Most of you know what Digg is, one of the largest and most popular social network.If you just signed up for Digg you might be like most of the Digg newbies, and not even know how Digg actually works. I personally don`t know how all the social networks work, but I am devoted to the ones I am active on and I can say I use them effectively. So if you don`t have a Digg account you can sign up for one now, read on this article to see how exactly Digg works , using the shouting feature effectively.

The shout feature is normally used to gain some attention from your friends, and increase your diggs on any of your submissions. The more your story gets digged the more chances it can make to the Digg`s homepage. Well the number of Diggs doesn`t decide if your story will be popular or not, there are actually a lot more factors in the algorithm. Some Digg users consider the shout out feature to be the greatest way to get a story on the Digg homepage, and my opinion stands the same. If we take a look at the most dugg stories, the ones that make the front page, they are from huge websites such as Forbes , Reuters , LifeHacker , Telegraph.co.uk , TechCrunch and a lot more others. Their stories get hundreds if not thousands of diggs because of their already build up communities and the huge traffic they receive. Most of them have digg badges on their sites that actually allow visitors to digg the stories, this is one great way to gain more diggs, and not let your story get buried by other Digg users. But in most of the cases, especially new blogs there is no such 'build up community' so things are a bit more difficult. Try to build up your friend list, socialize ask for help, and try to be as active as possible.

Most people think that the shout feature is a form of spamming others and nothing else. Well there is nothing wrong in shouting, that is why Digg implemented this option, for the users to take advantage. If you have hundreds of mutual friends, you might receive even hundreds of shouts everyday. It`s up to anyone what story they might like to digg. There is only one thing to consider thou, do not shout a story more than once, ask one of your friends to spread the story and make it popular, rather than invading other friend`s shouts pool.

You get what you put in, this is rule number one. Most of the social networks work this way, and there is no way anyone will be able to game the system, well at least a lot have tried and got their accounts suspended.

No miracle will happen if you don`t contribute with anything to any of the existing social networks, including Digg, which is one of the largest so far. First, grow your Digg profile to 500 or more mutual friends. You want your story to make the homepage, to become popular, then ask for it, use the shout feature and ask other members to help, and spread it to other users and so on, collect as many diggs on each of your submissions. Comments counts a lot as well, a story with more comments will be more likely to be on the front page, it has to be good no matter what.

Recently I have seen an article about some some of Diggs top users, what they do is hang out on Digg and digg stories they want to make the homepage, right before 12 midnight when the homepage is updated. Of what I`ve heard the time that a story is submitted does matter, but what most don`t know is which time exactly is the most efficient. My point is that, if you submit a story you should start sending shouts right away, timing is important, because the quicker you receive diggs the faster your story makes Digg`s homepage. You have to take into consideration your friends nationalities and the time difference between you and them, because you might be sending shouts to most of your friends when they are actually sleeping.The most effective digg shouts are during the working hours, because that is when people browse Digg in lack of nothing better to do. One more tip is to remove any of your inactive friends there is no point in keeping them there.

If you are using the shouting feature to shout to all of your friends at once, there is a limit of 100 shouts you can send at any one time. At least this is what appears in your shout box, actually there are 200 possible shouts to be made at any one time.That means only 200 of your friends will receive your story. Digg actually set this rule from the beginning just to prevent spam. Don`t worry if you have more than 200 mutual friends you can still send the same shout to the next 200 and so on.

I highly recommend using the shout feature, as this is the only way a smaller blog`s stories can receive more diggs and not get buried just after it has been submitted. There is some work involved, but using digg wisely is highly rewarded. There is just a little bit of time needed to make it efficient.

So not abuse of digg shouts, and do return the favors. In my option this is actually what social networks are and how they work, people have to interact between them, no one will do something for you unless you return favors and be active in the community.

Last thing to consider being a member of Digg , doesn`t mean people will actually digg your stories just because you send shouts, you should only submit interesting , helpful content then you might receive diggs just because your article has been helpful.

"Digg crashes servers" , this is what digg users call "The Digg Effect". There have been also made some experiments to test this effect of Digg. What actually happens? When a story arrives on Digg`s home page, it might get thousands of visits in the first minute it has made the first or second page, this is a tremendous growth of traffic at one time, entering your blog. This usually happens to cheap hosting plans where servers are always ready to crash..

Last thing to consider being a member of Digg , doesn`t mean people will actually digg your stories just because you send shouts, you should only submit interesting , helpful content then you might receive diggs just because your article has been helpful.

"Digg crashes servers" , this is what digg users call "The Digg Effect". There have been also made some experiments to test this effect of Digg. What actually happens? When a story arrives on Digg`s home page, it might get thousands of visits in the first minute it has made the first or second page, this is a tremendous growth of traffic at one time, entering your blog. This usually happens to cheap hosting plans where servers are always ready to crash..