3,746 Diggs: Olympic gold medal winner Michael Phelps caught with bong

Digg's reigning champ today is a picture of Michael Phelps smoking marijuana from a bong, as reported by England's News of the World. Let’s analyze its most Digg-worthy elements:

1) Pictures: Remember, most people’s web attention spans are just shorter than a cat playing with a fake mouse toy. If you can’t grab their attention immediately, you’re probably not going to get their Digg. That’s why pictures are golden – especially juicy pictures of celebrities doing illegal activity. And the picture layout of the page is great: a small preview at the top of Phelps smoking the bong; followed by two pictures of Phelps in the capacity he’s known for, as a swimmer; ending with the large, unadultured image everyone wants to see at the bottom. It’s an easy, straight-forward flow for the eye to follow.

2) Celebrityism: I don’t understand it – and it’s certainly not my thing – but people love to read and gossip about celebrities. The celebrity, in this case, is Michael Phelps, a 14-time Olympic gold medal swimmer, and, some would argue, the greatest Olympian of all time. And he’s got a killer six-pack, so the chicks dig that; also, the chicks Digg that. Posting pictures of your friend Bob won’t get you Diggs; posting pictures of your celebrity friends will. So go get some celebrity friends.

3) Source (or, in this case, lack thereof): Have you ever read News of the World? Me neither. But fortunately for them, sources don’t matter to Digg. A great story is just as viable on nytimes.com as it is on angelfire.com/~joes_place/blog/. That’s great news if you’re an up-and-coming blogger; not-so-great news if you’re a media giant. But you’re not a media giant, are you?

Read the titular story here.