Is there anything wrong with doing a digg exchange? I started a thread for one. Thought it might be an interesting experiment.
Yes, there is something wrong with it. It's not allowed and digg will take actions as they see appropriate.
You do not need an alliance. Just go through and add everyone to your friend list. A good percentage of those will add you back so that you will be mutual friends. A good number of those go through and digg every story submitted by their friends.
Focus all that energy into QUALITY content instead. Digg and other social news sites LOVE good content so focus on that instead.
Since Digg doesn't allow these sort of things, why not try Deli.ci.ous or Reddit? Do they let stuff like this slide? Is it allowed at either of those locations? What about StumbleUpon?
FYI, See what Digg did to DP members when they began exchanging Digs http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=105564
Interesting how this keeps coming up. Through this last thread where many people got banned and then subsequently my own, I've created a new site called http://www.techtagg.com which is a successful digg alternative that also shares revenue with users like DP. Read all about this: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=112376 http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=105564 TechTAGG was pretty much created by DP members and it is working nicely. Indexed in google and I make more than $20/day through AdSense. I am sure many members do as well. I will have a follow up post here at some point soon.
John Chow also made an entry about how he got banned from Digg. Those Digg dudes are very hardcore, man. Plus, the algo for their system keeps getting tweaked to prevent webmasters from 'gaming' their system.