Since the deletion of the story, literally thousands of stories popped up on Digg with the number, all receiving thousands of Diggs. The number spread to other sites such as Wikipedia, starting small rebellions as sites comply with fear of cease and desist orders. At last count, a Google search for the number turned up over 300,000 results.

I’m curious what your take on this is. The MPAA thinks a randomly generated number is intellectual property. Do you agree? It’s obvious since the Digg rebellion 09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63 56 88 c0 will be everywhere. How do you think the MPAA will react?

By the way, I recommend you take Colin‘s advice:

This time it has to do with Digg’s algorithm. The recent changes have left top users alienated. Their submissions are becoming meaningless, and some are even getting banned without justification. A long time visitor of my site, Smaran, who is currently ranked 28 on Digg, has expressed concern in his Newsvine column. I agree with him completely; if the algorithms are being changed to prevent the same old submitters from having articles promoted, what’s the point? Digg offers no monetary compensation, unlike Newsvine, making ranking (number of promoted articles) the only thing fueling users’ submissions.

From an outsider position (I rarely submit Digg articles), Digg has changed noticeably since the algorithm adjustments. Less articles are being promoted, and it’s taking longer for breaking news to reach the front page. This is not something I’m enjoying. While there was a lot of crap reaching the front page, there also was a lot of gems making the front page. Now the gems are harder to come by since there are less promoted articles.

I’m sure just like last time, changes will be made, and people will be happy again. However, I have a feeling it will be a different set of top Digg users. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, but I believe the top Digg users should be rewarded for their contributions. They’ve dedicated their time sorting through the crap of the internet; Digg should reward them by giving them the only thing they ask for, acknowledgment.

Looks great, doesn’t it? Well, I can’t use the signature at all. Apparently Gmail doesn’t support HTML signatures yet. So all that hard work went right down the tubes. I’m not sure who to be more pissed at. Gmail or myself for not thinking to check before I started.

Just thought I’d give a warning to anyone who was thinking of doing the same thing. Also, if anyone has any idea on how to get this signature into my Gmail messages, I’d love to hear it. I know I could use Gmail’s POP3 functionality, but I really like the Gmail interface, so I’d prefer not to do that. Well, disgruntled Gmail user out.

Previous to today, Newsvine was invite only. I was lucky enough to obtain an invite early on, and I can proudly say the site you will be seeing today has greatly evolved from the site I started with. Newsvine now has tons of features to help you enjoy the site better, and prevent it from going down the gutter like other community driven sites.

If you’re planning on checking out Newsvine today, I would recommend reading this article introducing the main feature of Newsvine. I would also check out the Newsvine Code of Honor, which will tell you what’s accepted on Newsvine and what isn’t. Finally, enjoy yourself. Seed some articles, leave some comments, write some articles, or just sit back and read. Newsvine’s what you make it, and that’s something I think everyone will enjoy.

Here is the raw visits data:

Here is the famous Digg effect, still not complete, powered by the Fresh View Pepper:

What Mint stats post would go complete without showing of the wonderful Pepper Trends, which was created by myself and Brett DeWoody. Just check out the increase percentage on the Digg article: