News Niblets: Social Media’s Best and Worst Quality
Many people love appetizers. They’re usually overpriced, under-portioned, and loaded with calories, but we love them anyway. Why? Because they’re quick, easy, and too the point.
Social media websites like Digg, Reddit, and Propeller offer the same product in the form of headlines. We get to nibble on the news, taking it in bits and pieces, served to us through headlines that are often sensationalized or pointed. While some people take the nibble and move on the main course by reading the full story, a good portion of us live on the appetizers. We read the headlines, possibly read the descriptions, occasionally scan the story (or even just the first few paragraphs), then it’s back to the social media site for the next bite of news via headlines.
Some never make it past the headlines, establishing a reaction or opinion based on the nibblet. This is good. This is also bad. Read more
The Godfather and Social Media
In many ways, the top level websites of social media can be compared to the fictional world of The Godfather. Sounds weird? Hear me out.
The Godfather showed us a world of beauty and corruption. Alliances were made and broken. Those who were good to the family were rewarded, while anyone who stepped in the way was hit.
Social media works in much the same way. It can be beautiful, offering the best of the web compiled into loosely organized areas where masses of people can flood a worthy website and enjoy its offerings. It can be corrupt, as spammers use the power of social media to drive traffic to unworthy websites. Read more
Front Page Addiction: Destroying Families, Ruining Lives
*** As my first real parody piece, I am moving this up in the blog to see if it gets more comment luv. ***
A little-known but dangerous epidemic is spreading across members of social media websites like Digg, Reddit, Propeller, Newsvine, and Mixx. Like a secret scourge, SM-FPA (social media front page addiction) isn’t making national headines yet, but the effects have been felt in thousands of households across the world.
“Ever since my wife’s submission hit the front page of Reddit last month, we only see her on the way to the bathroom,” said Jake Dixon. His wife Amber, better known as “diggwho”, made the front page of Reddit with a story titled Bush makes more people mad by saying something stupid. Since then, Amber has been submitting 15-25 stories per day and has a submission hit the front page 3-5 times per week. She declined to be interviewed.
Research scientists at the Social Media Institute of Technology (SMIT) in Kolkata, India, say that Mr. Dixon and his family are not alone. They have documented 342 confirmed cases of SM-FPA in 2007 and estimate the actual number in the thousands. Read more
Trouble with Reddit? Here’s some tips from qgyh2, the Reddit Jedi Master
This is a repost of an article that still applies today despite being about 19 years old.
Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been studying the major social news websites. Reddit, being one of the best ones, was obviously tops on my list. I did everything that seemed to work well on Digg, Propeller, Newsvine, and most other social media sites.
The results were different from the others. I was successful in the others. Needless to say, I wasn’t successful at Reddit.
My first technique was simple. Make friends, spam a lot, wait for the “Karma” to rise. It didn’t. Actually took a week to break 20. I wasn’t happy, but I kept trying.
I’ve discovered some tricks and tips, rising to a marginally respectable Karma around 1700 over several months. Most of those points have come in the last two. Still, I really couldn’t find rhyme or reason to what was working and what wasn’t. Stories that I thought would surely hit the homepage got down-modded to oblivion, while others that were decent stories at best got dozens, even hundreds of votes.
So, I asked. Read more
Impeachment Coverage - Who got it fastest?
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: Read more
New Blogs Focus on What Did NOT Hit the Front Page of Digg
On an episode of The Drill Down 3 weeks ago, MrBabyMan, Zaibatsu, MSaleem, and about 50 people in the chat room of their Ustream broadcast discussed putting up a site where stories that didn’t make it to the front page of Digg could “find a resting place.” After a quick brainstorming session, Lost Shovels was born.
While it hasn’t taken off yet as hoped with only 4 stories posted there currently, a variation of the idea was created at PopFAIL. This one has much more activity currently (I am one of the contributors) and each submission is accompanied by an analysis of why it didn’t make it and why it should have made it to the front page of Digg. Read more
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JD Rucker
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