How do TechCrunch stories make it to Digg's front page so often? With a little help from its friends, of course. Former TechCrunch writer Duncan Riley, now a foe of editor Michael Arrington, posted a screenshot from his inbox revealing what Riley calls "The TechCrunch Digg Club." It includes four writers from TechCrunch proper; seven from gadgets blog CrunchGear; two from TechCrunchIT, Arrington's incomprehensible enterprise-tech spinoff; plus two or three interns.

While health websites have struggled to attract dollars from Big Pharma, the drugmakers' billion-dollar marketing budgets have found a new outlet: vote-for-your-favorite-headlines site Digg. The site is currently plastered with ads for Lexapro, an SSRI drug used to treat depression and anxiety. This is a triumph of behavioral targeting, one that gives me hope for the future of online advertising.

News.com reporter Caroline McCarthy's informants could have sworn they saw Digg CEO Jay Adelson at a party for RealNetworks last night. But Adelson, pictured left, was in San Francisco. So who was it? One possibility: A model who appears in the Clarins Men advertising campaign, right. Jay Adelson, mistaken for a male model? The world is going mad.

The founder of Digg.com talks about sitting down with the heads of News Corp. and IAC in an interview on Big Think. "When I sat down with [Murdoch] it was a hand-holding process," says Kevin Rose, whose site is reportedly now being courted by Google. "When I sat down with Barry Diller, he was telling me about my business...it blew my mind." Rose is also amazed by Al Gore.

We've heard Google's Marissa Mayer is pushing hard for the company to acquire Digg. Without mentioning the social news site once, a Google News takedown in the New York Times neatly makes her case. Noting that it took Google News an hour longer than everyone else to report Tim Russert's death, the Times reports that Google News's traffic growth has been equally as sluggish:

When Diggnation cohost Alex Albrecht said Kevin Rose has "basically plowed through everybody" maybe he wasn't only referring to the Digg cofounder's dating habits. DIgg's gone through quite a few potential buyers over the years, including News Corp., IAC and Al Gore's TV network, Current. Except, as illustrated in this excerpt from Big Think's interview with Rose, there's one big difference between Rose's love life and Digg's many turns on the auction block.

Saul Hansell quoted Digg CEO Jay Adelson defending the Associated Press (of which Hansell's publication the Times is a member). TechCrunch's Michael Arrington freaked out, natch. Adelson then attempted to further explain his complicated position, trying to be diplomatic. Yawn. As we've said before, and will say again, exercise your fair use rights under the law and shut up, because giving the AP attention just feeds its argument and therefore reinforces its position. Moving on:

Online news aggregation community site Reddit is open-sourcing the company's Web application software, making it even easier to slap together a Digg-like site in whatever content or demographic vertical you think you can sell ads against. So unless I'm looking specifically for a community of gadget-obsessed, horny, almost exclusively male users, why would I want to buy Digg? [VentureBeat]

Chris Anderson, Wired's waggle-eared rock-star editor, has been dropping hints left and right about the relaunch of HotWired, a faded Web property Conde Nast picked up along with Webmonkey last month. The rumor we've heard: That Wired is relaunching the site as a news-focused social network like Digg. (Conde Nast already owns Digg competitor Reddit, whose engineers are likely involved in the project.) It's a sensible brand extension for Wired, but a far cry from HotWired's early ambitions, described in a 1994 email as "live, twitching, the real-time nervous system of the planet." Here's the HotWired FAQ, which reads like it was just unearthed from a time capsule:

Google's cupcake princess, Marissa Mayer, and Kevin Rose, the playboy of the Webhead world, would make an awfully cute couple. Not romantically — the two are dating other people at the moment. But we hear Mayer is pushing hard for an acquisition of Rose's Digg, for a price below $200 million. Kara Swisher hinted a few days ago that the social news site, on which users "digg" or "bury" their favorite news headlines, might be on Google's shopping list. Mayer's goal: to use what Digg has learned to fix Google News which, while popular, doesn't make Google any money. (Digg CEO Jay Adelson would not comment on the sale rumor, but did disclose that he was having a "delicious" In 'N' Out burger for lunch.)

San Francisco's Web 2.0 playboy, Kevin Rose, has been laying low since his much-publicized affair with Internet notoriety provider Julia Allison in Miami (shown here, in a previously unpublished photo, with Rose). But on Facebook yesterday, Rose took the word "single" off his profile. A tipster says Rose is dating again, but we haven't heard the lucky lady's name yet. We're guessing she's a newcomer to town, since Rose's Diggnation cohost, Alex Albrecht, once drunkenly noted that Rose has dated quite a few locals. Rose's Facebook update, after the jump:

The line to get into Digg's meetup and live filming of Diggnation last night in Brooklyn went around the block. Inside, the joint was packed with dudes drinking beer, waving around iPhones, and wearing T-shirts. There were maybe like 10 or 15 women. Just as rare: Microsoft Zune users. Despite Microsoft's sponsorship, when Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback tried to give away Zune T-shirts, the crowd only booed. Julia Allison's entourage, Kevin Rose, and more in our photo gallery.

Caroline McCarthy made it out alive from the Diggnation "sausage fest" in Brooklyn last night, where fanboys expressed their latent homoerotic desires by mobbing Digg founder Kevin Rose. She proceeded to the Thrillist party, where a more heteronormative mix were "Gettin' Jiggy With It" and indulging in founder Ben Lerer's boom nostalgia for when his dad Ken was an executive during AOL's heyday. [News.com]

What if Facebook let you properly express your rage against the tool who just added you to the "Buying and Selling Friends" app? What if Netflix knew you'd skip to the dirty bits? I paid Jay Hathaway a slave's wage to draw up what this would look like.

The internet loves bullshit. While many of its denizens will brag of their skepticism, claim thousands of readers make the best fact-checkers, and say the web holds the mainstream media accountable, the fact remains that made-up bullshit still drives huge traffic, if it's marketed right. Hence, "13-year-old Steals Dad's Credit Car to Buy Hookers," a realistic-looking "news story" posted on some financial site no one had ever heard of before called monkey.co.uk. The fact that there were no sources other than this dodgy domain didn't stop the story from making the front page of Digg and Fark and racking up probably hundreds of thousands of views. Then "real" news sites began picking it up. It made the UK Sun's print edition. This tale was invented by an online marketer to boost a client's SEO ranking. And no one on Digg or anywhere else BUSTED the hoax. Nor do they bother to debunk any of the rest of the snappily headlined bullshit that makes the rounds every day. Four more examples, below.

Why is tech podcaster Leo LaPorte picking a fight with Digg's Kevin Rose? He's jealous of Rose's Twitter following, and is making it a requirement that his Twit.tv listeners drop Rose and add him on Twitter to be eligible for a giveaway. LaPorte later regretted the call for a Rose ban, saying he was "drunk and out of control." Isn't that a prerequisite for listening to a podcast, let alone producing one?

Web 2.0 was hot last night. And I mean the kind of heat determined not by Technorati rank, but by the thermometer. Despite the stifling weather, San Francisco's Web stars turned out for a party Sarah Lacy threw for her new book, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good at Otis off Union Square. The hole-in-the-wall, two-story bar couldn't handle the crowd, which spilled out on Maiden Lane. Slide CEO Max Levchin, the star of the book, stopped by with fiancé Nellie Minkova to congratulate Lacy, and then immediately left. Runner-up Jay Adelson, whom Levchin beat on page count, stayed longer, as did Twitter's Ev Williams, who came with his wife, Sara Morishige. Also in the crowd: August Capital VC David Hornik, who didn't even rate a mention in the index, despite inviting Lacy to his exclusive Lobby conference. A gallery of photos, after the jump:

When we first listed tech's 10 best workspaces, we downplayed the importance of design and amenities. The crowd disagrees. It favors beer. Digg's beer, to be exact. 1,505 voted in our poll, and 28 percent chose the social news site's workspace and its fridge full of beverages as the best workspace in tech. Were the poll's results skewed because it hit the Digg front page? Possibly. But maybe second and third place finishers Pixar and Google should have thought about such consequences when they decided what businesses to get in. The full list, selected from Office Snapshots, ranked by readers:

Kevin Rose takes up 62 out of 294 pages in Sarah Lacy's Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, her new book about Web 2.0. That's less than I expected, since Rose was the coverboy for the BusinessWeek story, co-written by Lacy, which launched her book. From the look of the index, not much time is spent on the women Rose is said to have "plowed through", as his friend Alex Albrecht once put it:

Everyone has a little online jackass in them; some of us add people on Facebook too soon, some of us beg for votes on Digg, some make white whines on Twitter. But these behaviors can lead to more annoying habits, like constantly bugging people to blog you, getting hooked on Yelp, or writing drug metaphors. Thank god online jackassery can be summed up in a condescending online quiz. Take it below! Maybe you're a Carrie.