Digg has been on a banning rampage lately. The most famous digger to get banned has been Zaibatsu. The first glimpse of what Digg was up to came when Brian Cuban was banned. By the count in our database this morning, there have been about 600 users banned in the last week or so. That figure could be a little off -- we may not have researched someone for a few months -- but it shows the magnitude of what Digg is up to.

They also rolled up ltdraper, donatpms, and olivertaco. According to the email we received from Digg, donatpms was banned not because that user did anything (we haven't run anything through that), but because it was associated with someone who had been banned. So if you've been banned, they don't ever want you back. Good luck with that policy Digg, DHCP is enough to keep users coming back as much as they desire. There are a lot of agencies out there running dozens if not hundreds of users through multiple proxies.

Perhaps that's why Zaibatsu says he'll be back.

Don't Put All Your Eggs in One Basket

One of the benefits of using a structured approach to social media marketing is that you're not building an account, you're building a set of relationships. When you're Stalking Big Game on Digg, the key is to find a diverse group of people that are likely to play the game. That doesn't mean "gaming the system," it means finding other like minded individuals that understand that there is an unstated quid pro quo in digging. I'll digg your submissions if they're good, and in return you'll digg mine. That's not to say that I'll digg any bit of spam that you want to post, but I will give you priority in what I look at when I'm digging. The scripting and the bots are really just about time savings, not explicitly gaming the systems. As we've always said, you shouldn't do anything with a script that you wouldn't do in person. It's just a macro for saving you time.

Likewise, you shouldn't be invested solely in a single network, even one as powerful as Digg. There are 1,000s of Social Networks to choose from when you're promoting your content. Pick a manageable number of those and spread your bets. Likewise, as a marketer I'd rather my company have several accounts on Digg in the 500 range rather than be a single Top 100 Digger.

Stop Using Scripts

The flip side of a crisis is opportunity, and this new rampage by Digg is an unbridled opportunity for social marketers. By shaking things up, they'll be removing the log jam at the top. If users start to rebel against the blind diggers as we suspect, "well behaved" social marketers will have a distinct advantage. The 80 users from the Top 1000 that have been banned for script usage just opened up a lot of slots for people to move up.

The next release of the PMS Social Suite is going to see some real changes in direction. For now, we're heavily suggesting to our users that they concentrate on the analytical features of the product and refrain from using the scripts. Digg has been rolling up script users by looking in their logs for Diggs coming from pages on their sites that do not have a Digg button. The Digg Friends Easy script started all of this, and our shoutback function used an improvement on that script. So for now, don't use that.

If you want to support your friends like MrBabyMan does, then go to the Manage Friends page, click the "Submissions" radio button, then click the "Go to Friend Page" button. Click each of the stories you want to Digg (you can set TabMixPlus to automatically open links in a new tab), then cycle through the tabs. This is pretty much what MrBabyMan does, and Digg isn't banning him, even though he has an 89.2% Blind Digging rate.

We'd appreciate some user input on whether we should try to come up with scripts that don't have the vulnerability that Digg spotted in Digg Friends Easy? But before you form an opinion, read the next section.

New Features Coming

Digg's crackdown on scripts is going to make things a lot better for PMS Social Suite Users. Given that it will take more time to support your friends, choosing which friends you support is going to be even more important. And instead of using free Greasemonkey scripts on Digg, you'll be much better off if you can do your analysis completely offline from Digg. The entire key will be to find users that will Digg your submissions -- you just can't afford to waste time with people that don't understand the game. If you've got the right tools, you'll have a distinct advantage over the people that have had the rug pulled out from under them.

Top Diggers will tell you that the key is to find the best content before anyone else does. To help our users with that task, the upcoming version of the PMS Social Suite will use a list of 200 sites that we've developed by analyzing what makes it to the front page of Digg. We have a database application that will be hitting that list continuously. When you visit our new dashboard, you'll be shown a list of "Hot Stories" that have not yet been submitted to Digg and are from a source that has Diggable content. Click the link and you'll get two tabs opened: one tab will have the actual article, and the other will have the Digg submission page with the URL filled out. You probably won't be able to beat MakiMaki to a post on Huffington Post, but your chances are excellent for being first to getting great content for your submissions.

Another key to building relationships on Digg is commenting. One of the best places to comment is on a story that has very few comments but is likely to go front page. Our dashboard will also have a section called "Hot Submissions to Comment." This is a list of submissions from the Top 100 Diggers with 3 or less comments. It also shows the current number of Diggs so you've got an idea as to whether or not it's going to hit. Chime in first with something witty and you'll get great visibility.

The Dashboard also shows the list of users that you're tracking and key statistics that are updated continuously. For instance, you can see a count of how many friends you have in the Top 100 and Top 1000. We've also calculated the number of friends you have that are "Solid" and "Weak" according to our algorithm.

We've also eliminated the need for you to run your own research jobs. We've set up a network of machines that cycle through our database and perform the research function for you. We currently have stats on over 26,000 Diggers for you to mine. We're doing much more in-depth research now, including finding Diggers with high rates of mutual friend support. We've got a list of hundreds of people that are very likely to become mutual and support your submissions. For each month of subscription you pay for, we'll provide you with a list of 10 high value friends. Sign up for a year and you'll start off with 120 very strong friends to seed your network.

But the biggest key to success is to establish an offsite friend network. The Top Diggers don't shout to each other, they send email and IMs back and forth asking for votes. The best friend that you can find is someone that has a very high rate of mutual voting, but also has a way to contact them offsite. Part of our new research service is that we look for links to known services such as AIM, email addresses, StumbleUpon, etc for a user. You can mark a user as an "offsite friend" and contact them through other means. You can store an email address for them in the database. Push a button and you can send an email to a list of users with the url of a story you'd like supported. It's just like what the Top Diggers do, but more efficiently.

And if you'd like to be considered as a friend to other PMS Social Suite users, you can mark your user as open in your profile. You'll see a list of stories other users are promoting, and you can mark your own stories to be promoted. Obviously, with the analytics you'll have a good idea of who is digging you, so be a good friend and you'll get back results.

How Soon?

Soon, very soon. A lot of this was already in the works before Digg started their rampage. I'd say we're 95% done right now. Stay tuned.

We've heard a comment from a number of "A-Listers" that all of your social media activity should be "organic." That you shouldn't use automation or do anything that isn't natural with sites like Digg, because somehow that's cheating.

Our question back is "What's so noble about carpal tunnel syndrome?" If you're using automation to do the same things you would do if you sat at the computer and clicked your mouse in a mind numbing session, what's the big deal? Is it the user's fault that most of these social networks have built such a brain dead and poor user interface that accomplishing even simple tasks requires minutes of clicking? Is it the user's fault that these sites take forever to load a page? Is it the user's fault that most of these sites have limited their APIs to the point of near uselessness?

What's the difference between using a script to accomplish simple tasks and hiring an intern or someone from India to do the same thing? Is an agency that pays a staff of people to mindlessly click on social sites all day somehow more magnanimous than the sole proprietor that uses a macro to accomplish the same thing? Do you really think that these big name consultants that charge several hundred dollars for a consultation are spending hours a day of their own time clicking their mice on social networks?

How about the use of a programmable keyboard or mouse? What's the difference between using a FireFox plugin like Greasemonkey that will click a few links for you and open a window and using a programmable keyboard that will do the same thing when you hit a function key?

How about using a browser plugin that automatically opens all links on a page in a new tab so that you can easily read the stories? That's a script, isn't it?

How about using a super high-speed internet connection? Doesn't that give you an unfair advantage over someone using dial up? Doesn't that put more of a load on the website? To be fair, shouldn't you be using a 56K dial up line to do your social networking?

If social networks would make simple tasks like unfriending 100 friends that are completely unproductive a one step operation, there wouldn't be a need to use scripts. Instead, they're trying to maximize page views. So frankly, using scripts helps them with that goal. If it weren't for automated scripts, a lot of their traffic and revenue would go away.

Do as They Say, Not As They Do

Don't think for a minute that the majority of the people pontificating about "organic" use of these sites aren't using automation themselves. We're not going to call anyone out by name, but by using our tool to analyze the friendship networks and voting habits of Top Diggers, it's quite clear that they're very automated and voting in blocks like crazy. Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

If you buy into the party line that only "organic" use of these sites is acceptable, you're just guaranteeing that you won't be able to compete with the "A-Listers" -- which, frankly, is exactly they way they'd like it. They're not in business to create competition. So if you'd always like to be in second place, listen to their advice.

I'll also point out that the same people that rail against using scripts to make social networking more efficient usually have installed ad blocker software. So who is really stealing bandwidth?

Won't I Get Banned?

True, if you do something crazy and Digg a few thousand stories in a few hours you're going to get caught. Especially if you're testing a script in development and it gets away from you! Not that I know anyone that has happened to or anything. But if your script has the appropriate pauses, you only vote a percentage of stories, and you do the same things a human would do then there's a very low probability of getting caught.

And frankly, you shouldn't be putting all your eggs into a single basket. Keep an offline record of your relationships. If you get banned, it's just a matter of a new IP address and adding back the relationships you've already built. Your tools can do that for you, can't they?

Keep in mind that the top users get forgiven when they get caught using a script. I've heard several instances of top diggers that got banned and reinstated the next day after promising to behave. They're still misbehaving; they're just doing a better job of not getting caught. But if you're not one of the top people, good luck even getting your emails answered.

It's How You Use Your Tools That Count

The same car that can be used by a drunk driver at 2:00AM can also be used to drive the kids to school at 8:00AM. The car isn't good or evil -- it's how it's used that matters. If you're using tools to spread spam the community is going to punish you anyway, so it's not going to work out. But if you use a tool to be more efficient and do the same things that you'd do anyway if you were willing to risk carpal tunnel syndrome and spend 10 hours a day clicking then there shouldn't be any problem.

The real question is "How much is your time worth?" If it's not worth $19.95/month to save a few hours a day of your time, then keep clicking. Otherwise, you really ought to look into automating some of your drudgery.