One of the least expensive forms of pay-per-click advertising on the internet is StumbleUpon. With prices as low as 5 cents per click, they are able to drive more traffic for the buck than sites like Google or Facebook. What’s more, ads have a chance of picking up “natural” stumbles that are free. In some cases, a good campaign with strong content can get more natural clicks than paid ones.

The challenge is with disclosure. On mobile apps, it declares when a stumbled piece of content is sponsored. On the browser toolbar version, it does not. As pages are served to users who click the “Stumble” button on their browser, advertisers using Paid Discovery have their pages mixed in with the organically-selected pages. There is no indication that the stumbled page was presented because someone paid for it to be there.

On May 30, the FTC will hold a public workshop to get feedback on how to revamp their 12-year-old online advertising disclosure guidelines. Social media and mobile marketing have changed the game from the banner and text ads that the old guidelines focused on and a revamp has been desperately needed for a while.

There is a good chance that StumbleUpon will not be addressed because they are one-off, exceptionally unique case. With other social media sites like Twitter and Facebook or other social news sites like Digg or Reddit, the advertisements are part of the websites themselves. StumbleUpon ads never actually appear on the websites; users rarely visit stumbleupon.com itself. The “ads” are actually the advertisers websites themselves. One does not have to click from a banner or link on StumbleUpon. They are served the page through the browser toolbar or mobile app.

StumbleUpon’s model will not be discussed because they aren’t on the FTC’s radar. You won’t see any ads if you go to their website and they aren’t a household name like other social media sites, but the reality is that StumbleUpon is relatively huge. The user base is extremely passionate and the number of pages served by StumbleUpon competes favorably with other social media sites.

In other words, their model is very likely safe, but should it be? Should they be forced to disclose when a page served is a paid discovery?

To understand just how big they are and how prolific Paid Discovery is, this infographic that they created tells the story nicely.

From: San Francisco Toyota Via: StumbleUpon

This comprehensive guide is as true as can be. What does it take to be successful on StumbleUpon? Pictures. That’s it.

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Find more information About StumbleUpon on this site.

For social news powerhouses Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon to be so changed by the presence of gobs and gobs of spam hits a little harder. They are the sites where I started my journey in Web 2.0. They are the shiny beacons of user-controlled, traffic-generating goodness that made mainstream media look to the people for their opinions and discoveries.

They are, for all intents and purposes, shells of what they should be, and spam is to blame. Perhaps more importantly, how they handled spam over the years has caused them to close their networks in one way or another through a series of witchhuntesque spam countermeasures.

…and spam is to blame.

Digg Paranoia

Many people go out (in this case, we’ll call her Blogger Sue), create a wonderful site or blog, put their heart and souls into the content (some even pay for strong content) and prepare their servers for the onslaught of traffic inherent with a Digg front page story.

One try, two tries, ten tries later, nothing. They’re lucky if they get 100 total visitors combined to their 10 stories.

They look at the stats. According to Di66, 2203 of the 4011 stories to hit the front page in the last 30 days came from 100 websites. Out of hundreds of thousands of submissions per month, 100 website control 55% of the Digg front page.

Blogger Sue notices something. It’s not just the domains. It’s the users. The top 100 users this month have 2197 front page submissions, again over 50% despite millions of unique visitors per month. That’s the ticket! She makes friends with a couple of top users, asks them to submit, and again waits for the traffic onslaught.

Again, she is disappointed. After several failed attempts, her site has been flagged for what some call “autobury” or “spam protection” because the Digg algorithm watches for new sites getting too many Diggs and prevents them from hitting. In any given month, new sites will account for less than 1% of the total front page stories.

Digg has trust issues. It trusts certain users and certain sites. The rest are spammers pushing spam. While on one hand you can’t blame them, as Digg is often considered the crown jewel of a traffic-driving strategy (and therefore gets spammed to death) but on the other hand there really needs to be a way to make it more fair for both new users and new sites. We have ideas, and we’ve offered them, but thus far nobody at Digg has asked our opinion.

Reddit Elitism

Reddit is the most open of the social news sites in that great content can hit the front page regardless of the submitter. Well, almost regardless. As long as the submitter is either brand new or well “vetted” by an algorithm actively pursuing spam and as long as the domain hasn’t been banned within a subreddit or by the entire site, then Blogger Sue can create an account, submit a post, title it appropriately, and have a chance of doing well.

There are 3 problems with Reddit:

1. If you get banned in a subreddit or the site itself, you may never know. You can submit and submit and submit and nobody will ever be able to see your submission. This can be done by getting banned in enough subreddits or algorithmically based upon a series of criteria that few understand.
2. The Subreddits, while they were a great idea at first, have partitioned into “traffic or no traffic”. There are a handful of subreddits that gained popularity early on and have continued to gain in popularity simply because they’re popular. The others are worthless and there it’s almost impossible to get traction into a small subreddit.
3. The moderators. Too much power for the “trusted” few who have control over the strong subreddits. They can (and in many cases, have) banned users or domains based upon simply not liking someone or something. There are subreddits where respectable, completely non-spammy domains are blocked because they weren’t liked by an individual.

There are solutions at Reddit as well, but again, nobody seems to be looking for them. The offer, as always, is on the table.

StumbleUpon Contradictions

There are a dozen people in the universe who have figured out how to properly promote via StumbleUpon. For the rest, it’s hit or miss. Do we Stumble a lot or not? Subscribe a lot or not? Discover a lot or not? Should we share? Not share? Tweet? Su.pr?

Why did Blogger Sue stumble one decent story that got 30,000 unique visitors in a week, then stumble a great piece of content from the same domain that got 30 views?

StumbleUpon has been successful in driving traffic to quality sites, but has also been victim of filters that keep a TON of content out of the mix.  There are stories that are served up thousands of times before the algorithm realizes the content sucked, while other pieces of content that are gloriously powerful aren’t served to a single person regardless of who discovers it.

With StumbleUpon, I have no advice because I don’t understand it enough to offer any. Sorry guys.

What is the Future of Social News?

Digg.

Reddit.

StumbleUpon.

They are the present and will likely be the future as well. Still, there are things on the horizon that have potential. Tying in conversation within other networks is an option. Judging quality through batches of moderators vetting content is another. Someone will come up with a solution, then thousands will figure out ways to game and spam it.

That’s the nature of the beast, which is why I still love these sites, regardless of whether they’re dead or not.

… and spam is to blame.

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Read more about social news on this blog.

I want to clear something up for those of you who are now afraid to thumb up your friends stuff, or who think they can no longer thumb or review their favorite sites. I am going to explain how the process works from my knowledge in hopes of putting your mind at ease.

First of all, when you go to check one of your recent discoveries and find that it says “discovered by someone” rather than yourself, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are ghost banned. You may be experiencing:

• A glitch. They happen all the time on most sites and SU is no exception.
• You are sandboxed, which I will explain below.

I got a lot of my information for the term “sandboxed” from a post Jeff Quipp made a couple of years ago.  Where ever you are buddy, thank you! I wasn’t sure how to explain it until I found his post.

There’s no way I can predict the algorithm of SU, however there is a process SU uses to combat spam.  They found the best way is to not inform these suspected people that they are watching them.  They want to watch their usual activities versus giving them a warning, because they will eventually return to their usual spammy ways after a while and the process would start all over again.  Why not build up enough evidence that can’t be disputed?

If you have been reviewed or flagged before, there is a chance that your discoveries or certain discoveries are getting sandboxed. And if you haven’t been reviewed before, but are receiving a lot of flags, then this would apply to you as well.  What this means is that they take your discoveries and make it appear as though they are active, until it’s determined that tags are fitting etc (there’s more to it, but you get the idea). People you share with see your discovery, they can review and thumb it.  Everything goes on as usual, or so it seems to the submitter and the friends it was shared with, except one thing — the discovery is being reviewed.  Once it’s cleared (usually very soon after the discovery), then you get listed as the person who discovered it, and it becomes a normal discovery which can then be viewed by more people. This is obviously a very loose interpretation of the term “sandboxed.” In all actuality, it’s more complicated. However, it works very well.

Ghost banned means that basically all your discoveries are under review, and usually for a longer period of time. This usually means they have reason to believe that you are spamming based on their reviews, or a lot of flags on multiple posts. At this point, they are looking very closely at your patterns, friends, etc. That does not mean that they review all your friends however, just certain friends who have been thumbing all your discoveries, especially if they are leaving reviews.  Those particular friends will either be sandboxed or ghost banned as well.  This is necessary to eliminate the spam rings or circles. At this stage, you will lose all or most of the work you have put into SU in regard to your discoveries.

The next step is usually an email to let you know that you are under review, usually you cannot access your account during this period of time. There is a possibility of being permanently banned if they find evidence that you are spamming.

SU is not necessarily wanting to target the people who thumb up these sites in question, but the people who are actually discovering them. You will not know who these people are that are being watched, and that’s the reason you need to be careful/mindful of your friends.  It’s not being deceptive on SU’s part because it’s giving their users the benefit of the doubt. It may also appear that the other obvious spammers are getting away with it because there is no indication those people are even being watched.  But, the fact is, they are just building up the ammunition they need to ban them completely, if they are indeed a real spammer or a spammer ring.  I have only seen this with the real spammers guys, not an innocent user, so don’t think they are out there watching your every move just waiting to swing the ban hammer.

One of the reasons the actual user is not aware they are being sandboxed is because SU is basically giving the user time to prove they are or are not a spammer.  SU does not randomly chose these users.  They have only been brought to their attention because there have been multiple people thumbing their disoveries down, marking them as spam or un-useful, and if they have been flagged for nudity/porn when they are not listed as an x-rated site. And if you have gotten in trouble before, and you are still being flagged.

SU also understands that there are people who do this on purpose to get rid of a top user because they are haters, or they are tired of seeing their stuff etc. Basically SU is giving these flagged users the benefit of the doubt as I said before (I am being very redundant, I know). And keep in mind that SU doesn’t usually ban someone unless there’s a lot evidence, not just flags.

I can name a user off hand (in my mind) who is a top stumbler.  He is good, and I don’t consider him a spammer simply because he has quality stuff from a lot of good sources.  He has been reviewed at least twice that I know of, but he hasn’t been banned, and probably won’t be unless he changes his pattern. The reason it seems he is being targeted is because of some haters out there that feel he is spamming certain sites, there seems to be a large group of them who’s intentions are to “clean up” SU. However, sometimes their intentions may be a little misguided by their own jealousy, but that’s just my opinion, and it is only a few. SU can’t ignore it’s users, however, and they will do their best to weed out the good users from the bad ones.

You may see your good friend get temporarily suspended who you feel doesn’t deserve it, and then see some crappy user spam their health blogs or whatever, it doesn’t mean they (the obvious spammer) is not being watched while your friend gets picked on. Chances are that these obvious spammers are being watched, so their days are short.  SU tries to make their users happy, and like I said before, it’s a big accomplishment for a social media site these days.

Please don’t be afraid of thumbing your friend’s stuff.  Just make sure you take a look at what they are submitting, if it’s from the same source each time, or if it is obviously very low quality.  If it is, then just remove them, or don’t thumb it.  And if you feel it truly is spam, report it.  This will make it a lot easier for the rest of us who are on SU for the right reasons.  You have to be accountable for who you chose to be your friends, so getting upset that you are under review because you kept thumbing up joebob’s (hopefully that’s not an actual user) health blog that sells vitaimins over and over again, seems a little silly.  Common sense is the best advice I can give you.

I am in no way affiliated with SU, nor do I know anyone who is.  I am only a long-time user who loves SU, and write what I have learned from my own experiences and research.

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Read more about StumbleUpon on this Social News Blog.
Image courtesy of Pandemic Labs.

This concept has evolved, to say the least. Now you may be exposed to sites that are not relevant to your preferences just because it has been thumbed up many times by your friends, and their friends, and so on. These sites have been “pushed” through the system, for the sake of traffic/views. Recently SU has been trying to combat this situation by adding the share feature, and even offering advertisement etc. In addition, they are banning “circles” of mutuals that seem to be sharing, thumbing, and reviewing the same sites.

If you happen to be in one of these “circles,” you run the risk of getting “ghost” banned or completely banned.

Ghost Banned on StumbleUpon: You can thumb up, thumb down, discover… pretty much anything a regular user can do. The only thing is, your efforts don’t count. You can tell if you’re “ghost banned” by discovering a page, opening up a different browser, and visiting the review page of the site you just discovered. If it says “Discovered by someone” and not you, you’re a ghost. No word yet on how to reverse this.

Here are some things to avoid:

As you know the share feature can be pretty annoying. I usually have around 50 pages waiting for me a day, and it’s very hard to keep up with. Most of the pages sent to me are from my social media friends who are also on Digg, Reddit, etc. They are sending me things they like or want to promote. Now, this is actually not against TOS as long as it isn’t their personal site, however, it’s usually a site that is beneficial to them in some way, and that is against TOS.

SU has caught on to this particular “gaming” of the system, and therfore they are banning not only the people who own the site who are “pushing” it, but the people who actually thumb these sites up often. This may seem a little unfair because you are just trying to be nice and a good social media friend.  Just giving it a thumb shouldn’t be that harmful to you. However, it is necessary on their part if you think about it. I have been very weary of discovering my friend’s sites since the banning initially began several months ago. I personally will discover what I truly like, and what I feel is relevant to my basic theme or what I believe in, but I can no longer do this for some of my favorites, and this to me is the unfortunate part.

Unfortunately, the friends who have good content will have to understand that you cannot keep thumbing up their stuff all the time. If you continue to do this for anyone, you will be flagged eventually. Remember, you don’t have to review it, you just have to thumb it and it becomes a red flag when you do this often for the same source. Once you get banned or ghost banned, you could lose all the hard work you have put into your discoveries.

The whole point is for diversity. SU wants different sources.  They want content from around the Internet – good content/pictures that deserve exposure based on what people like to see/read. In order to assure this, they must not encourage the same sites getting pushed through the preference pages simply because your friends shared it with a ton of other friends who all thumb it just because they asked them to through the share feature. You would not be exposed to anything other than a handful of sites if this continued.

In conclusion, your best bet is to just say NO. You are not obligated to thumb every page sent to you. If you are wanting to have reciprocated thumbs or reviews when you have a good site etc..then they will thumb it without you asking if it’s good. If you are discovering spammy sites whose content isn’t really any good, then SU is not the place to go. One thing to keep in mind is the timing. Make sure that some of your top friends are online before you make a discovery if you are wanting it to get exposure immediately.  In theory, they will see the page even if you don’t sent it if they’re subscribed to you. If the content is good enough, it will get thumbs and reviews.

The only way to get loyal subscribers however, is to make sure you are discovering worthy material. They will follow you.

Many serious users on SU are picky about what they are looking at, and if they notice they are being forced to view things that are not their preference or the same sources day after day, they will flag you or just stop looking all together.

Another tip is if you mistag a discovery, you might as well just pack it up. There was a time when marketers/spammers were tagging their content with “viewable” or popular tags in order for it to be seen more often. However, their tags were not relevant and were misleading. These people were banned pretty quickly. Just be mindful of your tags – make certain it fits.

Send stuff to different friends each time, not just everyone all the time if you plan on doing the share feature often. Make sure the content you are sending them is at the very least pretty good and from different sources. Chances are, if it’s not interesting enough for you to read it or look at it yourself, then they won’t either and you will get a “blind” thumb. Eventually this will lead to you and them getting banned.  If you have a good post, and most of your friends thumb it or give it a review without you asking, don’t be fearful of it being flagged just because most of your friends thumbed it up because chances are that if they did this without you asking, others who are not your friends will as well (this is how you get new subscribers and friends in the first place). This is very good for you simply because it shows that you are reaching a more diverse audience based on a good post/discovery, rather than a forced one, and SU will see that.  You will be more rewarded on SU for having good content more than most places. SU also loves good pictures, and it’s a great place to find some never-seen-before photography etc.

For those of you who are planning on using it as a traffic generator, your time will be short if you are posting trash or asking the same people to thumb the same stuff all the time. That is the difference I have noticed on SU versus any of the other social media sites, and that is why it’s my favorite place to be on the Internet.

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Read more StumbleUpon Tips right here.

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.

In retrospect, this experiment was flawed.  The subject matter and style of delivery was very clearly geared in favor of one of the combatants.  When it was initially conceived, it was decided that the experiment would best be delivered through a post that announced itself.  By checking traffic statistics on a post titled: “The StumbleUpon Digg Experiment”, there would be equal billing, equal exposure, and most importantly, equal chances through the delivery methods to give both sides a chance.

We were wrong.

In retrospect, it is clear that the title and subject were more geared towards a social experience.  While Digg offers ways to share stories with friends, it isn’t nearly as suited for this as StumbleUpon is.  The very nature of SU is designed to where members passively share stories they like by stumbling and reviewing them.  Digg requires active participation by people to see the story.  Stumble requires nothing other than clicking and waiting for websites to be served to them.

The Digg traffic of lore says that websites will get tens of thousands of visits in a short period of time.  The problem is, not all stories get this kind of traffic when they hit the front page.  Because they have to be actively clicked on, people have to have an interest to click.  This story, while more popular than past stories that have hit the front page of Digg from this blog, still didn’t have the universal appeal to get a ton of traffic.

Stumblers are, by their nature, more interested in stories about SU than Digg users are interested in stories about Digg.  This and other factors make this experiment somewhat flawed.  Thus, the results were tremendously in favor of StumbleUpon.

Detailed statistics are being compiled.  We are breaking it down hour by hour, noting traffic spikes and comparing them to specific times of reviews on SU.  The data so far is interesting, but for those interested in the general results, here they are:

Story posted early in the morning, PST, December 14th.  It was Dugg shortly after being posted by ThinkingSerious. Then, it was Stumbled by hockeyguru around 7:00 am PST.

December 14th, 2007:

• Traffic from StumbleUpon: 15,694
• Traffic from Digg: 8,463

Surprised?  So was I.  Traditional thought is that Digg wins the short race and SU catches up over time.  Again, the subject matter/headline were geared to get Diggs, but not actual visits.  Another thing to note as that this story made it to the “Top in All Categories” box on the front page.  Less than a minute later, it was buried off that page after getting 24 hits.  Stories that do can get a huge bump in traffic for that day.  Some stories whose statistics I have seen have gotten twice as much traffic or more from being there than they did when they were initially on the front page.

December 15th, 2007

• Traffic from StumbleUpon: 4,761
• Traffic from Digg: 2,357

This is actually a very encouraging number from Digg.  Considering most of the traffic came from people when the story had to be found on deep inner pages, this is a huge number relative to the original day’s response.  Stumble traffic, if anything, was a little disappointing, as some stories get 80% of their initial day traffic on day two.  Despite the positive reviews still rolling in on day two, the percentage compared to the first day was low.

December 16th, 2007

• Traffic from StumbleUpon: 3,689
• Traffic from Digg: 349

There is the drop that happens with Digg.  There is also the famed residual traffic from Stumble.

Again, let me be clear.  This story was unintentionally geared to for SU.  The results are not a real representation, as stories that aren’t about Social Media will still have the normal results of Digg wins the first day and SU may or may not catch up over time.  The subject matter appealed to SU’s manner of delivery.  One digg is one digg and helps very little.  One stumble and especially a positive review by the right person can generate a chain reaction, a viral effect that can snowball into more and more stumbles.

Thank you to all who participated by reading, sharing, stumbling, and digging this story.  We want more data.  If you have statistics from posts other than social media themed ones, please contact us.  We want to explore, analyze, and share the data.

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Read more social news stories on this blog.

Bloggers and webmasters out there who watch their traffic as closely as we do have been amazed by the “Stumble Effect”.  Many know about the sudden burst of traffic that comes from the “Digg Effect” when a submission reaches the front page of Digg (or even better, if it reaches the “Top in All…” section on the frontpage).  This is normally a day of joy (or terror if your server bombs) followed by limited tricklings of traffic.

Stumble has a different, more steady infusion of traffic that it can send to a website that gets stumbled, especially if it is hit by multiple top users.  The effect is sustained, but more importantly, can be rejuvinated by a thumbs up and/or review by the right person/people.

Digg, on the other hand, has the advantage of having “controlled” traffic.  Anyone watching their posts as they’re submitted and rising on Digg can pinpoint if and approximately when their page will go popular.  You know when the traffic is coming and you know when it will stop.

The thing that truly piqued our curiosity was something that happened last Sunday.  This blog has had several stories hit the front page of Digg and other social networks and has received a ton of Stumble traffic over the weeks.  Last Sunday, someone “powerful” Stumbled a story.  Shortly after that, someone else with power stumbler status reviewed it.  Ninety seconds later, our server was dead, and it took an act of congress and an upgrade in equipment to get the site live again.  That never happened with any of the Diggs.

So, let’s experiment.  The idea has been percolating for a while, but James Pegram’s Blog beat us to the punch.  No worries.  The post was excellent, but there is a ton more that can be learned.  On Digg, as stories move down the front page and on to the next, the traffic slows, like tall rollercoaster freefall that hits tremendous speeds, then gradually levels out and slows.  Stumble is like a bumpy rollercoaster in the dark.  You know the traffic will go up and down, you just don’t know when it’s going to go up, nor when it’s going to stop.

A quick note about incentive: This blog makes next to nothing in ad revenue.  That can be expected, as almost all of its traffic is generated by social media users who are normally too web-savvy to click on adsense or purchase from an advertising banner.  Most, in fact, surf the web so much that they are now “blind” to these forms of marketing.  Then, there are those who use browser extensions to block the ads altogether.

For this experiment, we won’t put any adsense or advertising in the story, just so nobody thinks there are ulterior motives involved.  The sidebar will have the coffee banner (there more for asthetic purposes, as nobody buys coffee from a social media blog) and some text ads, but the story itself will be cleaner than any others on the site.

That should make our $0.63 average daily revenue plummet, but for research, no sacrifice is too great.

No, this article will track the traffic generated as well as hour by hour, sometimes even minute by minute updates to the data stream.  Who’s Stumbling, how may Diggs, times on front page, added Stumble reviews — the list will grow as more data becomes available.  We’ll watch who stumbles it and when as well as where it moves on Digg.

There are potential drawbacks.  Despite the fact that this website does not make enough money to cover the hosting, there will be those who think it’s a ploy to somehow put cash in our pockets.  There will be those who get some kind of joy out of messing experiments like these up.  They will bury it on Digg and thumb it down on Stumble.  I’ll give it a 30% chance on Digg and a 50% chance on Stumble.

All data will be posted here with times and results as they become available.

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Read more info at the Social Media Blog.

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