(This story has been updated with a newer idea here: A Plan for Social Media Sites (and users) to Give Back)

Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Slashdot, Newsvine, NowPublic, Yahoo! Buzz.  Between these seven sites, traffic to a particular website can easily exceed 100,000, potentially much higher.

With so much power to drive people to various websites across the Internet, why are none of them greatly involved with charity?  I’m not talking about donating – I’m sure that the companies or their executives donate.  I’m talking about making a difference.  I’m talking about using their power to drive traffic and applying it to charity websites.

The reason that they don’t is that they (other than Slashdot) are strictly driven by the actions, likes, and intentions of the users.  You could argue that there is a human hand or two manipulating the system from time to time, but that’s an entirely different post.

Would it be wrong or unjustified to use the server-busting power of their front pages for an occasional bit of  philanthropy?  It wouldn’t be hard to do at all.  There would be those who would cry out “don’t preach to me” or “keep your humanity to yourself” but for the most part, I believe the communities would embrace it.  Who knows – they might just learn something from time to time that has more substance than lolcats and bacon.

Digg could very easily create a category for charity.  They could hire a handful of people to moderate the category more closely than others to keep the spam to a minimum.  The threshold could be lowered a bit (if necessary, though it probably wouldn’t be) to get a story or two a day on the front page.

As with all categories, if a user doesn’t want “charity shoved down their throat” they can always turn the category off completely.

Reddit could adopt a different type of charitable technique.  By making a charity subreddit that was featured as one of the  primary selections on the front page and making it a default, the subreddit would grow quickly.  No need for moderators – the community self-moderates well.

Even better, they can integrate their technology into a new site dedicated to charity, activism, and philanthropy.

Slashdot is clearly more tech-niche-oriented, but their control of the front page is a perfect way to make sure that tech-related stories involving charities (there are plenty) received attention from time to time.

Newsvine and NowPublic have strong communities that really pays more attention to original stories written on the websites by the users than most of the links posted there.  It would take the users themselves, especially the “powerful” ones, to take more of a stand and write about charities (then link to them, of course).  Still, the sites can help promote it through special sections dedicated strictly to charity and posted on the front page.

Yahoo! Buzz – still a tough one to understand from a traffic perspective, but potentially the most powerful of them all.  As with Slashdot, the super-popular stories are hand-picked, so squeezing in a story or two every now and then for the sake of righteousness would be a piece of cake.

StumbleUpon already has a way to implement charity into their system.  They have an advertising platform that allows people to buy Stumbles for a nickel.  Why not open that up and allow some charities to join in?  They could easily send a conservative 500-1000 people a day to a page with a 5 cent discount given to charities.  My math is spotty at best, but I believe that comes to a total cost of none, both for the charity and for StumbleUpon.  If it does well, the charities can always purchase more than their low daily quota.

Regardless of what they do, it is important and practical that they do something.  Times are tough for many.  Charitable giving is naturally down as a result.  With the power that they wield, it just makes sense that they should use just a small bit of that power to help make the world better.

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For more social media opinions, visit Social News Watch often.

When the news wires started buzzing, burning, and smoking about Dennis Kucinich introducing 35 letters of impeachment against President George W. Bush, we started watching the three top social media sites to see who would get the news the quickest to their front page.

As of the time of this post, it was broken 3 hours, 33 minutes ago.  We started watching the front pages of Digg, Reddit, Propeller, Newsvine, and Mixx just over 3 hours ago.  Here are the results:

Propeller and Newsvine: Currently not on the front page.  This is disappointing, as one of the reasons to have Scouts and Anchors on Propeller is to quickly move breaking stories to the front page.  For Newsvine, which has a front page that is similarly edited and also feeds directly from many news sources, this is not a good omission.

Digg: 2 hours, 38 minutes.  The first three stories that broke the news were bypassed by this Rawstory piece.  The odd part came when the live C-Span coverage received quite a few more diggs (over 300 in 2 and a half hours) but was immediately “buried” from the upcoming section when the other story hit the front page.  Fishy.

Mixx and Reddit: Less than 30 minutes.  By the time we started checking the front pages, both Mixx and Reddit had it already on the front page.  Mixx had it in their innovated Breaking section and Reddit members had already pushed it to the front page naturally.

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Read more about Social News Sites right here.

Every time I bring up Alexa, I get a ton of people who tell me how unreliable and worthless it is.  Let’s assume for the sake of this piece that I know this.  Let’s also assume that my budget for gathering data is zip and Alexa and Compete are the only real options.

With that out of the way, Alexa is showing major drops in reach for Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Mixx and other social bookmarking sites.  They are all happening around the same time.  Concerning?  Not at this point, since the data is all very young.  Worth monitoring?  Absolutely.

Digg

StumbleUpon

Reddit

Slashdot

Mixx

del.icio.us

Newsvine

Ma.gnolia

* * *

Propeller and Fark saw some drops, but not as pronounced as these.  Again, this is absolutely, positively nothing to worry about.  It’s been a slow news week.  There are things going on that are taking up people’s time that aren’t social media.  This drop won’t last long.  BUT, it’s interesting to see it happen like this.  Just FYI.

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Social News must be watched.  Watch more.

Strange. It’s one of those things that pops up and you think, “was there really nothing like this before?”

That is what comes to mind when you look at the Social Media Social Network at Social News Central.  It is a simple Ning site, but it has started off very strong.  With 160 members joining since its recent creation and a member list that boasts “heavy hitters” from social media websites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Propeller, and Mixx, Social News Central promises growth and a world of potential.

The network itself has several features.  There is “open source blogging” in which members can post their own blog posts to the primary blog.  Images can be submitted as well.

Groups can be created and joined, with many of the social media sites already represented.  StumbleUpon has the highest current membership with 60 members as of this post.  If it involves social news, you can find it here.  If you can’t find it, you can start it.  That’s the real beauty of the network.

“Go there to vote, come here to hang out”.  That’s the tagline for the network, and in its simplicity it speaks volumes.  If you ever wanted to discuss ideas, talk with people who are involved with the same (or different) social media sites that you frequent, or if you just wanted to socialize with SM users from across the Web 2.0 spectrum, SNC is the place to go.

Read more about social media sites like this one at the homepage for Social News Blogs or visit some of the sites we recommend.

Social Media Marketing isn’t new. 2008 is simply the year that it emerges as THE thing to do if you want your business, charity, or blog to be “in” instead of “out”.

With companies that aren’t traditionally forward thinking in their marketing techniques, such as Ford Motor Company and Starbucks, making a push to enter social media marketing, it is clear that both big and small business are starting to take notice. Even local businesses are approaching anyone knowledgeable they can find on the subject to help them.

Below are some of the social media initiatives and trends from 2007 that tell of things to come in 2008. First, there are ways to create a web presence that goes beyond building a website or a blog. Then there are ways to drive traffic through social media to these websites.

First, Build Something for People to See…

Social Media Press Release

Ford’s Web 2.0 advertising for their 2008 Ford Focus made some waves in 2007. Not only did they create and market a completely different type of hype-up page that could appeal to and be spread virally by social media members and social networkers, they also branched out with the subdomain media.ford.com.

People can join the network and interact with each other, learn more about Ford products, and share what they find through an easy interface. MyMedia.Ford is the network, and while far from perfect, it is definitely ahead of the curve compared to other automotive manufacturers.

<Expect Ford to expand and other manufacturers to imitate and innovate in 2008. Combining different principals of Web 2.0 will prove to be brilliant. The advantage — appeal to a broader range of people, whether they are the Facebook/MySpace social networking types or the Digg/Reddit social media types. Links throughout to tag on del.icio.us, so no, the social bookmarkers weren’t left out. It’s a social smorgasbord.

Facebooking and MySpacing

It isn’t just for teens and techies. Social networks are getting groups from all around the internet. Facebook has popular groups for Victoria Secrets and Reebok, while MySpace boasts Bombay Clothing and Urban Outfitters.

Both Facebook and MySpace need to (and are, I’m sure) make changes to appeal more to business, not just through advertising, but also through networking. Even though neither format is strong enough yet for significant benefit for business, it isn’t stopping the businesses from flooding in to figure out some way to get their words out.

The emergence of niche social networks should end up being the fix that local and even national businesses are looking for to engage their direct audience. They are popping up left and right, are easy to market online and off, and as more new users swarm to Facebook and MySpace, more older users are leaving, looking for something more personal and less obscene.

Viral Social Marketing

Starbucks has never really gotten into advertising their products heavily until 2007. They didn’t need to. When the word Starbucks became synonymous with quality coffee in the 90′s, the buzz fueled unprecedented growth. Now, with more competition and rising costs, the old business model still works, but why not pump it up with some viral marketing.

Their Cheer Chain was extremely innovative and successful, with over 30,000 chains created already. Relatively inexpensive advertising perpetuated by users with a competitive edge to it — what better way to get the word out and expand on their monumental branding. Social media marketing is not just about selling something. Sometimes, the branding alone is enough to make sales happen down the road.

When you have the clout that Starbucks have, you have the luxury of being able to focus on such things. Still, businesses do not have to be mega-global empires to learn from this. Any time you can get your customer base to spread the word and get your logo out in front of the masses, you’ve accomplished something. Perhaps more importantly, it’s dirt cheap.

Twitter and Flickr and YouTube, oh my!

Social media marketing doesn’t have to require long development and planning. Some businesses have recognized that micro-blogging and media submissions are enough for a boost to get more of the word out. With Google’s Universal Search starting to take wings and show up on the search engine results pages in the form of images and videos, this is more important now than ever before.

Companies like Radio Shack and Bowflex have done a little on YouTube, while EBTM T-Shirts and Chumby are active with using Flickr for marketing. Then there’s Tiger Direct, who has created a mini-empire by promoting on YouTube in bulk.

Micro-blogging platform Twitter needs only two words to prove its effectiveness: Amazon and Apple. Though both have modest follower numbers, you can always bank on these two knowing what they’re doing with new and innovative marketing techniques. Businesses large and small would do well to follow their lead on internet marketing matters.

Second, Get People there to See it…

Promoting Social Media through Social Media

Possibly the most important trend for 2008 is the use of social media to promote other social media. A perfect example recently happened for one girl trying to win a contest. Kina Grannis put a video about Digg on YouTube, had it submitted to Digg, and watched as it flew onto the front page and up the Top in All Categories section.

It has had over 250K views in 10 days, not including the knockoffs and resubmits.

Sometimes, taking events on social media websites and turning them into news for social media websites works well.

“The true gems in the social media arena are folks that not only find good User Generated Content (UGC), but create it as well. Interviewing a top banned Digger and interviewing the Mixx founder were great sources of content for us.” – Brian Wallace, NowSourcing

Any good social media marketing piece should make its rounds. That part is clear. But in these tough-to-find cases, the social media became the social media story. The results — a likely victory for a singer and a nice couple of bursts of targeted traffic for a pair of social media blogs.

StumbleIt! the Right Way at the Right Time

Every day, many people see a spike in their traffic that they hadn’t seen before. They check their web analytics and see StumbleUpon.com as their top referrer by far. If the content is high quality and they are lucky enough to get a few good reviews and some thumbs up, there’s a potential for this traffic to continue for a few days.

If they get lots of good reviews and lots of thumbs up, the traffic could continue for months.

At some point, these website owners go to SU, create an account, and stumble every page of their website. At this point, they’ve nearly ruined their chances of getting any real traffic from SU, and they don’t know why.

StumbleUpon is an incredible traffic driver, but the algorithm is designed to not be used for spam marketing. First, the more prolific stumblers are the ones who drive traffic, not the ones who just created an account. It takes time and sincere stumbling, discovering, befriending, and activity to build the kind of account that can shut down servers the way Digg can. Second, repeated discovery or stumbling of the same website by one user will result in turning your stumbles into worthless window-dressing on the review page.

If you have time, Stumble earnestly. Create an account, discovery quality content, make friends, and enjoy. You can stumble the occasional page from your website, but for the most part, it’s better to just let people know where your website is by posting it on your profile and hope they discover your pages for you. If your stuff is good, it will get traffic. If not, you might get a burst, but it will die quickly.

Digg, Reddit, Propeller, Mixx, Newsvine, and Everyone Else

As with StumbleUpon, you have to have something high-quality that people want to see for the social news websites to be able to work for you. Whether it’s a new and innovative service, an interesting article or blog post, a funny picture, or a great video, you have to have something that compels social media users to vote it up or it’s a mostly worthless submission. Of course, it helps with search engine optimization, but this is about driving social media traffic.

Submitting your own content is fine as long as it is done sparingly. Still, having someone with some clout find your story and submit it is always best. Many of the top users are flooded with requests to submit things for people. Keep in mind — if it’s crap, it’s crap, and having Mr BabyMan on Digg, TechnologyExpert on Propeller, or QGYH2 on Reddit do the submitting will not get it to the front page if it’s crap.

Best techniques – either spend time, make friends, build up a strong profile on the social media websites, and succeed that way, or just hire a social media marketing company who knows what they are doing. The best of the best have made connections with strong submitters. In some cases, they’ve gone so far as to contract or even hire them. Services claiming to get you on 200 social bookmarking and social media websites for a fee are usually not the best. Services who have a firm grasp of social media marketing are the ones that will make themselves (and you) stand out in 2008.

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Social media marketing is here to stay (at least in internet terms, which means a couple of years or more). Businesses, charities, blogs, and individuals with a message or a product should take advantage of this, as it can be extremely cost effective and fun. You’ll touch people that you probably weren’t touching before. There are many pitfalls and a high chance of failure, as very few understand the concept and even fewer have the ability to practice it, but if you can market through social media properly, you have the potential to reap tremendous rewards.

Special thanks to resources with research that helped: 110 Ways Retailers are Using Social Media Marketing and Get Ready to Get Social in 2008, plus others who offered ideas and advice.

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Learn more about social media at the Social News Watch homepage. We take Web 2.0 News seriously.

On the internet, change is part of the definition. In social media, changes are happening literally by the minute. 2008 promises to show humungous growth and an incredible amount of change for major and minor social media websites.

Certain things will be universal as the websites below grow. Some were acquired, some will be acquired in the future, but one thing that we have seen and that we will continue to see is a lack of a shake-up based upon the acquisitions. When a larger company buys a smaller company in the “real world”, there are normally big changes made right from the start. These changes rarely result in mass exodus of employees (unless done by design) nor does it yield a major drop in consumers.

The participatory nature of social media and social networks requires that changes happen slowly and any changes in the beginning must be subtle. Unlike in the real world, a change from one social website to another is quick and easy. Had eBay started throwing their results pages on StumbleUpon, many would have left. Reddit is virtually unaffected by being acquired by Wired, just as Newsvine has seen no change since MSNBC scooped them up. Expect this trend to continue.

Newsvine – Marketing Changes

The MSNBC acquisition will not change much for Newsvine from a useability perspective. What we will see more than with any of the other social media websites is marketing that hits all fronts. Newsvine was the “pet project” for someone who recognized that it was a low-risk acquisition that, if handled properly, could turn into a home run.

The interface is more geared to help people transition from traditional news websites to social news. It’s citizen journalism that offers the quality in writing of professional journalism without making the less educated user feel alienated. Social media with a smile! By the end of the year, expect Newsvine to triple in membership and double in traffic, due in large part to MSNBC taking its mass of resources to get the word out.

StumbleUpon – Monetization Changes

The eBay purchase terrified many users. They waited, and when nothing happened, many put it to the back of their mind that there was even a purchase. Did it really happen, or was it a rumor that never came through?

It did happen, and executives at eBay (other than the ones on the campaign trail) are brainstorming ways to make money from it. Tying it into eBay in any way is out of the question. Many will bail out the second they stumble a couple of “Buy it Now” filled pages. Still, there is an angle, and someone knows it, but nobody is talking yet.

We will see SU blossom as more and more features make the user-experience so strong, people will continue to tell their real world friends about it. It’s fun. For 2008, the fun will be monetized. Currently, buying stumble traffic is working to some extent, but advertisers are realizing that the traffic quality is low. They don’t buy. One idea on the table is to utilize user data to offer targeted advertising while stumbling and when not. They will learn from Facebook Beacon and offer a better service in 2008.

Digg – Sellability Changes

Will it be sold? Who will buy it? Are we in the groomed product stage, or are recent indications of an upcoming improved interface part of the master plan to increase traffic, pageviews, and perceived value?

Expect major changes to Digg on an evolutionary level. It has the luxury of a large base of users who are so entrenched in it, they will welcome changes that improve the site and deal with changes that don’t (at least that’s the hope). The changes have been rolling out pretty constantly over the last few months, but it should be miniscule compared to the changes that are coming. Advertising will change, as will how pages are delivered. Nofollow attribute is also coming, as the huge base of users do not care whether there is any search engine optimization value in the links and Digg no longer needs the SEO submissions and traffic to maintain huge status.

Comments fixed at last? Most definitely.

This article by Muhammad Saleem details some of the potential changes, and they barely scratch the surface.

Reddit – Design Changes

Will Reddit have its first major redesign in years? Will the algorithm be tweaked, submission style get changed, or functionality be improved?

The smart money is on “no”, that Old-faithful Mr. Steady will not change. The users like it the way it is. Our money is on a big, fat “YES”. For the first time, there will be a truly noticeable redesign that will be met with resistance at first, but with the tremendous loyalty that Reddit users have, they’ll get used to it and eventually love it.

Mixx – Innovative Changes

The new kid on the block has been tweaking behind the scenes since the beginning. This social media website that rose to modest prominence because of a single banned user at Digg drawing attention to it is now working their way up the ranks.

Are they a Digg-killer? There is no such thing, other than Digg itself. Still, Mixx has features that other social media sites don’t, and it’s in their nice array of stories that will be its greatest strength in 2008.

Watch as it grows to compete with Propeller, possibly even Reddit, in traffic. It has a long way to go as far as users, but the ones that are there are either in and out, here and gone, or they are the dedicated users that Reddit and Newsvine enjoy.

With a billing that says they take the best features of Digg, LinkedIn, and My Yahoo!, expect them to innovate their platform to draw in people from other realms outside of social media. More interaction, more Facebook-style community, and less Digg-cloning. They want to improve on what Digg started, not copy them.

Propeller – Partnership Changes

Is AOL going to sell Netscape? Who would buy it? Propeller, on the other hand, is ripe for a change. With all of the traditional media outlets looking into social media, someone will most likely make an offer that Propeller can’t refuse. Whether it’s a buyout or a partnership, something will attach them to someone. It could be someone within the AOL circle, but if that were the case, it probably would have happened already.

The interface itself should only see minor tweaks. They like the product they have to offer, and most of the users do as well. It’s growing faster than the larger SM sites, not as fast as Mixx, but it’s starting to secure its place as the 2nd/3rd/4th option.

* * *

Social media was big last year, huge in 2007, and will become the same level of phenomenon that social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook enjoy. They allow for video interaction on sites like YouTube and 5min, but they have the avantage of being filtered by peers.

One more thing to remember — the niche social media sites that have been a failure so far will slowly emerge in 2008 as viable websites. Sphinn has proven that appealing to a small group of people is not a sign of doom. Sites like Hugg didn’t exactly explode in 2007, but they did offer a glimpse into what is to come in 2008.

Should be a great year.


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Learn more about social media at the Social News Watch homepage. We take social media news seriously.

You’ve seen them before.  They create accounts that have either a gibberish name or “SEOSuperstud”.  No avatar, or one that is their company logo.  They might have lots of people befriended.  They may have none.

They always submit.  They never vote/Digg/upmod anyone else’s submissions.  Their submissions get 1 or fewer votes (unless they are a MASS – a Multi-Account-SEO-Spammer, in which case they will have more than one, but it will always be the same amount and always voted by the same “people”).

They submit stories or websites that nobody from social media visits or votes for, and they don’t care.  They are the social media SEO Spammers.  If nobody clicks on their link, no worries.  The only visit they care about is from Googlebots, and sadly (in some cases) Google will visit and take note of the website.

We wanted to make a video spoof on the “Leave Britney Alone” theme, but neither Chris Crocker nor Seth Green were available.  Instead, we’ll just put together a nice little rant about why Reddit, Propeller, Newsvine, Mixx, StumbleUpon, Sphinn, Digg, and the others are not communities tolerant of spammers.  More importantly, we’ll offer ways to combat the issue.  Read on.

For those unfamiliar about how Search Engine Optimization works, here is the one basic premise that draws SEO Spammers to our hallowed pages: Links Rule.  Inbound links with the proper title (or anchor text) posted on many social media websites gives the target site a boost in rankings for their particular keywords.  There is much more to it than that, but that’s the basic idea.

SEO Spammers realize that a link from SM sites can be a powerful tool in their SEO arsenal.  The problems are many, but the one that affects the masses is simple: we don’t care about Viagra, unsecured credit cards, penis enlargement, free credit reports, or any of the other hundreds of things that SEO Spammers are pushing.  Period.

Is everyone who uses social media websites for SEO bad?  Are they all spammers?  Absolutely not.  Some of the most respected members of the SM sites are SEOs by profession.  Without “outing” any, it’s clear that they are active contibutors who submit quality content.  They participate in many ways, more than just submitting.  They vote, interact, and in general they add more to the website than they take.

Every now and then, you might see them submit content that is possibly spam.  To social media purists, this is bad.  To us, it’s earned.  If 1 out of 50 submissions is for their benefit or to benefit a client, we shouldn’t worry.  To us, the other 49 quality submissions supercedes the spam.

So, the question remains.  How do social media websites combat the problem?

Newsvine is the most heavily policed social media website in the world.  The members are passionate.  They have a “Greenhouse” where new members are scrutinized, watched, reported, and subsequently banned for spammy behavior.  They track multiple accounts very well and they take action quickly.

Still, Newsvine is very small in comparison to the other social media powerhouses.  Reddit uses the SEO-dreaded “nofollow” attribute on any stories that do not get over 1 point through upmodding.  Spammers generally do not get the full benefit for this reason.  It is somewhat effective, but barely makes a dent because even in the SEO ranks, many do not check for nofollow.  Even amongst those who do, there is a debate over whether the nofollow attribute is real or not.  Could it be red herring?  We say no, but our opinion doesn’t matter to the SEO Spammers, so they continue to use it.

StumbleUpon uses it on all of their posts, but the effect from Stumbles is too strong to make the spammers care.

Digg, Mixx, and StumbleUpon rely on members to report.  This, to us, is the only real recourse that active members can use.  If enough people file a report, eventually, the spammers will get banned.  They can return, but some will not.  Is it futile?  As with so many things, it’s only as futile as the general public believes.

Propeller has people who hunt for spammers.  Pound for pound, this may be the most effective method for larger sites.  While Newsvine is the best policed, its ways are not practical on a scale as large as Digg.  Propeller’s on the other hand, is.  While it isn’t as hole-free as Newsvine, it is better than what is currenty being used.  It would require money spent to hire people, but Digg, Reddit, and Stumble have the money to invest.  Isn’t user-experience important enough of an investment?

What can we, the users, do about it?  Some was mentioned above, but here is more:

1) Report abuse to Admins - It takes a few seconds out of our busy day.  It’s worth it if we don’t have to sift through spam, in our opinion.

2) Report abuse to their Clients - It doesn’t take long to follow a link to find out the source.  Send their admin or webmaster an email asking if they are aware that their SEO vendor or in-house SEO team is spamming.  Tell then that you are not interested in buying products from companies that use/condone spam.  If it’s a Viagra or one of the other types of sites listed above, it probably won’t make a difference.  If it’s some other type, it just might help.

3) Make their posts invisible – Most social media websites have a threshold that makes a particular post become virtually invisible, both to the people and to the search engines.  If you find extremely spammy posts, bury/downmod/sink their submission.  Get your friends to do the same.  Contact the SEO Spammer and let them know.  If it doesn’t help, they won’t do it anymore.

Anything we missed?