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in his book the wisdom of crowds, james surowiecki discusses some examples that show the power of google and how well its index performs. to explain how google works, he uses sergey brin and larry page’s paper called the anatomy of a large-scale hypertextual web search engine, and google’s definition of pagerank, their method of ranking results to your search queries in order of relevance:

pagerank capitalizes on the uniquely democratic characteristic of the web by using its vast link structure as an organizational tool. in essence, google interprets a link from page a to page b as a vote, by page a, for page b. google assesses a page’s importance by the votes it receives. but google looks at more than sheer volume of votes, or links; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”

the way google goes about it is that it’s not just the incoming links to a page (the absolute number of votes) that matter, but they also take into account the quality of those links (i.e. how many links the linking site itself has gotten and their quality, and so it goes on).

this got me thinking, why does social media have to be democratic (i.e. one person one vote, where all votes are created equal)? if we assume that the average user on a social media site is ‘fairly intelligent’ (though it’s true that not all users are equally savvy and in the end some users will rise above others to be stronger contributers) then it makes sense to give a ‘top contributor’ more weight than a new user just like google gives a link from techcrunch more importance than a link from my site. why? well, a top user, by definition, has become a top user because of all the votes he or she has garnered from other new and top users over time and therefore has proved that he represents a degree of quality (whether it be from natural skill/knack for cool-hunting or just a result of participating on a site for a longer time) that a new user has not attained yet (though may over time).

i know partly from experience and partly from what i’ve read about these sites that reddit and propeller are completely democratic (i.e. each user’s vote is equal and a higher karma or rank doesn’t mean you have more influence in the system), whereas stumbleupon by its construction gives more power to users based on their participation and the size of their audience (previously audience number, now just a combination of friends and fans), and digg leaves it somewhat ambiguous.

so what do you think do we need a new form of government?

this post is a part of my journey through james surowiecki’s the wisdom of crowds.

Technorati Tags: digg, propeller, reddit, stumbleupon, social news, republic, democracy, james surowiecki, the wisdom of crowds

i’ve written a guest post at read/writeweb on alternate reality games (args) and how to properly use them as a viral marketing tool.

even though i enjoyed participating in them, until recently i hadn’t really thought about what makes them compelling - beyond their premise (i.e. the product they are based around).

read the entire article for 4 things to do and 6 things to avoid when making alternate reality games.

Technorati Tags: alternate reality game, arg, viral marketing, readwriteweb

i wrote a guest post at read/writeweb a couple days ago on how a couple of nerds with the help of some friends, were able to take over youtube.

to help shed some light on the project and how the nerdfighters took over the 4th most popular destination on the web and the number one site for video hosting and sharing, I had a chat with hank, one of the orchestrators of the coup.

check out the complete interview.

Technorati Tags: nerds, nerdfighters, youtube, brotherhood 2.0, ecogeek, readwriteweb

i wrote a guest post at read/writeweb yesterday, taking a look at the new features we may soon see on digg.

with all the things that we can expect in the next few months, I can really say I haven’t been this excited to see the next phase of digg in a long-time. especially considering that they are reaching out to the community at large to get feedback (usually they get feedback from limited focus groups).

have a look at all the features in detail.

Technorati Tags: digg, features, readwriteweb

i’ve written a guest post at last100 on a way to get around hulu’s closed private beta.

so there you have it. if you’ve been unsuccessfully hunting for a hulu invite for a while, look no further than to openhulu.

please check out the interview with the creator of openhulu.

Technorati Tags: hulu, openhulu, last100

i have to admit, in the past 2 years i’ve tried almost every greasemonkey script, firefox extention, and api-based digg tool, and there are only three tools that i continue to use regularly, one of which is digg alerter. digg alerter has been at version 1.2 for a while now (and with good reason, the release is really great) but now adam is opening up the forum to the users to request new features they would like to see implemented in the next release of the software.

here are some of the things that i would like to see implemented:

1. enable comment threading and the ability to see the comments’ current ratings (sort by most dugg comments).
2. have the option to list more than 100 people that dugg a particular post. this is especially useful for top diggers whose stories often require 150+ diggs before they are promoted.
3. the ability to double-click a link from digg alerter and go to that story’s digg page. and the ability to double-click a comment to go and respond to that comment.
4. front the personal file: the ability to record when a story hits front page. sometimes my submissions are promoted overnight and i would like to know how many diggs it took.

if you have ideas on how to improve digg alerter please leave adam a comment or send him an email.

p.s. the other two tools that i still use are the digg this! firefox extension and the add mirrors greasemonkey script.

Technorati Tags: digg, digg alerter

update: chris mcgill has responded to some confusion caused by the initial press release. check out what he has to say.

this is a response to marshall kirkpatrick’s recent look at mixx.

when i first read that mixx had been busy making deals with mainstream news outlets such as usa today, reuters, la times, and the weather channel, i naturally assumed that the deals were similar to the one digg recently made with the wall street journal. but when dave cohn, my friend and co-worker at propeller, pointed out that the mixx deal went far beyond that, that’s when i had to take a look at the fine print.

what does the mixx deal entail?

matt marshall has broken down the details of the deal and one particular point is especially worrisome:

…times’ content will be “optimized” for searches from within the mixx site, suggesting results will be biased toward returning la times stories.

what this means is that when you search for content from within mixx, you won’t be getting the best possible results, or the socially driven or personally relevant results, but paid results from la times.

why is this bad?

this is problematic because this goes against the fundamental principle of socially driven news and the main purpose of mixx. mixx is supposed to be a response to editorially driven news, but is supposed to be better than other social news sites because of the power of it’s individual user based recommendation engine. i understand that thus far the editorially sponsored results are only in the search results, but i do feel that dave is right in pointing out that this could be a slippery slope for mixx.

for comparison purposes

in addition, i also wanted to examine some of the other points that marshall raises because i feel that people are unfairly comparing mixx to digg while they should be comparing it specifically to propeller, reddit, and stumbleupon, since realistically speaking they should be aiming for a top 5 spot (#1 not included). that said, here’s a comparison with propeller (the one that i know best out of the bunch):

1. openid login system: already implemented by propeller
2. off-site submission bookmarklets: these bookmarklets already exist for digg, propeller, and reddit. in the case of digg it’s not a first-party bookmarklet but the community has created one. there is also a right-click contextual menu submission plugin for firefox users (70% of digg audience).
3. personal start-page: was implemented at my.netscape.com but subsequently removed because not many people were using it. upcoming site upgrade will make it redundant anyway.
4. photos and videos sections: n/a
5. tagging: already implemented by propeller.
6. groups: coming in future propeller release.
7. point-of-submission checks: propeller checks story urls and story titles at point of submission without even requiring an action from the user. furthermore, once you click check story, it shows potentially related or similar stories to compare your submission with.
8. bury accountability: propeller has had bury accountability for a long time now.
9. changing votes: propeller allows you to vote and un-vote as many times as you want.

mixx certainly has a good set of features, but they should really be careful in the what kinds of deals they make. if they start killing off their social aspects in favor of sponsored results, then they’re playing a completely different game. and even with the features, the community has a long way to go.

Technorati Tags: social media, social news, digg, propeller, reddit, stumbleupon, mixx

i’ve written a guest post at read/writeweb on an unofficial digg recommendation engine called digg filter.

while we wait for the digg recommendation engine, which is perpetually ‘coming soon’, one enterprising digg user has taken the initiative and built one himself. sfter putting in 200 hours of his own time, dmytro mulyava has come up with digg filter, an api based digg story recommender.

check out the interview with the founder of digg filter.

Technorati Tags: digg, digg filter, recommendation engine, readwriteweb

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

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