wow. it took me a while to calm down before i could start writing anything. i got a chance to look at the new site design (not live, only internal) for propeller, and i have to say, it [expletive] rocks! the design will not only be much much better than the current site design, but it is safe to say that it will be better than all other social sites out there right now.

Technorati Tags: propeller, site, design, social media

hi! if you're new here and like what you read, you may want to grab the rss feed so you can always be up to date. thanks for visiting!

if you’re going to be at the good and green pre-conference networking event (and of course the conference) don’t forget to stop by and say hi!

when: wednesday november 28th, 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

where: hard rock hotel, hamer room, michigan ave.

Technorati Tags: conference, good, green, networking

i’ve written a post on search engine land explaining everything we can hope to understand about the digg algorithm.

have you ever wondered what it really takes for a story submitted to digg to get to the home page? or why a certain story—even a really good, social media friendly story—never got to the home page? i’m frequently asked the question, “hey, my story has [number] of diggs but it still hasn’t been promoted to the home page. any idea what’s wrong?” and, relatively less frequently, I hear someone saying in amazement, “wow, all it took was 29 diggs and that story rocketed to the home page!” i’m always tempted to reply “it’s the algorithm, stupid!”

so here’s your chance to learn more about the algorithm.

Technorati Tags: social media, social news, search engine land, digg, algorithm

i’ve written a guest post at pickthebrain with 6 steps to writing content that readers will retain.

an opinionated piece with a human element should give any active reader more than enough to participate in a discussion while simplicity and brevity will appease the most reflective of readers. furthermore, while visual cues and formatting will attract the visual ‘readers’, retainability through repetition and simplicity should draw the verbal readers to your content.

please check out the complete article for a all 6 points explained in more detail.

Technorati Tags: copywriting, content, retention, readers

i’ve written a guest post at read/writeweb as a follow up to why digg is blocked.

by now most of you have probably seen the site ‘why digg is blocked’. for those that haven’t come across it, the site is on a mission to convince webmasters and content producers to reject social media traffic. here’s a look at the incredibly flawed logic the site uses to justify its purpose.

please check out the complete article for a point-by-point refutation.

Technorati Tags: social media, digg, propeller, reddit, stumbleupon, traffic, economics, readwriteweb

it’s almost been a week since digg launched digg the candidates, and it’s about time i took a shot at it. the new section let’s you keep track of presidential candidates’ profiles on digg (i.e. their submissions, votes, comments, and so on) and add them as friends.

you can now check out the 2008 presidential candidates profiles on digg! add your favorite candidates as a friend to show support, and to see all their digging activity in your friends’ activity feed. many of them will be digging, commenting and even submitting content.

on the digg the candidate’s main page you will see a star next to each article by each candidate’s name, this article is the candidate’s most recent favorite. when you add a candidate as a friend, a box will also be created on your profile showing which candidates you have added.

there are three three parts to ‘digg the candidates’:

1. the 2008 election primary calendar

the election primary calendar is incredibly simple. it just displays dates and the corresponding states next to them.

a much more interesting implementation would’ve been to allow each candidate to create a campaign hub with a detailed calendar of events that their campaign plans to hold, including a list of televised appearances and addresses, sponsored debates, candidate endorsements, endorsed advertisements, and so on. then we would really be digging the candidates.

2. the candidate profiles ranking page

the main ‘digg the candidates’ page does several things.

the candidates are divided into two lists based on their party affiliations and are ranked based on the number of friends they have on digg. underneath each candidate’s ranked profile is the latest story they have made a favorite. finally, in the right sidebar, the page displays the recently popular stories from digg’s u.s. elections category along with the candidates’ recent profile activity.

3. individual candidate profile pages

the final piece of ‘digg the candidates’ is the actual candidate profiles. these profiles function exactly like the rest of the users’ profiles.

keep in mind that this is the first iteration of ‘digg the candidates’ and even then, the feature is in its very nascent stages and is bound to evolve and improve as we head into 2008. at the same time, if you’re expecting an in-depth look at the issues rather than a straightforward popularity contest, i would suggest you take a look at political base.

Technorati Tags: digg, social news, politics, candidates, elections

i’ve written an introductory manual for participating in social media at danny sullivan’s search engine land:

i get so many questions from people about digg, propeller, reddit, stumbleupon and other social news sites every day, that i decided to write this little “manual” as something to read before you jump in head first into any social site, and to keep by your side as you progress through the ranks. it should not only help you succeed with your social media marketing efforts, but also help you avoid some of the mistakes i’ve made.

please check out the entire manual.

Technorati Tags: social media, social news, search engine land, digg, propeller, reddit, stumbleupon

when i submit content to social news sites, i usually check them at least twice over a 24 hours period to see what kind of comments they’re getting. in fact, often times, i read the title and summary of someone else’s submission and read the comments before reading the actual story.

one of the great things about the comment threads is that oftentimes when a site goes down because of the sudden influx of unexpected traffic from digg (or another social site), people point new readers to mirrors for the content so you can read and digg the story even if the site itself is unavailable. usually these mirrors point to duggmirror, coral cache, and google cache, but recently spammers have gotten wind of this tactic and have begun scraping content onto their own sites and passing them off as mirrors.

enter smith johnson (who is incidentally a 39-year-old girl):

smith has setup a blogspot blog at diggmirror1.blogspot.com (presenting a server error at the moment), and is mimicking well intentioned people by pretending to link to a legitimate mirror (i.e. duggmirror, one of the most popular mirrors for dugg sites), while actually linking to his/her own site where all the content is being scraped and reposted. i have already reported the user to digg (for posting 5 spam comments like that in the last hour) and if you come across the user, please bury the comments.

also, if you’re looking for an easy way to access unavailable content or for a way to inform your audience about mirrors, i would encourage you to look at the dugged firefox extension. the extension simply adds a link to the duggmirror page for a site that is down, right next to the submission for the site. here’s an example (notice the orange text at the bottom-left):

Technorati Tags: digg, social news, traffic, dugg, duggmirror, coral cache, google, mirror, spammers

i’m happy to announce that i was just inducted into the digg.com 1,000 club. i join the esteemed ranks of mrbabyman and digitalgopher, the only other diggers (apart from me) to promote more than 1,000 stories to digg’s home page (though i’m certain zaibatsu and supernova17 will be joining us before the end of the month). i want to thank all the content producers whose stories i have submitted (for creating the great content) and all the digg users (who have been reading, digging, and commenting on my submissions).

check out my profile, and the complete rankings.

p.s. digg was having some major issues yesterday, and it seems my promoted stories from yesterday haven’t been counted yet. i have talked to a few people with backup information on top diggers’ profiles and was assured that i had 992 promoted stories as of 4.00 am on the 14th, and since then have had 10 more promoted, out of which 6 were yesterday and consequently not counted by digg. though digg is still showing 996, the actual number is 1,002.

i have written a guest post at allen stern’s centernetworks:

this move will definitely increase the readership of the online news outlet and will most certainly further solidify the brand. however, while it is great to see that mainstream media is becoming more comfortable with new media and embracing it more comprehensively, i remain skeptical with respect to the revenue model as far as social media traffic is concerned.

please check out the entire article.

Technorati Tags: social media, digg, wsj