Last week a woman in Tacoma, Wash. lost everything in her house when a fake ad on Craig's List invited people to come over and take everything and anything they wanted. When done, there was nothing left of value. The dogs had taken everything including the kitchen sink.

Yesterday I pointed to a soldier's story that became a Digg sensation with hundreds of people voting for the story. It became so popular that Good Morning America ran a story about it and Apple now wants to replace the solider's iPod. It was an incredible story and was Dugg a bunch of times.

On the heals of this story comes a month-long research project that shows Digg users are three times less likely to click on an ad than Google users. The research concludes that Digg users are more inclined to find something to read because they are bored, while Google users are motivated to find something useful, and therefore, more likely to click on an advertisement.

On the PR-side of this story, Communication Overtones Kami Huyse reports Digg can be used to your benefit if you have a great story (see above) or have generated tons of useful content.

While not quite a measurement tool, Digg does have its value. Aside from a huge bump in traffic, if you have built a content-rich website, you might also get some new subscribers. However, you better have a beefy server or Digg could shut you down.

Which brings me full circle. The link to the story about the iPod and its Digg effect couldn't be accessed last night; the server has been brought down by all the Digg users trying to link to it. On this issue, Scott Karp points out that Digg can do more harm than good:

Mounting evidence suggests that Digg traffic in particular is less like networking with like-minded individuals at a social event and more like getting attacked by a pack of wild dogs, who leave nothing of value in their wake, other than lessons learned on closing comments and crashed servers.

If you accidentally have the Digg dogs drop in on you make sure your protected and can offer them something to chew on. Otherwise, the traffic bump will be fleeting, the buzz generated may not result in regular readers, and you're going to be standing there looking for the kitchen sink.