Digg was the first-mover in democratizing the classic editorial selection process and has helped propel social media into a cultural norm. User created blog posts, videos and images appear alongside traditional media on the front page of Digg and it’s completely up to the audience to decide what stories become popular. You’ll find Digg buttons on every story on the websites of large media outlets. It has become a necessity to include a Digg button these days, because Digg drives huge amounts of traffic and/or exposure to your story (fondly named the ‘Digg effect’) – and if your story is on the web, you’re looking for either or. We experienced the Digg effect not too long ago, which drove a month’s worth of traffic to our blog in less than one day.

Now, Digg is bringing their version of democracy to the US Elections with ‘Digg the Candidates’.  Click through to read more about this new section of Digg, to see Barack Obama’s Digg profile, and what candidates are achieving by joining Digg.

Presidential candidates were invited to join Digg and have been interacting with the Digg community like every other member. They post stories, they Digg stories, they favourite stories and the driving factor behind their ‘Digg the Candidate’ standings is the number of friends they have accumulated. And by they, I mean the candidates campaign team.

Apparently, Ron Paul has been a Digg member since February and Obama since May, long before this site feature was available – so they do have a head-start on all other candidates. As of now, Ron Paul leads the pack with ~3300 friends. Surprisingly, Hillary is a no show thus far, but her profile is reportedly in the works. She has been great at adopting Web 2.0 best practices. Her campaign website is essentially a social network of supporters where individuals can even create and manage their own online fundraising campaign for Hillary.

This is a great example of a Web 2.0 strategy being implemented in the election. With Digg creating this outlet for their members, the candidates that choose to get involved (most if not all it seems), are effectively engaging and communicating to males of the Net Generation who predominantly browse Digg. You can learn a lot by viewing the stories someone chooses to Digg. Go ahead and befriend your favourite candidate.