WTF, OMG, etc. Geeks Like Swimming

By Jane

Swimwatch has a love-hate relationship with social media giant and social news website, Digg.com. When I published a photograph last year, taken out of the side-view mirror of my now-departed Jeep Cherokee, the picture received a lot of attention from the site's members. It gained 2152 votes, or "diggs", and 214 comments. Many people thought that the picture was a fake (in geek-speak, "totally 'Shopped") and argued amongst themselves about how they could tell the photograph had been manipulated until their mothers made them put down their Mac Books. This amused me; it was nothing but a lucky shot, taken at a red traffic light on a clear San Francisco day with a relatively good little digital camera.

Swimwatch has no chance whatsoever of "getting on Digg" with its regular content. I know a little bit about Digg and what appeals to its users because I work at an Internet marketing company. We do everything from search engine optimisation (SEO) to social media marketing, focusing on sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit. The usual content that appeals to Digg users is about politics, humour, technology, science or entertainment. They aren't much into sports, and when they are, swimming is definitely not their cup of tea.

We have far better luck with StumbleUpon, which brought huge amounts of traffic to our story about the best least-recognised pools in the world.

So can you imagine my surprise this evening when I visited Digg to see this story as the latest to have "gone hot" and made the site's front page?


I want to guess that this has never happened before. Nerds and geeks aren't really into Jason Lezak, Michael Phelps and Brendan Hansen. They'll show more interest in Amanda Beard and Natalie Coughlin, but not because of the women's sporting abilities.

The amazing thing about this is, the story in question isn't that sensational. It's a basic New York Times recap of last night's finals session. More interesting things happened tonight, in some ways, with Hansen being upset for a spot in the men's 200 breaststroke and Mary DeScenza missing out in the 200 butterfly to teenagers Elaine Breeden and Kathleen Hersey.

One thing that is interesting crowds like Digg about swimming nowadays is the swim suit technology. Although I warn you not to read - or at least not to heed - some of the comments on Digg stories, you'll see the Speedo LZRs mentioned. You'll also see the regular accusations of steroids, which is a low-blow in most ways. The sad thing about the drugs argument is that whilst it's very unfair on those who are honest, it is likely that, like Marion Jones, some cheats will slip through the doping cracks and onto Beijing-bound teams.

Adding to the interestingness of this Digg success is the fact that Digg reformulated their algorithm recently to require stories to have more votes in order to make the homepage. Two years ago, a story only needed between 35 and 60 votes to become "popular" and thus highly visible. Now, it generally takes close to 100.

Swimming fans should celebrate this small victory in the land of iPhones, video games, political conspiracy theories and silly, humourous pictures. Whilst it's ignored for the most part, our favourite sport sometimes gets the attention it deserves.