Thoughts on Digg's "Fat Belly" of stroy submissions

Cruising through the upcoming queue on Digg.com, it's becomes quite clear that the changes to the site have fattened it's belly in terms of stories with 20-40 diggs. Additionally, it seems to me that the # of active digg friends is more important than ever to get a story on the front page.

I regularly get 10-15 incoming shouts per day to look at stories (most of which do get promoted) and though it's slowed down a little, I still get at least 10 or so notifications of people following me. (Ironically, none of these followers are digging anything I've submitted ;-)

I digg for it's own sake, and as long as I have time to do it, I'll keep posting stuff that I think is cool whether it gets 20 diggs or 2000

In the meantime, I think I am going to start looking more at the stories by # of comments and also by length of time in the queue. I want to find the other "fat belly" or "long tail" stuff thats simply flying under the community's radar.