W3Counter.com’s global stats report was recently featured on Digg.com, the community-driven link sharing site. It isn’t the first time W3Counter’s been voted to the top as Digg’s users are passionate about technology and love to know what everyone else is using — what browsers, operating systems, screen resolutions — the exact stats W3Counter reports on.
Being one of the top 100 sites on the web, a front-page Digg link with more than 5000 votes means serious traffic: Over 50,000 unique visits in just the first day. Being the statsaholic I am, I made sure every one of those visits got recorded and analyzed, so we can turn the tables and see how Digg’s users compare to the web at large.
Web Browsers
There’s an amazing polarity between the web browsers used by Digg.com users and the rest of the world: less than 1/5th use Internet Explorer, the current market leader by far. In its place, more than 3/4 choose Firefox, with the next preference being Safari and Opera.
Operating Systems
Reflecting a clear high-tech early adopter trend, Digg.com users have made the move off Windows XP to a far greater extent than the rest of the population. More than 10% are Mac OS X users, while an astounding 9% have converted their desktops to Linux PCs. Those that haven’t abandoned Microsoft’s operating systems are adopting Vista at a higher rate than the rest of us — more than 5 times faster — with 1 in 10 Windows users running the latest incarnation. Looks like Digg.com’s users may be to thank for Microsoft’s record quarter and high Vista sales.
Screen Resolutions
While at least 10% of all internet users still browse the web at 800×600 or lower resolutions, none made Digg.com’s users’ top 10. Given Digg’s large web designer user base, one can only hope those designers remember that fact and test their designs in resolutions lower than their own monitor’s maximum.
Wrapping Up
Digg.com’s spend much less time on site than average; only 18% viewed more than one page, while more than 50% do on the average day. Of those that did click through to other pages, their average stay was less than 2 minutes, less than 1/5th normal. What did W3Counter get from those tens of thousands of visits? Mostly more traffic: A popular listing on Digg.com leads to increased activity at other social bookmarking sites Digg users have accounts at, more blog mentions, more stumbles, and more links. The site also gained a couple hundred more users, which equates to less than 1% of those that viewed the report. While traffic stabilized a few days after the story, it stabilized at a higher level than before.
Robert Norton
June 4th, 2007
That is pretty kewl info!
Sara
June 5th, 2007
I love analyzing stats. Speaking of.. i think i may finally give w3counter.com a shot! Any words of advice?
Dan
June 6th, 2007
Hmmm… can’t think of anything non-obvious, but I’m probably biased about what’s obvious when using my sites…
Phill Midwinter
June 6th, 2007
Useful information cheers.
Also nice one on debunking that terrible pagerank ‘article’, it makes me so mad when people pass information like that off as their own in one fecking long list which is full of inaccuracies about a system that’s practically not even used anymore.
mark
June 6th, 2007
That’s great stuff Dan, although it’s really just the stats behind what is obvious on digg - they hate Microsoft and love Apple and Linux and Kevin Rose
Brendon Kozlowski
June 7th, 2007
Statistics help to prove (or disprove) over-exaggerated generalizations.
Brendon Kozlowski
June 8th, 2007
Dan, I was wondering (and also asked by a coworker, so I’ll be researching this further anyway), since you seem to have an interest in statistics… Do you happen to know, or have any proof, as to which version of syndication (RSS 0.9x, 1.0, 2.0, or ATOM) seems to be the most widely supported by applications, and/or used by site visitors?
Dan
June 8th, 2007
Can’t say I’ve ever looked into it, but I’ve never run across a reader or browser that didn’t accept any RSS feed I’ve come across, so they must be supporting all the versions simultaneously.
FeedBurner claims to know what version major readers prefer since SmartFeed is one of the free services you can turn on for a feed they’re serving for you. A fun trick to play might be adding a feed to FeedBurner, turn on SmartFeed so it translates your feed into the preferred syndication format, then requesting the feed from FeedBurner. Spoof your user agent as a different reader on each request and see what formats get returned.
Brendon Kozlowski
June 8th, 2007
That’s definitely a neat trick, and one I wouldn’t have thought of. I’m looking for the easy way out right now though (some research already done), not the programmatic solution. If I find anything that seems anywhere near interesting, and actual statistics, I’ll let you know (if you’re interested). Thanks for that cool idea (and the comments on LOLCODE)!
Fajja
January 12th, 2008
Thats quite an interesting read, I have been slowly converting all my freinds to Firefox
"Digg" visitors spend 21 seconds on my site
October 16th, 2008
[...] on 50,000 unique visits coming from there comparing them to normal traffic on the same site: Dan Grossman | Who are Digg.com’s Users? [...]
"Digg" visitors spend 21 seconds on my site
October 16th, 2008
[...] on 50,000 unique visits coming from there comparing them to normal traffic on the same site: Dan Grossman | Who are Digg.com