URLs Matter in Social Bookmarking

I've been asked how I handle URLs on sites like Digg and Netscape. The URLs you choose to submit actually make quite a difference. Their uniqueness plays a big factor in getting promoted to the front page.

The more unique a URL is to a story, the less likely duplicates of that story will be submitted. Duplicates (aka dupes) are the bane of many people's existance in social bookmarking. They split votes for a story between multiple submissions, thereby degrading the community's efficiency of bringing that story to the masses. In other words, they slow a story down from reaching the front page or sometimes cause it to miss its window of promotion opportunity altogether.