Everyone says, "submit your site to social bookmarking sites like Digg etc. and it will help increase your traffic"...well I don't buy it. I don't have anything personally against the Digg website, but I just don't see the benefit of submitting your blog articles or your sites to Digg. Unless you happen to have some tech guru type of site, you'll probably only get a few Diggs at best, and even then, the traffic generated will be minimal. Sure, you'll pick up a few backlinks for your submissions, but I don't see the major benefit from Digg. Everything on the Digg front page is some big news article that 5 thousand people have Dugg for no reason at all, so how is your little 200 word article on the newest SEO methods going to get on the front page? My guess is, that it probably isn't. Not trying to be a "glass half empty" guy, but this is just what I have noticed. Has anyone seen a huge benefit from Digg?
Not seen a huge benefit from Digg, although like you said it gives a few backlinks. What I have seen is a small increase in visitors to my site, and this happens everytime I digg a story. Usually though, as I have a football news most of my stories have already been submitted to digg by several other people so I don't get many diggs.
I read at digg less than I used to. I occasionally digg some small stuff on science and corporate news. Yeah, I feel like a peon and never send them anything of mine anymore.
Major news got digg very well. If your news or articles match the categories precisely, it will be better. What people are submitting like SEO tips, traffic tips are mostly duplicated and there are no proper category for these articles. You can try out Del.icio.us or StumbleUpon as your main social media for traffic because they do have more categories.