1715
15CBS News1421
16The Washington Post136
17The Economist1312
18Huffington Post88
19NBC Nightly News87
20The Christian Science Monitor80
21NBC Meet the Press76
22Boston.com77
23MSNBC66
24The New York Times14
25BBC News10
26USA Today00
27Reuters00
28CNN00
29Fox News - Business00
30Chicago Tribune00

Time stands out in this group but it is actually following two fewer profiles than last year so it does not appear to be a priority for them.

The number of diggs by each profile is up quite a bit but there has been little commenting activity:

 ProfileDiggs by Publisher
8/10/11
Diggs by Publisher
8/4/10
IncreaseComments by Publisher
8/10/11
Comments by Publisher
8/4/10
1Reuters38,2565,740566%11
2Bloomberg Businessweek27,1385,913359%00
3Forbes16,5543,958318%00
4Breaking News8,9691,257614%00
5Time8,5466,28936%2929
6BBC News8,1055,42349%00
7The Christian Science Monitor6,9961,405398%20
8Boston.com6,181972536%00
9Los Angeles Times5,4213,62050%00
10United Press International5,1452,437111%00
11Fox News - Business4,965675636%00
12MSNBC4,1772,46569%00
13CNN3,811863342%00
14CBS News3,4881,96078%30
15CNNMoney3,353756344%11
16Telegraph.co.uk3,0611,435113%22
17NBC Nightly News2,935933215%00
18Huffington Post2,809767266%43
19The Daily Beast2,800519439%00
20Slate Magazine2,278658246%77
21USA Today2,154591264%00
22The Economist1,996457337%00
23Yahoo! News1,651334394%00
24The Washington Post1,29867094%00
25AOL News1,07063569%00
26The Atlantic1,063497114%00
27The Wall Street Journal43528155%11
28NBC Meet the Press31668365%00
29The New York Times13165102%11
30Chicago Tribune110%00

Reuters, Bloomberg Businessweek and Forbes have much higher digg counts than the other publishers. But a quick look at the diggs by the Reuter’s profile shows that it is mainly just digging its own content.

The same is true for Businessweek and Forbes as well as many of the publisher profiles. One exception is Breaking News which appears to be digging a variety of content.

I didn’t look at the submission counts for the profiles last year since it was very early days for many of them.

But here are the submission counts as of today:

 ProfileSubmissions 8/10/11
1Reuters28,805
2Bloomberg Businessweek19,567
3The Christian Science Monitor6,996
4Breaking News6,833
5United Press International5,203
6Fox News - Business5,097
7Boston.com4,942
8NBC Nightly News2,915
9CNN2,239
10BBC News2,164
11CNNMoney2,149
12The Daily Beast2,134
13Time2,071
14Telegraph.co.uk2,071
15USA Today1,472
16Slate Magazine1,440
17Huffington Post1,435
18Los Angeles Times1,402
19The Economist1,375
20Forbes1,372
21CBS News1,296
22Yahoo! News1,141
23MSNBC1,083
24NBC Meet the Press320
25The Washington Post318
26AOL News316
27The Atlantic235
28The Wall Street Journal128
29The New York Times53
30Chicago Tribune0

Reuters and Bloomberg Businessweek again lead the pack by a considerable margin, but this came from self-submission (which is no longer possible to automate via RSS) as opposed to active participation.

So what do you think? Have official publisher profiles already run their course or is there still a good opportunity for those that are willing to engage users through genuine participation?

Related posts:

  1. News Sites on the New Digg: Who is Active, Who is Gaining Followers?
  2. Publisher Survey: Reddit Traffic Way Up, Digg Way Down
  3. NBC Targets Local Markets on the New Digg
  4. Journalists on Facebook: Official Pages or Subscribe Button on Regular Profiles?
  5. Google+ Engagement for News Sites: Top Performers and One-Year Growth Rates

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About Adam Sherk

Adam Sherk is an SEO and PR consultant helping publishers with digital strategy and audience development, including enterprise SEO, public relations and social media marketing.

Adam is VP SEO and Digital Strategy for Define Media Group.

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