Since my post four days ago about the incredible run of Knuttz submissions on Digg, their winning streak has suddenly come to a grinding and painful halt.
As I predicted the Jet vs Bird submission did indeed go “popular”, with the attendant flood of fraffic from Digg, but then Mr Knuttz made some changes (I’m not sure exactly what), the consequence of which is that not one subsequent submission on Digg has been promoted… not even one. That’s what you call coming to a grinding halt!
The Alexa pageviews graph tells the story of the last few days graphically:
In the only communication that appears to have come directly from Mr Knuttz a couple of days after my initial post, he spends most of the post addressing concerns about image copyright, something I never addressed at all, so I assume he may be feeling the heat on various fronts.
What is definitely clear is that knuttz.net is now no longer quite the Made For Digg site it was just 5 days ago. While certain posts (that correspond to matching Digg submits) do carry Digg buttons, the funnel mechanism is gone. Futher, Digg submissions just don’t seem to be getting off the ground any more.
I don’t have the time or resources to analyze this any further, but you have to say that it is rather intriguing. Observers and commentators like me don’t have power to effect such dramatic change, and I am under no illusions that I was the cause of this traffic drop on Knuttz. My suspicion is that Mr Knuttz may have received a “clearly worded” email from Mr Rose to back off. Or he drew his own conclusions from the fact that this Digg submission, at over 90 votes, still hasn’t been promoted… Now why would that be?!
Hmmm… are Digg and Knuttz no longer friends?
