Reddit has perfected a model for sharing entertaining news, pictures and video. The site had been growing steadily, but a botched redesign at its main competitor, Digg, drove a huge bump in traffic to Reddit in August.

Digg launched a redesign because some users and publishers had figured out how to game the system, and colluded to get their own items to the top of the site.

The new Digg was designed to aggregate content based on social connections instead of the entire Digg community. But it was executed poorly, and users who tried the new version found the content sparse and boring. One of the effects of the redesign was to give more weight to mainstream publishers, which irritated Digg users who felt they were missing out on important YouTube videos, blog posts and animated GIFs.

By contrast, Reddit is known for its tight community of highly active users, who exchanged 13,000 Secret Santa gifts this year.

Digg's traffic fell 33 percent over the year, according to Compete.com. Reddit's was up by almost 50 percent.

The amount of time spent on the site, which is inversely proportional to the productivity of the American workforce, went up from 12 minutes and 41 seconds to 15 minutes and 21 seconds, Reddit reported in a blog post. Pageviews were also up from 250 million in January 2010 to 829 million in December 2010.

The site also helped raise $601,269 from users for DonorsChoose, an education charity, and $185,356.70 for Haitian earthquake relief.

Reddit has about 10 employees, according to VentureBeat, in cities across the country including New York.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries

Now Fast Company is following up on some detective work by a disgruntled Digg user LtGenPanda, showing that dummy accounts voted up content from Digg's publishing partners—BBC website, the Guardian website, BoingBoing, WashingtonPost.com, Gawker—to the top of the site.

Getting a story to the top of Digg pays off with a significant bump in visitors. LtGenPanda is pointing the finger at Digg, suggesting that the site was artifically boosting items to appear more useful to it partners.

For a company in crisis, this is a potentially damaging blow. Digg already lost the trust of its users with their redesign, and if these same folks feel that their contribution to the site is being overshadowed by businesses ties, they may abandon Digg altogether.

Back in July Reddit engineer Mike Schiraldi wrote a blog post about how Condé Nast wasn't providing Reddit with a big enough budget. "We've been kinda bummed at Reddit these days. It seems like every week something comes up that slows performance to a crawl or even leads to a total site outage. And we almost never get a chance to release new features anymore."

To get some perspective, Reddit has four full-time employees. Its competitor, Digg, has more than 60. The mainstream perception for a while now has been that Reddit's traffic was also tiny compared to Digg. Turns out that's not the case. 

Digg founder Kevin Rose recently wrote that his site got more than 200 million views a month. This led Reddit's Chris Slowe to cry foul. "Wow, we're 40% bigger than them [Digg] now. Finally, we'll get some respect in the press!" wrote Slowe. That same week the mainstream media referred to Reddit as a "tiny" operation, "dominated" and "dwarfed" by Digg.

Now is the time for Condé Nast to give Reddit the funds it needs to change that. Digg's traffic has fallen 26% since it's redesign in August. Many Digg's power users have been defecting to Reddit. With a little push, especially in terms of media and communications, the site could take the spot as the number one news forum.

Condé has been looking at Reddit's revenue, which is meager, and basing its budget off that metric. But owning one of the most powerful traffic drivers on the web is powerful in and of itself. Reddit could provide Condé with rich, realtime data on which articles are succeeding on the web and why, data that most publishers would pay a pretty penny for. 

bpopper At observer.com

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There are a handful of aesthetic changes that make the whole thing seem very blue. The main difference is that logged-in visitors to "Digg.com" are immediately taken to a "My News" section. This seems to work like a hybrid of the Twitter and Facebook-style feeds that offer you news items from only your most trusted strangers. Users who aren't registered with the site are taken to a more general "Top News" feed, reminiscent of the old site. Right now that contains a list of reasons why Kanye West is a douchebag and something about Pokémon, so content-wise it seems to be about the same.

Digg maintains its aggregation edge by frequently shifting its algorithm, so it's a safe bet that the new design also comes with a new algorithm, especially given the recent discovery of right-wingers trying to manipulate the site for nefarious purposes.

The group was founded last spring. Since then, they have submitted more 30,000 stories to Digg and all together have recommended a million. In that time, according to Alternet, hey have been responsible for burying some 40,000 stories.

The author of the article, Ole Ole Olson, calls his reporting an "undercover investigation" but doesn't get into what that entailed.

He notes that a new version of Digg is coming soon that could make it harder for Digg Patriots to operate. People in the group know about this and have reacted:

In an entertaining twist, this shift to version 4.0 is already being interpreted by many of the DP members as "another" conspiracy to silence them. They latched onto the latest paranoid rumor floating around that all stories that reach the front page are manually selected, and that since they are being "oppressed", that somehow justifies their cheating.

Digg founder Kevin Rose tweeted yesterday that his team was "looking into this" but that they were focused on the relaunch. ReadWriteWeb got on the phone with Digg's communications director Michelle Husak, who called the Alternet article "an interesting look into the lengths people will go to create the Digg experience they think is best," which conspicuously stops short of condemning the people involved in Digg Patriots and implies that their use of the site was their perogative. She added, however, that the new platform will not have a "bury" feature and "focuses much more on a relevant and personalized news experience by allowing users to follow profiles of people and content curators that they know and trust."

Digg's apparent vulnerability to the efforts of groups like Digg Patriots-- and there are more-- is something competing social media services could point to as they try to win over users. Spotery, a Digg-ish start-up that relaunched its social media service a few weeks ago, has editors on its payroll who run a section of the site where submissions from users are vetted and ranked.

Here's an outline of the info, gathered by Pingdom, a digital service that alerts businesses when their Web site is out of order.

- The social news sites Digg, Reddit and Slashdot have significantly more male users than female. The standout here is Slashdot. 82% of their users are male.
- Twitter and Facebook have almost the same male-female ratio; Twitter with 59% female users and Facebook with 57%.
- The most female-dominated site? Bebo (66% female users), closely followed by MySpace and Classmates.com (64%).
- The average ratio of all 19 sites was 47% male, 53% female.

So why are so many women connecting on social networks, but not as involved in social news sites like Digg and Reddit?

The Wall Street Journal reported on a study with similar results in early October, and spoke with Aaron Smith, a research specialist at the Pew Internet and American Life Project. "Men are more likely to use transactional types of tools, like online banking," he told WSJ. "Not to say that men don't like to talk, and that women don't need to get information, but in general when we look at the overall picture, we see women gravitating toward those applications that allow them to connect with friends and share information with people they know."

But perhaps the question is whether there truly are more women conversing on sites like Twitter, or if they are just spambots registering as females. Don Synstelien, a strategist for social networks who worked in research and development at MySpace, wrote on Pingdom's comment page that "possibly 25% of every 'female' profile that I viewed was a spam page."

Kill a Kid? Take the Day Off — A Michigan journalist highlights a Dallas, Texas story on his blog. "Here's another appalling story of how the police get treated one way and civilians quite another," he wrote. "Dallas cop does 70 in a 40 mph zone without his lights or sirens on, hits a kid on a bike and kills him. His punishment: A day off from work. Without pay, I'm sure." Digger mablung admits: "If that was my child I would be in prison right now for killing that cop."

Hulu's Glorious Free Days Are Officially Numbered — Gizmodo's story on News Corp. pushing Hulu to start charging for content in 2010 has the Diggers' eye rolling at media companies who want them to pay money for their entertainment. "Torrents will be faster in 2010," wrote WeirdEdsel. Orbish comments: "Well ***** you, I'll just read a book!"

Pro-atheism Ads: Sean Hannity Defames New Yorkers — Subwaysights.com, a New York–based site checking out underground things, highlights Mr. Hannity's argument that intolerant leftist New Yorkers are O.K. with atheists buying subway ads but would be outraged if Christians did the same thing. "The problem with this thinking is that Christians have been putting up pro-Christianity ads in the subway for years and nobody cares," they note. Diggers get into a morality vs. mortality argument in the comments (?). Buggstarr writes: "i live in NY and i'm fine with this. We see crazier things daily."

44% Of Americans Think Marijuana Should Be Legalized — A recent Gallup Poll's results are reported on at hailmaryjane.com. Support for the legalization of marijuana "is at an all time high in the US" (ha!). Top comment from chicagojack: "56% are not smart."

Medical marijuana could lead to full legalization — Another article blazing up the chart. This one is from MySanAntonio.com, posted by Digger RobertWright with the note: "Even conservatives are saying, 'Why not?' Drug war has failed."

Barack Obama sees worst poll rating drop in 50 years — The decline in Barack Obama's popularity since July has been the steepest of any president at the same stage of his first term for more than 50 years ago, according to the U.K. Telegraph. Quetz7 says: "He started with 69% approval, no way in hell that was going to stick unless he managed to fix the economy, end the war, cure cancer, and end unemployment all in the span of a few months. Let's be realistic, guys."

Top 6 Internet Technology Epic Fails — Next Generation Online's Web site chronicles some major tech crashes over the years, spurred by Microsoft recently losing data of their Sidekick users. Remember when Gmail went down? The horror! Most of the Digg comments seem to be lamenting the use of the phrase "Epic Fail" in the title. One sighs: "Does anyone else wince nowadays when you read/hear 'Epic Fail'?"

Gamers Rejoice! Legendary Civilization Is Coming to Facebook — Mashable reports that one of the best known video game franchises of all time, Sid Meier's Civilization, will get a Facebook version under the name Civilization Network. Tacopop says: "this is going to revolutionize time wasting."

WTF: Man Arrested for Being Naked in His OWN HOME - A Fox TV D.C. affiliate reports on a man who says he was making coffee in the nude, but was then arrested after a neighbor saw him. "Yes, I wasn't wearing any clothes but I was alone, in my own home and just got out of bed. It was dark and I had no idea anyone was outside looking in at me," he told reporters. The neighbor was apparently walking her son to school and says he deliberately exposed himself twice while standing in glass windows and doorways. Oops!

Nat'l Sec. Network Slams Cheney: "Incompetent War Fighter" — A HuffPo article rounds out this week's list. This report is on retired General Paul Eaton, senior adviser to the National Security Network, who has hit back hard at Dick Cheney a day after the former vice president criticized the Obama administration again for "dithering while America's armed forces are in danger." ThsGuyRightHere has a thought: "When did we as a nation decide that being a Republican automatically grants you superior knowledge of all things military, war, and defense related? Enthusiasm is no substitute for knowledge or talent."

9 Actual Examples of Why Google Search Is Better Than Yahoo! — On Maxim.com's "Stupid Fun" blog, their writers decide that they're going to decide to settle the Google vs. Yahoo! engine debate by checking out search suggestions. Google gives initial suggestions like "how do I tell my girlfriend to lose weight" or "how do I convince my girlfriend to give me head." Meanwhile, Yahoo! comes up with search suggestions like "how do I convince my husband" and "how do I tell my girlfriend I love her." Maxim concludes: "It's now obvious to us—women are running Yahoo!" Digger Darnubbi notes: "um...A woman IS running Yahoo.." That's Carol Bartz, natch!

Interracial couple denied marriage license in Louisiana — An AP article on Yahoo! News reports on a Louisiana justice of the peace who refused to give a marriage license to an interracial couple "out of concern for any children the couple might have." "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it," he said. Top comment from codemonkeysteve: "He's right, the best a mixed-race child could ever hope for is to be President of the USA."

Fourth-Grader To Obama: Why Does Everyone Hate You? — "They're supposed to love you," the young boy said at a New Orleans town hall meeting. Mr. Obama's replied that criticism is meant to keep him on his toes. "When things are tough, you're gonna get some of the blame," Obama said. But, he added, "I'm a tough guy. Are you a tough guy? You look pretty tough." (Cue collective "awwwww.")

Balloon Boy: "...We did this for the show." — Gawker's post on wee Falcon Heene's appearance with his family on Larry King Live, in which he blurts out, "You guys said that, um, we did this for the show." In the comment section, Diggers think Mr. Heene farted after Falcon's apparent "confession." Kruse says: "I can't wait to see what the South Park guys do with this."

7 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Help a Girl Move — HolyTaco.com has the goods: "Helping a girl move is like sitting through a screening of Beverly Hills Chihuahua with a clothespin on your ballsack: it's completely miserable, it hurts like hell, and you gain absolutely nothing from it." TSK05 comments: "Department of redundancy department."

Judge: Mobile Phone Ringtones are Not Concerts — According to this report from Wired.com, a federal judge had to rule against the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, who were arguing that anytime a cell phone rings, say, a Jay-Z ringtone, the iPhone users is committing copyright infringement. Since people around them can hear the song, the mobile phone is a "portable concert hall," according to them. The ASCAP was suing AT&T and Verizon in a New York federal court. The top comments on Digg shout various expletives to the RIAA, which has nothing to do with the case.

Interracial Couple Denied Marriage License — The same article from a few links up, only this time, from the Huffington Post. The Digg comments here focus more on the judge claiming that he isn't racist because he has black friends, he just doesn't want to marry interracial couples. Comment from kelpdip: "I have boxcars of Jewish friends."

U.S. troop funds diverted to pet projects — The Washington Times reports on a study by the Center for Defense Information that found senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects "largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops."

House Republicans Call on Obama to Fire 'Safe Schools Czar' — Fox News reports on 53 House Republicans urging Obama to fire his "safe schools czar" Kevin Jennings over concerns that he wants to "exclusively" promote a "homosexual agenda" and that "as a schoolteacher years ago he did not report that a young student told him he was having sex with an older man." The top comment is from tracygav, who posted a statement from Mr. Jennings' former student: "I find it regrettable that the people who have the compassion and integrity to protect our nation's students are themselves in need of protection from homophobic smear attacks. Were it not for Mr. Jennings' courage and concern for my well-being at that time in my life, I doubt I'd be the proud gay man that I am today."

Guitar legend Les Paul dies at age 94 — R.I.P. to the musician and inventor who changed music. Comment from fattehboi: "damn 94 years strong, congrats Mr. Les Paul, your name is the Coca Cola of guitars."

The 20 Greatest Shows Canceled By Fox Before Their Time — ToplessRobot.com, a nerd news and humor site (which is produced under the Village Voice Media umbrella), lists some shows we know and love and miss ("Arrested Development," "Wonderfalls," "Family Guy," "Undeclared," "Firefly") and others we'd forgotten about ("The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.," the science fiction/Western starring Bruce Campbell). Comment from gumballer: "I blame American Idol."

7 Reasons to Go See 'District 9' — Filmschoolrejects.com compels you! (So does the Observer.)

"Death to Obama" Sign Holder Detained by Secret Service — NBC's local Washington D.C. TV station has a report on their Web site about a man who was holding a sign reading "Death to Obama" outside a town hall meeting on health care reform in Hagerstown, Md. Washington County Sheriff's Capt. Peter Lazich said the sign also read, "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids."

Apple, AT&T sued for lack of MMS capability — A class action suit started in a Louisana district court alleging that Apple and AT&T touted the iPhone as supporting MMS (multimedia messaging service) but have not as yet provided the service. "Want to know the best part of this story?" asks goelz83. "Every phone on AT&T, other than the iPhone, supports MMS."

State Farm Pulls Glenn Beck Support — "They are falling like dominos," according to the dailykos.com, but in the post, a State Farm statement says the ads were "mistakenly aired," not exactly "pulled." In the comments, some Diggers say this is a violation of Mr. Beck's freedom of speech. A top comment from ThsGuyRightHere: "No one is silencing Beck. It's just that several companies have chosen not to advertise on his show. Beck is free to say what he wants, I'm free to buy what I want, and I'm free to tell someone that I choose not to buy their product. No free speech is being stifled here."

Michael Vick signs two-year deal with Philadelphia Eagles — ESPN.com reports that the convicted dog abuser will make his way to Philly. Superguysteve quips: "Vick is an Eagle. Hide your Beagle."

5 Guys A Girl Wouldn't Be Caught Dead Going Home With — According to collegecandy.com: "It’s a well-known fact that guys will go home with just about anything when they’re drunk. However, women are a different story." They allege women won't go home with "Sweaty, Smelly Guy," "Oversized Bouncer With Neckbeard," or "Older Guy Who Doesn't Really Belong At the Bar." Skuzzlbut notes: "'Guy with Too Much Money' was not on the list."

Adam Savage Interview -- Have Mac, Will Bust Myths [w/ PICS]— Maclife.com interviews Adam Savage, cohost of the Discovery Channel's MythBusters, on how and why the guy is obsessed with Apple. "Oh lord. I see the fuses popping in Diggers' brains right now," comments sklassen. "Love of MythBusters vs. Hate of Apple. Digg. No wait... undigg! No Digg! Arrgghhhgh!"

Digsby Joins the Dark Side, Uses Your PC to Make Money — Alert! Lifehacker.com reports that TheDigsby, an instant messenger client, "not only bundles half a dozen "optional" crapware applications, it's also using your computer to crawl the web, do stock market research, and more. It's time to uninstall." Indeed, Diggers.

TMZ: John Hughes Dies — Appropriate comment from NRay7882: "RIP, and here's to never remaking The Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

Advertisers dumping Glenn Beck — MediaMatters.org quoted a ColorForChange press release announcing that three companies who run ads during Mr. Beck's Fox show—NexisLexis-owned Lawyers.com, Proctor & Gamble and Progressive Insurance—today "distanced themselves" after "over 45,000 ColorOfChange.org members called on advertisers to pull their ads from Glenn Beck after the controversial news host called President Obama a 'racist' who 'has a deep-seated hatred for white people' on 'Fox & Friends' last week."

Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? — On Alternet.org, an excerpt of the book Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? by Steve Fox, Paul Armentano and Mason Tvert (published by Chelsea Green), which examines how Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps could get away with acting like "a drunken ass," but when he inhales a bit of pot, "he is run through the social, corporate, and legal wringer—but only for his suspected pot use. ... Next time he goes out in public, he should just stick to being drunk and obnoxious." Frankyfran3 says: "This comparison is all the more serious because of his previous conviction of driving under the influence of alcohol, which could have potentially maimed/killed himself or others."

Rejected By Apple, iPhone Developers are Going Underground — Wired reports: "Some developers aren’t taking the rejection lying down: They’re turning instead to an unauthorized app store called Cydia, where forbidden wares continue to exist — and even earn developers some money." Viva la anti-Apple revolution!

How Did Hackers Cripple Twitter? — Time magazine investigates. Comment from skyfyre: "They did the world a favor."

Spotify Is the Best Desktop Music Player We've Ever Used — Lifehacker reviews this music app getting lots of attention across the Web recently, including from New York's Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and his son, Josh Wilson, who were quoted in Brad Stone's recent New York Times story. This is from Lifehacker: "Imagine a music app with instant access to any song you wanted to hear. Imagine creating a playlist from those songs and quickly, easily sharing it with friends. Such an app does exist, it's called Spotify, and could just change music forever."

CNN Rips Into Fraudulent Health Care CEO Anti-Reformer — Talking Points Memo points out the rift between CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, who took down Rick Scott: "Rick Scott, the founder of an organization that's been funding anti-health care reform protests and the former CEO of a hospital company that, as Sanchez pointed out, paid $1.7 billion to settle charges of overcharging Medicare and Medicaid." Latenight13 says: "Finally CNN finds a backbone."

10 mysteries of human behaviour that science can't explain — The U.K. Telegraph writes up the New Scientist magazine editorial about our pecularities, like why we have body hair and get blushy cheeks or pick our noses and do silly things like make art. Comment from Rockout: "#11 Women."

Digg Ads beta rolling out this week — Wow, now Diggers can help influence what kinds of ads they see as they browse around the site. What if you could down Digg those Palm 3 ads into oblivion? Bliss! An explanation from Digg's official blog: "your Diggs, buries and clicks influence a quality score that determines how often the ad gets displayed, and ultimately how much the advertiser pays per click. The more you Digg an ad, the less the advertiser will have to pay; the more an ad is buried, the more the advertiser is charged, eventually pricing it out of the system. ... Our goal with Digg Ads is to encourage advertisers to create content as compelling as organic Digg stories, and to give you more control over which ads you see on Digg."

Twitter, Facebook attack targeted one user — CNet reports: "A Georgian blogger with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and Google's Blogger and YouTube was targeted in a denial-of-service attack that led to the sitewide outage at Twitter and problems at the other sites on Thursday, according to a Facebook executive." Just one guy, people! Comment from ipt2g: "I'm so mad at the hacker. I really wanted to see what my friends ate for lunch today, and when they flushed their toilets, or when they farted. I missed out on a lot today, all thanks to this Russian Hacker! :("