From Online Spin

"While Digg is far from a mega-mainstream Web destination, it has disproportionate influence on search-engine results and blog memes, primarily in the tech and social-media world. Moreover, Digg's tendency to periodically extend beyond its core audience by uncovering and virally launching niche content into mainstream is certainly compelling."

"For example, when Vincent Ferrari submitted to Digg an MP3 recording of his excruciating experience trying to cancel his AOL service with a retention specialist, thousands of people "Dugg" him. This exposed his story and helped catapult it across the Internet, landing on NBC's "Today" show, and getting covered in the New York Times and many other places."

Red Door's director of search marketing reports on how much companies allocate to search, and how much you should, too.

Retailers reveal how they budget overall marketing spend
The latest Internet Retailer Survey shows the following summary for percentage of sales allocated to marketing budgets. While the data refers only to retailers, we think it generalizes across industries as a fairly good overall benchmark guide.

• 4.1 percent of all companies earmark more than 25 percent
• 7.7 percent spend less than 1 percent
• 18 percent spend between 2 percent and 3 percent
• 19.9 percent between 4 percent and 5 percent
• 28.1 percent from 6 percent to 10 percent
• 21.9 percent from 11 percent to 25 percent
• 46 percent of catalogers allocated 6 to 10 percent of sales to marketing and advertising

Based on retails in the following catagories:

• 31.8 percent of manufacturers
• 27.8 percent of virtual merchants
• 20 percent of chain retailers