Facebook Helps Digg Post Record Month

Digg isn't dead yet, at least, that what the company is saying. Not only that, it's seeing a second youth of sorts. Testament to the power of the new Facebook Open Graph perhaps, Digg saw a 35 percent increase in traffic in the last month, after implementing the Digg Social Reader, a Timeline app.

"January was a good month for Digg with an increase in page views by 35% (our highest level since October of 2010) and Facebook referral traffic up by 67 percent," Digg found.

"It also marked the first month for Digg Social Reader, our Facebook Timeline App," it wrote.

"But increased engagement has only been half of the benefit. The greatest learning has been a better understanding of the type of news stories that people add to their Timeline and why," it said.

Digg's newfound popularity on Facebook is responsible for quite a big increase in traffic and even new users. But that's not the full story, new traffic is good, but people are also finding new ways of using the site.

One thing that Digg found, unsurprisingly perhaps, is that the news people post on their Facebook pages are not necessarily the most popular on Digg itself. What's more, a certain type of stories were typically shared, generally more neutral in subject.

For example, while on Digg entertainment news make up 14 of what's read, only 4 percent of stories posted to the Timeline fall into this category.

It goes on like this, only 2 percent of Timeline stories are political, but about 10 percent of the stories read via Digg are political.

To exemplify, Digg has provided a list of the top 10 stories of last month on Facebook. At the very top is a tech story, about PIPA support veining in Congress.

Moving down, iPhone app lists prove as popular as ever, taking the second spot. Most of the top 10 stories are tech news, there are exceptions.