Digg Digs The News More This Year

Traffic flowing out from Digg still hits entertainment-related sites the most, but recently the gap between driving traffic there versus news & media sites narrowed.

Once upon a time, believe it or not, Digg served as a tech news playground. Venerable Slashdot looked old and busted compared to Digg’s high-speed approach to getting news in front of techies.

The great lesson of life is that things change all the time, and it’s as true with Digg as with anything else. A more mainstream focus emerged with its revisions over time, to where the Digg of today bears a passing resemblance to its tech roots.

That shift slowly began sending traffic more to entertainment sites, as determined by Hitwise in March. A followup post by Heather Hopkins today showed a big swing in where people go from Digg.

“The top category visited after Digg is still Entertainment. However, by only a small margin (3%). In June, 21.34% of visits from Digg went to an Entertainment website compared with 20.67% to News and Media,” said Hopkins.

“Visits to News and Media websites from Digg are up 16% year on year compared with a decline of 20% to Entertainment.”

Internet users who find their way to Digg seem to be there as much for the news that occupies more of its front page than for entertainment or other topic areas. That leaves us with this thought: will there be another “Digg” to replace the current one someday, or will Digg endure?