Here is the math behind the major social networks, the formulas worked down from analyzing their inner mechanisms and just exactly how a submission gets a “popular” status. Hopefully, these social networking statistics will provide some insight into how they work, and which ones might be easier to manipulate for your particular niche.

Social Network: Digg
Digg takes, on average, 60 - 300 “Diggs” to become popular, and you can expect to receive around 10,000 to 100,000 unique visitors if your story makes the Digg homepage.

Social Network: StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon submissions take about 30 - 50 “Thumbs Ups” and/or reviews to become popular, and you can expect to receive anywhere from 2,000 - 50,000 unique visitors in the first round, and you will probably receive more traffic over time, in residual waves.

Social Network: del.icio.us
del.icio.us submissions take around 100 - 130 bookmarks in a relatively fast time period to achive popular status, and you can expect around 20,000 unique visitors if you make it to the del.icio.us front page. Expect this number to go up, due to the recent redesign of del.icio.us!

Social Network: Reddit
Reddit submissions take anywhere from 30 - 300 votes to become popular, and you can expect just as wide a range of incoming traffic, which could be 3,000 - 30,000 unique visitors.

Social Network: Yahoo! Buzz
If a Yahoo! editor chooses your submission for inclusion in Yahoo! Buzz, you can expect to receive 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 unique visitors initially, and expect to have higher authority in the search engines now that you have an official link from Yahoo!’s website.

Social Network: Propeller
Propeller stories take around 40 votes to become popular, and you can expect to receive anywhere from 1,000 - 20,000 unique visitors. If your story gets chosen for inclusion on news.aol.com, you can receive upwards of 100,000 unique visitors, and a nice authority link from AOL.

Social Network: Mixx
Submissions to Mixx take about 30 - 50 votes to become popular, and you can expect to receive anywhere from 100 to 1,000 unique visitors, as their network is still expanding and growing their userbase.

Cheers, and remember, if you liked this post, feel free to submit it to your favorite social network! Don’t forget to subscribe to our feed as well!