How to get on the Netscape/digg homepage--EVERY SINGLE DAY!

Filed under: Netscape

As we all know I'm no longer working on Netscape. So, these are my observations as someone who is no longer affiliated with the service. I've figured out exactly how you can get almost any quality story on the home page instantly.

For Netscape

Step One: Add the top 20-30 users on the service as friends. (Approximate time: 10 minutes). The top users are located on the home page on the bottom right.
Step Two: Add the Netscape sidebar on Firefox so you can follow your new friends (Approximate Time: 2 minutes)
Step Three: Vote for the stories of the top 30 users and place intelligent/fun comments on their stories (Approximate time: 30 minutes).
Step Four: Find a good story and submit it. Tip, try to avoid politics and news channels since they are the most crowded. (Approximate time: 5 minutes).
Step Five: Sitemail your friends the url of the story and say "check this one out!" (Approximate time: 1 minute). NOTE: Do not spam your "friends" list with sitemail or they will block you. I think maybe once or twice a month is fine. Once or twice a week might get annoying. Really depends on how your friends view you and what they think of the stories you submit. If they are good users they probably have the sidebar and are watching your activity already.

Total time: About an hour.

For digg:

[ I'll write this one up next. It's harder for digg obviously... but the key is of course to become friends with at least 30 people on the service by voting for and commenting on their stories. Yes, it is a popularity contest on a certain level. ]

Tags: digg, netscape, social news, SocialNews

Dec 13th 2006 11:28AM
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1. I actually find it really annoying when my sitemail is full of URLs from the same people over and over telling me to vote on their stories. It's fine on occasion, but people abuse it and it has the opposite intended effect - there's so much i'll simply ignore it.

If you want to have quality content on the front page, get to know the people you call your 'friends,' submit quality content, and be the first to do it. That's the best advice I'd give anyone.

Posted at 12:00PM on Dec 13th 2006 by Corey Spring

2. Have translated it into German thanx Jason!

Posted at 12:41PM on Dec 13th 2006 by Stefan Julius

3. Yes when someone sends me a link to every story they submit I don't care to even vote on them. Once in a while is fine.

Posted at 4:25PM on Dec 13th 2006 by John aka pagey(Netscape)

4. I ran an experimental script once to add every single Digg user as a friend, the theoretical outcome being that I would get enough of them reciprocating the relationship through checking their 'incoming' friends that I would have critical mass to get any story I submitted (not spam, obviously) onto the front page.

I got to about 16,000 friends in 10 hours (which broke the site for me -- attempting to render the "friend's activity" sidebar caused most page loads to time out) before Digg killed my user account. This is also why Digg now have a limit on how quickly you can add friends.

Anyway, I find most of the top users make terrible friends. They submit and digg so many stories that the value of them being a "friend" is essentially worthless. It's just noise.

Posted at 5:53PM on Dec 13th 2006 by Anson

5. i m experimenting your technique, hope it works for me too.

Posted at 8:15AM on Jun 12th 2007 by Eliena Andrews

6. Very cool. Thanks. One more internet promotion idea for me to keep in mind.

Posted at 7:07PM on Aug 3rd 2007 by Jimmy

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