I must get in the habit of reading The Telegraph's blog. They're posting some really interesting stuff out there, and The Guardian's role as beloved newspaper of the blogiosphere sometimes obscures that. Take this post, about writing headlines just to get featured on Digg, the “vote for stories you like” news site:
I learned a new word this week: diggbait. A story that panders so closely to the prejudices and interests of Digg.com users, something about the failings of Windows XP, for example, or the success of Firefox, that it seems to have been written specifically with them in mind. Having seen the traffic that can come from a link halfway down a popular page, it’s a tempting thought.
In other words “journalist writes headline to attract readers”. What's wrong with that? Well, the obvious answer is that the subsection of the public who are active voters on sites like this are suspicious of manipulation and you really don't want to upset them if you want to take advantage of the site. So, where does the line between the skill of attracting readers through good headline and just fishing for links lie?
I suspect Diggbaiters will find out pretty quickly.
[Hat Tip: Open]
Technorati Tags: digg, headlines, journalism, the telegraph
July 17, 2006 9:46 AM | Reply
Thanks for the good words and the link Adam. There is some debate here over how far we should go to attract traffic from sites like Digg. Personally I think that attempts to attract readers based on one's own assumptions of who they are are almost bound to fail and active diggers are right to be wary of bait. It's a difficult temptation to resist though.
July 17, 2006 2:02 PM | Reply
We're having some of the same discussions here at RBI, with people putting forward everything from "we should submit our own stories" (not a good plan, I feel) to "just leave it to the users.
We'll see.