expertSEM

Updated  on November 4: See answer below.

As we mentioned in a previous post, each week a Location3 staff member comes up with a question about interactive marketing and quizzes the entire company. These questions have created a great deal of conversation internally and helped to further educate the entire staff. We thought it would be a great idea to share these questions and give you, our dear readers, a chance to test your knowledge as well. The question posed this week comes from our social media department: What’s likely to happen if multiple accounts on a single IP address vote up a story on Digg in a short period of time? Select one of the multiple choice answers below and leave your choice in the comments. Feel free to add your reason for selecting this answer. We’ll post the correct answer next week as an update to this post. Good luck!

A. Your story will be buried
B. Your account will be suspended
C. You will automatically be grouped in to a friend network
D. Nothing, just more Diggs

Answer: The correct answer is B. Your account will be suspended.

If Digg sees that multiple accounts from the same IP address have voted for a story, the account will be suspended due to suspicious activity. The Digg algorithm analyzes several metrics when reviewing submissions, including:

• Digg Rate — How fast is the story being dug? Are the votes coming through in a natural way, or has the story been dug an exorbitant amount in a short time period?
• User Influence – Users gain power and credibility by Digging more. The more involved a user is, the more trust Digg awards them.
• Digg Diversity – Digg notes the various uses that vote for a particular story. If a story is dug only by the author’s friends, it looks suspicious. If numerous unrelated users Digg a story, it can most-likely be viewed as interesting to a broad range of individuals.

For more information on how Digg works, check out their FAQ, particularly the “Digging, Burying and Promotion” section. And stay tuned for this week’s question.