About Digg Status:

DiggStatus is a small utility that calculates the average usage statistics of Digg users and compares them to the statistics of a selected user. It utilizes PHP, MySQL, Flash, and XML. The database contains a cached copy of the statistics for every user name requested to avoid subjecting Digg to its own Digg Effect. To provide more accurate averages and to lighten server load during the Digg effect, thousands of recently active users were added to the database before the launch of DiggStatus.

The concept was an exercise in statistical analysis of activity-related data. The data set is fluid and constantly growing. The results are also time-related, such as finding out the average sign-up date for digg users.

For performance reasons, not all data is stored in the same state in which it originated. Therefore, exact figures are not outputted -- only the comparison to the rest of the field.

Because I do not have direct access to the Digg database, I could not retrieve extremely specific data. For example, the total number of comments a user has posted is only an approximation. The script goes by the number of pages of comments a user has left, and multiplies that value by the number of results on a page. This value represents about how many different stories a user has commented on, not the number of actual comments. If a user posted ten comments on one article, it would still represent one unit using this measurement.


About the Author:

My name is Brian Shaler, and I am a professional Flash Programmer located in Phoenix, Arizona [RefreshPhoenix.org]. I don't really enjoy 'name-dropping', so if you would like to see some of my recent work, and who it's for, you can go to the Work Section [brian.shaler.name] of my web site.

Did you enjoy DiggStatus? Feedback is always appreciated: brian@shaler.name