Digg, like many other social media sites, allows everyone to post stories on their site for free. The more people that enjoy the story (and Digg it) the higher up the page it shows and the more exposure it gets. This can result in a lot of traffic for the site containing the story.
It has recently emerged from an insider, that the voting process on social media sites may not be as democratic as we thought. The man in question is a well established social media poster and his Digg posts carry a lot of weight. He admitted to taking payments from a number of companies in order to write and promote posts in an attempt to get them on the front page of Digg.
I am not sure where I stand on this one. I know you can pay an SEO company to carry out a social media campaign for your website, but this is just a type of public relations exercise and everyone who wants to can use social bookmarking sites to promote their own site. Manipulating the social media sites in order to get more exposure is maybe pushing this a little too far.
People read the top stories on Digg and the other sites because they think hundreds of other people have voted for them and found them interesting. If too much of this type of underhand activity occurs, visitors will start to see that the top posts are not that interesting and stop visiting the site.
Digg may try and prevent this type of activity in future. Perhaps they should start a paid advertising section like some of the other social media sites have.
