Anyone who uses social news sites knows that any news submission basically winds up in one of three places:

a) the site’s “front page”, where it gets maximum exposure

b) the site’s “upcoming” or “new” section, where it stays until it gets enough votes to get promoted to the front page, or:

c) the “bury” status, whereby the story either becomes invisible to the general population

Social news users cast votes to get the story from b) to a) while hopefully avoiding c).  Votes clearly have value, but do they have more value at any given point in time in the process?

I have a couple of questions for all social media users and I would greatly appreciate it if you would respond by comment here on this blog or at the social news site that where you are probably seeing this article.? I think this knowledge could be valuable to a lot of people.

1) Is a “vote” (i.e. Digg, Stumble, Sphinn, etc.) more valuable to you when it’s cast before a story becomes popular before the story hits “front page”, after it hits “front page”, or does it matter?

2) If someone casts a vote for your story, are you more likely to check out their submissions if they vote for you during the “upcoming” phase or during the “front page” phase?

3) Do you place any value in votes on your submission after it’s been buried?

I would really appreciate any feedback that you can provide to these questions.  Thanks for reading!

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