Patrick Parise is the co-host of the Social Blade show, a weekly social media podcast. Patrick was known for being a well-connected, powerful Digg user – who promoted over 625 stories to the home page under several accounts (most recently Jenocide312). He stayed ‘under the radar’ and kept a low public profile until he got banned on Digg for the 3rd time, and recently decided to come out and share his knowledge with others. These days, you can follow him on Twitter…

Tell us a little about yourself?

Patrick podcasting at his dual-monitor workstation.

“I live in Lusby, Maryland, I have 4 boys and I’m recently divorced. I’m a business owner, but it has nothing to do with computers or technology. Digging and social media is a hobby – it’s what I do after work.”

You were actively involved in Digg and you were extremely successful at it. What motivated you so intensely?

“I just really enjoy it. I love finding a great story, and there’s a sense of accomplishment when it gets to the top. It’s fun when you’re friends with people and you can find the good stories first – and they’re like “Damn! How are you catching these already?” I’ve been offered some money (to digg stories) but I always turned it down – because I didn’t feel like it was worth the hassle. I get up and go to work every day and I stress over it – so one of the reasons I do social media is to escape from reality. When I come home, I wanna escape a little bit. Rather than getting drunk or falling asleep in front of a TV – I’d digg.

I had 3 strong accounts that got banned: Crackerpat, Brokebackcasket, Jenocide312. Cracketpat got banned because I was using the ‘Digg Friends Easy’ script (warning: do not use!) – which a lot of other people were using at the time. But once you’re banned on Digg, it’s forever. You can never come back. So my last 3 accounts got banned because they found it it was “me.”

What makes Digg more interesting than the more ‘mainstream’ sites, like Twitter and Facebook?

The home page of Digg.com is one of the most trafficked, competitive spaces in entire the social Web.

“It’s all about the stories. The constant stream of good content. It’s such a good way for me to pick up news from all different angles, whether it be high-tech security, computer industry news, faceplant videos on YouTube, celebrity gossip, or the strangest / wackiest stories you can imagine. And it’s filtered by the community – if I see something on the front page it’s because a lot of other people found it interesting, too.”

What feelings and emotions did you feel when you were digging?

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get into it. I’m sure everyone, including top diggers like MrBabyMan and Msaleem, still get a rush and get drawn to the excitement of it, too. However, I find it’s more frustrating when something really good doesn’t make the home page, than it is rewarding when something good does become popular.

There are certain milestones, like when you reach your 100th popular story, or when you pass a certain person. It was pretty cool when my last account got more home page stories than Kevin Rose’s account – which is kind of an honor – but sometimes he doesn’t submit anything for months. The week that I got banned (as BrokebackCasket), I was doing very well – I had 49 home page stories in one week.”

What kind of time do you have to put in to to build a power account?

image: Computer Choppers

“To start, you’re gonna have to spend, maybe, 6 hours a day. It would take a lot of digging people’s stories… but once you get enough of the right people following you and you get some momentum – you can do it it maybe an hour, or so. Nowdays you can only digg 200 stories a day, so you can’t really blind digg (vote on stories without reading them) like you used to. And that’s kind of missing the point me being there, which is to find the most interesting stuff.

It also takes a lot of behind-the-scenes networking. I have over 700 contacts on instant messenger. Probably 120 of them are green lights (active) at any time – all the way down into the red and the orange, I can’t even see them all.”

Do you know anyone who doesn’t spend hours digging friends’ stories that consistently does well on the site?

“No. Even the accounts where you look at ‘em and see that they only dugg 10 or 15 in the last 24 hours… those guys aren’t hitting the home page on a regular basis. They might break through occasionally – but that’s just Digg throwing those guys a bone to keep people’s attention. They can’t give out every single home page to people who submit a lot of good stuff – they have to keep the worker bees interested and involved.”

What percentage of active diggers do you suspect get some kind of financial compensation for endorsing stories?

“I’d say that there’s between 500 and 1500 daily diggers at any given time. Maybe 10% of them – or 50 to 100 of those (could be getting paid by someone) – it’s very possible. And you know, that catches up with you. For the bigger accounts, if they are getting paid, they sure aren’t telling anyone about it – because once you get to a certain level, you start to get haters. And those people would turn ya in. If anyone could prove it just a little, Digg support would have no choice but to ban them for being a ‘hired gun.’”

Does Digg.com arbitrarily ban people for just being “too good”?

“No. Why would they do that? Then MrBabyMan, and Msaleem and MakiMaki would be gone. Guys like LouieBaur would have been gone long ago – because guys like him are so ridiculously good at it. …They banned InsainCain02 they same day they banned my account, BrokebackCasket, because they found out I was a banned digger. And once you’re banned, you’re not allowed to come back.”

What kind of personalities do power users have?

“A lot of the people do it to pass time because it’s an escape from reality. Also… to be popular on Digg, you have to have a strong rapport with people and be friendly. And helpful. You’ve gotta be social and willing to give – help people with stuff, digg stories for people – and build up a good relationship with a lot of different people. You’ve really got to enjoy what you’re submitting or else you won’t be much good at it.”

What tools did you use for finding content and digging? Any tips or tricks?

1. Google Reader. I have all my sites loaded into there and I could go there this second and find 4, 5 or even 6 stories that should be ‘home page material.’ I can pass those out to my friends and 70% of them should hit the home page. Finding the right content just became second nature, for me.
2. Social Blade. Urgo’s site has incredible Digg analytics. You need to know that once you’ve dugg 199 stories, you need to stop. It also shows which sites are the most popular sources for home page stories, which diggers are most active, etc.
3. The Bigg Board by Brainnovate. This is an real-time dashboard for Digg that lets you track your stories, see where they are on the site, whether they break into ‘upcoming,’ etc. Some people digg way too much stuff and aren’t seeing any of the results that I am. So I’ve been helping a lot of new diggers learn how to do it right. And Bigg Board is the best tool to let me see exactly what’s happening with their stories.

What are some of the all-time greatest headlines or stories you remember?

The online Susan Boyle phenomena got a nice boost from one of Patrick’s submissions on digg.com

“I guess the best story I ever had was given to me by MrBabyMan – because some unknown user had just submitted it and it wasn’t gonna make the home page. It was a Susan Boyle video – way before she became popular. The YouTube video had less than 10,000 views when I submitted it. It went viral and the next Monday I got e-mails from The Daily Mail wanting to know how I’d discovered it. Then before ya know, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher are tweeting about it. I didn’t make it go viral, it went viral by itself – but I just happened to be the power digger who ended up submitting it.”

Who are some people you think that have great social media skills or contributions to the community?

“The most influential person, to me, by far, was Diggboss. That guy has done wonderful things for me and for other people as well. He showed me everything – every trick you could possibly use – and he wanted nothing in return!

EmitStop (a 17-year old Web designer) does very, very well. He’s been around a lot longer than I have and he’s great a connecting with people and movies stories along. There’s a relatively unknown guy named Cancerkitty who finds the funniest articles – his stuff is just phenomenal and it just flies to the top. .”

What are your goals? At what point will you feel satisfied or feel like you’ve “made it”?

“ I don’t think I’ll ever be totally satisfied. I’m pretty family-oriented, so whenever all my kids are grown up, and are married and are living successful lives – then I’ll know I’ve done right. Money isn’t the most important thing. My kids are healthy, I’m grateful for what I’ve got, I’ve done well in social media – and I enjoy spreading it all out and helping people do well.

When not at work or doing social media coaching, Patrick coaches football and spends time with his kids.

Recently, I did a show with JD Rucker, Erin, Victor and Urgo- where we we interviewed the singer Josh Charles. All the money he makes from his song ‘Healing Time’ will go to rebuilding New Orleans after the hurricane – and we’re trying to raise a million dollars. It’s been 4 years since Katrina and a lot of people aren’t feeling the love, anymore, so much. So, by helping get the word out about important things like that, it feels pretty good…”

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Reg Saddler is the co-host of The Drill Down, a popular social media podcast, along with Andrew Sorcini (Mr. BabyMan), Muhammad Saleem and Lidija Davis. He is well-known for being the #4 Digg user of all time- until he was abruptly and arbitrarily banned last September, along with several other power users. That hardly set him back, as he’s currently rising to the heights of popularity on other hot social sites. These days you can find him on Twitter, Mixx and Facebook …

What do you do for work? And for fun?

“My background is in IT consulting. More recently, I’ve been exploring doing some social media consulting with companies. Now… that doesn’t mean I’m promoting or submitting stuff for people. I’ve seen many people try that and it doesn’t work – for long. Instead, we’re showing them how to make content that will get popular on social media sites: how to make stuff people will want to share.

I’ve got a wife and kids I like to spend time with. So these days, I mostly hang out at home and play with my computers and watch movies and stuff.”

Serious video & sound: Reg’s 73″ home theater system.

Are you an information junkie?

“Yeah, I’m definitely an information addict. But I’ve noticed there’s different kinds of information addiction. For instance, my wife subscribes to thousands of RSS feeds and she is really patient. She goes through all these stories and reads every single one of them from beginning to end. I subscribe to thousands of RSS feeds, too. But me, on the other hand, I just go crazy. Scan through stories and try and find something good enough to submit. Something that might make the home page. I have a much, much faster pace.”

Too much information for one brain to handle! image: Martino!

Do you think social media is evolving our thinking or shifting human consciousness in a new direction?

“Actually, I think it’s dumbing us down. I think people are no longer reading stuff like The Great Gatsby, they’re just searching for quick answers on Google. You don’t have to know how to add, multiply or do any research – it’s all just there floating around on the internet at the push of a button. It makes things too easy.

Reg in his home office.

Here’s an example: I used to be really organized and collect all kinds of media – but now that information is floating around out there everywhere – I just kind of pull it out of a cloud and will download whatever I need to. So in some ways, this isn’t really evolution.”

Do you think social media could be a mainstream influence in the 2012 election?

“Yeah, I could totally see social media being a huge part of the next election. Even now, it has a lot of power. During the election, I submitted a Digg story: “Sarah Palin Wants Harry Potter Banned.” I kind of figured that the story might not be true, but I loved the headline and I submitted it anyways. It hit the front page, and the next day the McCain campaign responded to the story. I got a kick out of that. I’m fairly sure it was because of the Digg story – cause it wasn’t really reported anywhere else, nationally.”

You were a very hardcore Digg user… you dugg over 130,000 stories and had 1,566 submissions hit the home page. What drives someone like you?

image: Computer Choppers

“A lot of people play video games. Xbox. PS3. World of Warcraft. Social media is an outlet like that for me. Not so much as a toy “game” – I take it seriously – but I do take a (video) gaming-like approach. I get a sense of joy. Just like when you’re finishing a level of a game… I love to get on the home page. Not for an ego sense, but I do enjoy getting to share some stories that I think are amazing and have a lot of people see the same content.”

Any metaphors that you use when you think of Digg?

“One thing I think that most people don’t consider that Digg is a business. Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson had a really cool idea, but they set up as a company and it has to make money. It has advertisers and legal policies and stuff like that… ”

What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out on Digg?

“First, look for the sites that top Diggers are submitting content from, and also submit content from there. Then spend some time getting to know the site and understanding how it works socially.

Second. I’d say there, maybe, a pool of 1,000 or maybe 2,000 people who submit content on an active basis. We know them all – we know who is active and who is on vacation. If you get to know maybe just 20 or 30% of these active people by just befriending them and digging their content – only the content you like – they reciprocate. They will notice you. They’ll say: ‘This is a new person, and they like my stuff, let’s see if I like theirs!’

Also, you should have to have a very visual icon. Pick one and stick with it – don’t change.”

Who is one Digger who really impressed you?

MakiMaki hasn’t been on for that long, but he’s really passionate about Digg, he has a popular blog, and he is really incredible at finding good news stories. He’s the best, actually. That guy must not leave his computer. I watch what he’s up to… and I learn a lot from him.

I’ve never seen a picture of Maki or spoken with him. Have you talked with him?

Andy (MrBabyMan) has spoken with him. So has Oboy (JD Rucker). We’ve analyzed him – cause we’re hardcore, die-hard users – and he’s for real. There’s no way that a team of people could be submitting his stuff. It’s not just about finding the content… a lot of it is re-crafting the title to make it hot. He’s a master at that.

You’ve recently had a meteoric rise in popularity on Twitter. What’s your philosophy?

For me Twitter is a lot like Digg – without an algorithm. I can post great content to Twitter, but instead of getting thumbs up or dugg up… I get retweets. I’m not hyper-aggressive, not using some kind of script: I’m manually finding new people. If they like my stuff, they stick. .and if they don’t.. they de-friend me. If you look at some of the top guys like Chris Pirillo, Guy Kawasaki, Jason Calacanis, Kevin Rose or Scoble… they’re posting top content. It’s content – mostly – and you build a great following from your content.

What people like — just like in a newspaper – is diversity of content. I post stuff about space, politics, science – you name it! An easy way to do that would be to go to the front page of Digg, find the best story and tweet it. Right when Obama got inaugurated, I found some really great photos of the event and it was hot on Twitter.

Conversations are also a huge part of Twitter… I try and reach out to people, ya know, join the conversation. I don’t want to be a Twitterati that doesn’t say anything. If you ask Kevin Rose a question, chances are he won’t get back with you. Ask Scobleizer, and he might – and that’s how he builds his following. I’ve got 23,000 followers, so I try to engage with as many people as possible.

When you have so many followers, how do you possibly keep track of it all?

I use Tweetdeck. I can’t read every single message from the raw flow of my followers, but I do read the @ replies and the direct messages. I also set up groups in Tweetdeck to watch followers whose tweets I want to see… or those I have to, because they’re business partners and colleagues. I also watch certain hash tags.

Tweetdeck rocks!

There’s other good tools like My Tweeple – where you can go in and see who hasn’t been active in a while. SocialToo is amazing. It gives you an automated response when people follow me on Twitter – saying “Thanks! Check out my Facebook profile (or blog)“… and if someone follows you or unfollows you – it can do the same thing back. It makes ‘people management’ soooooo much easier. It can be a real pain to do it all manually.

What’s happening at Mixx?

Mixx is cool because you can make your own customized homepage – where you only see the content you care about. Also, Mixx aggressively listens to their user base. If they hear about a problem, or if people suggest a new feature that might be cool… Mixx is a lot more nimble. There’s only a small number of people who are highly active in social media…. maybe like 2,000 who are on Digg, Mixx, Reddit, Twitter and stay active on every major social domain. Mixx understand this, and rather than ostracizing the power users… they’ve embraced them.

Digg has 28.7 million dollars in funding, but they’re laying off people and they don’t have a direction. But Mixx is Chris McGill and his team – and if you ask them for a feature, they’ll try it out for you. (Mixx) doesn’t send 100k visitors to your story. But CNN understands the value of Mixx, it’s the main social voting icon on their site. And so do their investors. I think they have some groundbreaking ideas that I might not be able to wrap my head around yet.

You do really well at building an audience. What do you want to use your influence in social media for?

During the presidential election, I used my social media capital to push Barack Obama. I’m going to use my position in the future to push worthy causes. I also want to have a successful social media company and be a strong player in the industry. I do want to make a lot of money, but if I can push eyeballs to a story about starving kids, or to help after a disaster like New Orleans – I’ll always do that.

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