When Mike Arrington wrote a couple days ago about Digg refugees leaving for the new-ish social voting site Mixx, I just kind of brushed it off as slow-time, Thanksgiving weekend talk. But then something funny started happening today, I noticed traffic coming to my site from the mixx.com domain – I decided to investigate.

Now I’ve been using Mixx on and off since I was a pre-launch beta tester in September. I’ve liked it – a lot – since day 1. The problem with it – and really with most Digg-esque sites – wasn’t the design or execution, it was really just all about getting a critical mass of users using the service regularly. As recently as a few weeks ago, it seemed like that still wasn’t happening for Mixx.

Then there was the TechCrunch post over the weekend, and as I said I went back after seeing hits coming from the site. Lo-and-behold, on Mixx now there are a plethora of stories with 20, 30, 40, and even 50 unique votes! These numbers are not insignificant, these is like the olden days of Digg.

Now I don’t know if Mixx can sustain this, or if it is just a bump from the TechCrunch story and the residual stories that followed, but just on quick glance at some of the users I do see a couple dozen people I know from my old days as a Digg power user, using Mixx. Keep in mind of course that a lot of these guys and gals like myself sign up for most, if not all of the social news sites out there to at least test them out, but I see them actually using Mixx.

It should also be noted that the top story in the Entertainment section for most of the day came from my site, and I’ve so far seen only a handful of hits (as compared to the tens of thousands I would get for a popular story on Digg) – but it’s edging closer to the traffic numbers that would come from being a top story on Netscape (now Propeller).

If they can sustain this momentum, things could start to get interesting at Mixx. They certainly have the tools in place to compete in this market – while Duncan Riley sees it as more of a Propeller knock-off, I see it as using some of the best elements from Digg, Propeller, and Reddit in conjunction with each other.

Digg will remain king, but this isn’t Highlander – there is no reason there can’t be more than one.

You can follow me on Mixx here.