How often do you see the little digg logo on people’s blog posts? In most cases, it’s just a meek attempt at some attention…and hardly ever works.

Appearing on digg can certainly help a blog. This post drove enough traffic to the Wikinomics site to crash our servers, but there is a fair amount of criticism of how the site works. From Wikipedia:

It has been reported that the top 100 Digg users posted 56% of Digg’s frontpage content, and that a niche group of just twenty individuals had submitted 25% of the frontpage conten, A few sites have raised the problem of groupthink and the possibility that the site is being “manipulated”, so to speak.

Our friend Neil addressed ths question head-on last week on his outstanding blog 1000awesomethings. After trying the old fashioned way (begging friends and regular readers to digg on his behalf) without success, he tried a direct route, writing An Open Letter to Digg from Unpopular Websites around the World. An excerpt:

Damn, girl.

You sure do play hard to get.

Why you gotta be so hot? Why you gotta be so attractive, with your smooth and sexy layout, massive in-our-face traffic patterns, and cute and casual down-to-Earth style? From the moment you first asked us “Are you human?” we were hooked. You’re just so funny and cool.

Digg, we want you bad.

Then, some sucking up, and…

Maybe one day, we think to ourselves. Maybe one day you’ll glance our way. Maybe not the big dance on Friday at 9am, but one little popular submission on a Sunday morning at 5am. Heck, we’d take the jogging-before-church date. We’d love the jogging-before-church date.

So that’s it, Digg. You’re hot and you know it, and we admire the fact that you always let us know where we stand. No matter what anyone says, you’ve always treated us with respect and honesty. And that’s what makes it so hard.

So we’ll just keep on dreaming. You just keep on being you.

Sincerely,

- Unpopular Websites Around The World

Was it pathetic? (yes). In the comment section, there was speculation that Neil was obese (he’s not) and a geek (well, he doesn’t bite the heads off animals in a circus act). But it worked! The post and the next one (he posts every weekday) both made the front page of digg and the total visitors went from 250,000ish before diggwhoring to 350,000ish.

Awesome.