Obama, Google Tops At Digg

The following results from my little, informal study are hardly definitive, but they are interesting. Someone following up with a more intensive and scientifically rigorous quantitative analysis might find the same thing I did: stories related to Barack Obama are submitted more often to Barack Obama
(Photo Credit: wikipedia)

Not-Safe-For-Work (NSFW) content? Not so often, it turns out.

Here's how I conducted the study, just to get it out of the way, and so you can scrutinize fully. I ran searches on the Digg.com site for [Obama], [Hillary], [McCain], [Ron Paul], [Google], [Microsoft], [Linux], and [NSFW], with parameters to bring back all stories, sorted by newest first.

For the first three pages of each set of search results, I calculated how much time elapsed between submitted stories, and what the average wait-time was for a new submitted story on that subject. I only went three pages deep because, well, I don't have that kind of time. ;-D

Here's what I found out:

Digg submitters are just crazy about Barack Obama and can't go three minutes without submitting another Obama-centric story—literally. The average time between Obama stories: 2.26 minutes. The largest gap between stories: 8 minutes. Total time elapsed in 3 pages of results: about 2 hours.

You'd have to wait nearly twice as long for a story about Hillary, about 4.65 minutes on average. The largest gap between Hillary stories: 35 minutes. Total time elapsed in 3 pages of results: about 4 hours.

You'd have to wait even longer for McCain stories. On average, 6.9 minutes went by between submitted stories. The largest gap between: 33 minutes. Total time elapsed in 3 pages of results: about 5 hours.

I didn't forget about you rabid Ron Paul fans, though I kind of wanted to. A Ron Paul story popped up about once every 26.45 minutes, which may mean even the Internet has given up on him now. Total time elapsed in 3 pages of results 16 hours, 42 minutes.

Google proved king of the tech sample, with only 5.1 minutes elapsing on average between stories over a 4 hour and 30 minute period. Average time between Microsoft stories: 9.2 minutes, 7 hours total. Linux: 17.5 minutes, 13 hours total.

Just to see how raunchy it got on Digg (strictly for research purposes only, of course) I also checked NSFW submissions. All tech and politics and no play? Pretty much. A not-safe-for-work submission was made on average every hour or so, about 67.75 minutes.