Part Eight: Know Your Audience

Pondering the problems of audience more, nubi couldn't help but find more questions for the Master. As always, since nubi was always kind and polite to him, the Master replied honestly, to help as best he could. Here is another of the many conversations they had.

"Master, I don't understand your submissions. Some of them seem almost doomed to fail from the start, yet you submit them anyway. Why do you do that?"

"It all depends upon the goal I have for that story, nubi."

"Goal? I thought the goal was to have your story Ascend?"

"Not always. I have many other goals, and one even more important than the Ascension of any given story."

"What could be more important than Ascension? What else could matter so much?"

"Many things, nubi. One of them is that I like to shape Digg so that content I like is looked upon more often by many Diggers, even if it doesn't hit the frontpage."

"In other words, you simply submit stories you like."

"Yes. That is only one goal, however. Sometimes, I will submit a friends' blog post, purely to get that friend more views, if I enjoyed the post. This makes the blog more known, as well as the friend happy, and any friend who writes good things makes me happy."

"I see. But the post that makes me wonder was neither of those things. In fact, it was your own blog. Wouldn't it get more success if you asked a friend to post it?"

"Yes, but I don't post it to reach Ascension."

"Why do you post it, then?"

"Because my friends like to read it."

At this, nubi was enlightened.