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marty, over at the aimclear blog wrote a post a few days ago, outlining ‘social rock star rules for little people‘, to which i have been meaning to write a response for a few days now. initially i was going to write a point by point response but after reading the rant a few times i have decided that there is really only one point that marty is making, that he thinks there is hypocrisy in what the ‘social rock stars’ do themselves and what they preach to ‘the little people’.

now i won’t argue that there is no hypocrisy because there certainly is some. there are those (and quite a few of them) that preach ‘netiquette’ to others but will resort to anything when it comes to promoting themselves. on the contrary, i want to point out that this is not a standard feature of your average ‘social rock star’ in fact, in the social bookmarking sphere, (the one niche that i can attest to) there is no ‘us versus them’ mentality.

you are absolutely incorrect when you say,

no asking rock star diggers to consider content if there’s a possible vote involved. they complain about it in private and public as a violation of the soul and integrity of social media. they deride the little people that made them famous and bitch about little people’s use of networking tactics rock stars use everyday…sane, healthy, and respectful content promotion among friends. networking is how they got to be rock stars! i believe in the wisdom of the mob too. tell the rock stars that mobs have leaders, who lead by evangelizing, and to suggest otherwise is ludicrous.

before i even talk about asking for diggs, let me tell you about asking for submissions. there are close to a dozen prominent content producers that contact me and my friends (i’m talking about digg and top diggers) daily to ask for help in submitting and promoting their content and we do it with a smile and not in exchange for any kind of benefit other than to make a new friend. they would tell you that your accusations against top diggers are rubbish. furthermore when it comes to asking for diggs, the only thing that anyone has spoken out against is mass, blind, shout-spamming as a means of getting votes. other than that, instant-message a person, strike a conversation, ask for as many diggs as you want, just don’t use people.

in fact, let me point out a comment i made on alister’s blog many months ago,

hi alister,

thanks for the kind words. you know i was having the same conversation with wendy (emomsathome.com) the other day. i don’t mind submitting content for anyone and i never ask for favors, money, or anything of that nature. the only thing i say is that if you want me to submit something for you, feel free to ping me, but please please please make sure that the content is digg-worthy because i hate saying no.

apart from that, if it helps you get traffic or reach whatever other goals anyone as a content producer has, i am more than happy to oblige.

and i’m not pointing this out to blow my own horn, but because this comment is representative of most of the people that i’ve come to know over the years. i could say the same for andy, reg, karim, tamar, and 99% of the other top diggers i know. if you still hold your opinion, i can only suggest talking to one of them before judging all of them.

relax and take deep breaths stumblers. stumbleupon has suffered a database failure and has been inaccessible for over an hour now. hopefully all is well and will return to normalcy soon.

database access error

there has been a problem accessing the database. this error has been reported automatically to stumbleUpon. if you continue to get this error, let us know. if this still doesn’t work for you, please contact us to let us know

i can access the stumbleupon homepage but the toolbar is not functioning. i keep getting the following:

update: intermittent problems.

Technorati Tags: stumbleupon, stumblers, database, failure

killerstartups just posted their review of stumblerank. here’s what they think:

why it might be a killer

stumblerank.com is easy to navigate. the top users are clearly placed in a chart that gives you other information about the user. when you click on a user you are lead directly to their stumbleupon page where you can get more information about them. It is always fun to rank users of a community. stumblerank.com lets users of the community get more involved.

Technorati Tags: stumblerank, stumbleupon, killerstartups

one of the most important things when you blog, is to make sure that you aren’t unnecessarily complicating things for your readers. your readers will be from all walks of life and consequently will have different reading and comprehension levels. Of course that isn’t to say that you should dumb down your content, but it is an argument in favor of simplicity.

with that in mind we have the blog readability test.

simply plug your url into the site and it will give you the readability level for your blog. while for some people, the fact that you need a post-doctorate degree to comprehend their blog, i think it’s preferable to use this tool more to ensure that you are writing at a level not more complicated than high school/college. this ensures sufficient maturity in the writing without unnecessarily complicated language.

Technorati Tags: blog, readability

we all have bloggers that we love and bloggers that we absolutely hate. while it’s easy to ignore bloggers you don’t like (just tune out), there are many ways to appreciate bloggers that you love, that often start with a comment or an email of appreciation.

today i stumbled onto another way of appreciating bloggers you like: customizable, serious and funny blog awards.

you can pick from a wide selection of awards ranging from serious, to funny, and often weird/bizarre, and send them to bloggers you like (and even bloggers you don’t like). simply select the award you like, fill out the recipeint’s information, and your own information (or you can send it anonymously), and you’re done.

once the recipient get’s the award, it will be in the shape of a medal that can be placed on his or her website. show your appreciation today!

Technorati Tags: blog, awards, appreciation, customizable

hi everyone, i just wanted to mention that i have launched a new site, called stumblerank. i have been using stumbleupon for a while and the more i use it, the more i realize that some aspects of the site don’t work as intended. therefore, and rather than complaining about what doesn’t work, i decided that i should offer a substitute that does work.

stumblerank is supposed to provide a more detailed and more accurate alternative for the top stumblers list that stumbleupon provides us with. with that in mind, head over to stumblerank to check it out and don’t forget to stumble it!

additional coverage: mashable, searchenginejournal, franticindustries, valleywag, islamcrunch, downloadsquad

Technorati Tags: stumbleupon, stumblers, stumblerank

it was supposed to be a feature that we had all been requesting for a long time: the ability to communicate with other digg users easily, and on the site. instead it ended up being a spam nightmare. here are my thoughts on david’s ten reasons to hate digg shouts:

note: i omitted reason 4, 6, 9, and 10 because they are largely irrelevant.

1. new diggers are now able to get submissions on the homepage

i don’t know why this is on the list david. allowing new diggers to get on the homepage is a good thing. it gives them an ego boost and ensures future participation from them. i think the fact that new diggers get on the homepage is not a problem, rather the problem is that they spam their way there.

2. it doesn’t require as much skill to get submissions on the homepage - anyone can do it

yes, this is incredibly annoying because people who don’t care about social bookmarking etiquette can get on the homepage while the people who actually give a damn (and are refraining from shout-spamming) have a lesser chance to succeed.

3. new diggers are adding 900+ friends, shouting them all and getting 40 diggs in less then an hour

i think that is an understatement. i’ve seen people add just a hundred friends, shout to them and get an 80% response, after which they don’t need any more (most of these new spammer-diggers can get a story on the homepage using this method with just 40-50 diggs). this is one of the main reasons why i have 2,108 fans but only 98 mutual friends (and decreasing). i’m hesitant to network with other people for fear of getting spammed.

5. top diggers are being challenged

a challenge is good but putting michael jordan in a wheelchair and asking him to compete is not a challenge, it’s a crime…

7. ron paul submissions can now get over 100 diggs in an hour

the best part, though, and the part that makes me love digg (and the social news space in general) is that the content is still moderated so that legitimate content gets on the homepage and stays there while most of the spam is buried while it is still in the upcoming queue, or shortly after reaching the homepage.

8. the feature reminds me of netscape/propeller

i’ve written extensively about this and yes they pretty much copied the feature from propeller without learning how to prevent (or limit) spam the way propeller is trying to.

Technorati Tags: digg, shout, spam, netscape, propeller, sitemail

one of the many factors that stumbleupon uses to asses your ranking in their hierarchy of users is how many pages, photos, and videos you have stumbled. i recently discovered a stumbleupon-approved way of stumbling at light-speed.

by clicking tools > toolbar options and clicking through to shortcuts, you can set keyboard shortcuts for the various stumbleupon interaction options.

furthermore, you can go to the configuration panel from toolbar options and set your preferences so that based on whether you like or dislike a page (or both), the toolbar automatically sends you a new one without having to keep on clicking the stumble button.

once you’ve made these two changes, all you need to keep in mind are your ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ shortcuts and you can keep on stumbling without using your mouse.

note: it is also a good idea to ‘prefetch stumbles’ (from toolbar options > configuration panel) so that new pages don’t take extra time.

Technorati Tags: stumbleupon, settings, configuration, toolbar, stumblers, stumblegod, stumblegoddess

pownce, kevin rose’s twitter-clone, just released their public api.

right now you can get lists of public notes, user profiles, and individual notes with replies. we’ll soon be adding the ability to post notes and get friends-only or private notes. check out the api documentation to find out more details.

this is definitely a good step for pownce (towards bringing it in line with other micro-blogging platforms) but i’m still left wondering what to use the service for. twitter (even with all its drawbacks) has a larger user base, is less buggy, more light-weight, and already has a slew of api-based applications that i can use. furthermore, the one reason why i was using pownce (as a digg-messaging service) was made redundant once the digg team added shouts to the latest revision of digg.

Technorati Tags: pownce, api, twitter, digg

i have written a guest post at ben cook’s blogging experiment:

blogging means different things to different people. for some it is is merely for entertainment, for others it is purely a business venture, but for most people (including me) blogging is about sharing your ‘expertise’ with others, meeting new people, and building relationships. With that in mind, here are what you will find to be quite straightforward steps you can follow to strike a conversation today and build a relationship tomorrow.

please check out the entire article for all 6 steps.

Technorati Tags: social media, blogging, relationship, conversation