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I forgot to post this earlier, but here's the link to the digg thread for this article. It's good to hear what the digg user base thinks of this potential deal. Some like it, some don't.
FTA: "For micro-blogging the power is in the conversation and right now Twitter wins hands-down. During Twitters technical issues, where it seemed like it was down more than it was up, many people tried out other services, however the majority of users have always come back to Twitter in some capacity"
I actually think Plurk handles conversation in a better way and during the outtages, many switched over to Plurk and never looked back.
Twitter will always have its front-runner advantages and their position (from a macro-perspective) does look unshakeable (much like Digg for social news) but they'll always only be 'King' to some and not all users, which itself suggests that there's not just room for other services but certain notable flaws with Twitter itself.
That itself is worth noting, apart from the usual look at userbase size + traffic.
I've actually seen this eccentric behavior before.
Last year on Sphinn, I saw someone submitting a propeller story to Sphinn, and the propeller story linked to a digg story which linked to the source. I guess he hoped that sphinn users will go to propeller to vote it up and then propeller users will go to digg to vote it up and then he'll get a frontpage.
Noobs crack me up sometimes.
I got a pop-up layer pushing an opt-in newsletter/course when I clicked over to the site. That's a tad annoying for some social media audiences.
Kinda similar to my post on ways to use Twitter. We had some almost identical points. I guess there aren't many different/unique ways to use it.
Pursuing sites that interest you the most doesn't mean you can't diversify, unless you only have one interest in your life. And seriously...what has PR got to do with influence or profit?
Unless your site is not getting any search traffic at all (cuz of the 'PR slap'), its irrelevant. PR doesn't negate the fact that passion drives and motivates web publishers to excel or strive towards profit or influence.
Perhaps you misread my article.
"Having more friends and fans means your stumbles will be seen by more people. Stumbleupon allows you to friend only 200 people, so make sure each one you friend, friends you back."
I don't really see the reasoning behind this tip. I think there's too much of a marketing emphasis on mutual friends, this is not necessary at all if you're looking to use SU to build a brand or market your site/s.
If you're talking about dialog, most of the active SU users I know hardly use the send-to feature (the only feature-based benefit of being mutual friends) and communication lines are still open via SU's internal mailbox.
If you're talking about having your stumbles seen by more people, its really about increasing your fanbase, irregardless of mutual friendship. Stumble visibility is fans not friends.
You befriend users with shared interests because you want to be recommended their stumbles when you click on the toolbar: to remove them because they don't friend you back does not make sense.
However, there might be an argument that "fans" are more likely to remain fans if you are mutual friends.
And these are probably not the friends worth having. With the size of StumbleUpon's userbase, you don't need this focus on exclusively having mutual friends. It's such a limited way of looking at things.
Friend those whose stumbles you like to make sure you get served up the best information.
It's like subscribing to a blog: Would you only subscribe to someone who subscribes to your blog?
Friend network strategies are a little different on other social websites. But honestly, if you want to be a social media superstar on a service like Stumbleupon, the no. of mutual friends is the last thing you want to sweat about.
Evangelizing the service and driving interested traffic to your profile is far more important.
There are many reasons you do not want to have someone in your friend list who doesn't friend you back. It's not a quesiton of "sweating" it, if it serves no purpose having them as a friend what's the point?
And these reasons are? It is 'sweating' it when you're meticulously checking/rechecking to see if all your friends are mutual on SU. There is a point to being friends (getting served up their stumbled pages) but there is no real solid advantage for mutual friending. And I'm talking purely in the context of online marketing through SU (which is the point of this post)
Of course if you are interested in their posts friend them, but you want to be getting into the position of people friending you, being a follower all the time means you are not that influential.
Not entirely true. Influence does not increase or decrease if you are following many users or not. If that were the case, we would all have a influence ceiling of 200 for SU.
We all know stumble visibility is the fanbase, I've mentioned that in a previous comment. I guess I'm trying to say you don't need mutual friending to build a fanbase or influence.
It depends on how well you market your brand through the social service. I've never conscientously practiced mutual friending (in fact I don't even have 200 friends right now, never did.) but I have over 1,200 fans on SU.
It's all about evangelism, active usage and driving targeted traffic to the profile.
People judge you on how many friends and fans you have, if out of 200 of the people you friend a low percentage friend you back, to me that says you don't know what you are talking about and that effects your brand.
I disagree with that. How would that reflect on a person to say that they don't know what they are talking about? Perhaps this is how you use SU but I don't think many people even bother to click on all 200 profiles in your friends list to see if others have friended you back.
I know you're talking about the fan/friend ratio but since SU has a low limit of 200 friends, it's not a big deal. This is more apparent on services like Twitter, where user can be following tens of thousands with only hundreds following them back.
In fact, I could unfriend every mutual friend on SU right now and I doubt it'll reflect anything bad about my brand or if it'll mean that I don't know what I'm talking about. This article is about being a 'superstar' or a popular profile on SU for marketing purposes and I still maintain that mutual friending is not important at all. Personally, I have done quite well without that focus.
Many ways to use Twitter and I do agree that too many see it only as a broadcast platform, after all... there is no faster way to send a link/request/message out to hundreds or thousands of people. It beats IM, email and any other tool out there for call-to-action response and immediacy.
But if you only use Twitter for close friends and people you know, it's intimate and awesome.
Nice lil ramble by Mark but the title is a tad misleading, I didn't really learn about how to really make friends and influence people online.
Story: YABL Trusted Google sites
These sites might have been on Feedburner pre-Google acquisition.. I do recall seeing such a page when I was researching Feedburner for my feedflares article last year...
Story: Rebuilding Your Blog Groove
Cutting back on Digg is an excellent idea... she can be a real vampire sometimes...
Thanks for volunteering, Brent and Jeff! We all appreciate your efforts.
An issue that could be solved by emailing support@digg.com to ask why there are no icons. I don't really think its deliberate censorship as other other socials like Reddit n SU have icons..
Story: Humans Versus Robots On Digg
oboy is not a robot, he's a real person and I don't think he does anything shady. Just a very active user. I usually digg over 300+ stories a day on Digg myself, but I'm not a bot... nor do I use one.
Digg is usually pretty smart when it comes to people who want to game them... they will get banned. Try hanging out at thedrilldown podcast every friday and you'll get to meet many of these super active diggers... all humans, no bots.
Excellent stuff. I don't think anyone has ever written about the lifespan of a story on Digg in such detail.
I like Digg but creating an April Fools joke at the expense of site-wide usability is just plain dumb.
Good post but the 'professional' blog advice sites have talked about this topic before so it's hardly new. This comes from someone who's one of the many blog marketing authors out there. :)
I'm on the social media section of Alltop and it probably sends me less than 15 visitors everyday according to my stats... I don't think it'll get me many new readers in the long run. Might be useful for some people though.
And flattery + free exposure works... I would have probably promoted it the same way, if I released an aggregator tool-thingy.
Rob is correct in saying this is incentivized voting. I sphunn this for the discussion in the comments and not for the story itself... it's important for the community to reflect and discuss on what is or is not welcome/allowed.
I think Sphinn could do with a Terms of Use page, something like what Digg has on this page.
Currently, I only see a Help section and a Third Door Media Terms page.
A specific TOS page for Sphinn would be very helpful, indeed since social news sites have certain dynamics or rules which need to be highlighted/emphasized.
Story: Google In Final Negotiations To Acquire Digg For “Around $200 Million”