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social news
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social news
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social news
rumormonger
Wired relaunching HotWired as a social network?
Chris Anderson, Wired's waggle-eared rock-star editor, has been dropping hints left and right about the relaunch of HotWired, a faded Web property Conde Nast picked up along with Webmonkey last month. The rumor we've heard: That Wired is relaunching the site as a news-focused social network like Digg. (Conde Nast already owns Digg competitor Reddit, whose engineers are likely involved in the project.) It's a sensible brand extension for Wired, but a far cry from HotWired's early ambitions, described in a 1994 email as "live, twitching, the real-time nervous system of the planet." Here's the HotWired FAQ, which reads like it was just unearthed from a time capsule: More »
silicon valley users' guide
How to get traffic with StumbleUpon
The traffic boost from Digg-front-page glory only lasts a few hours. Getting an article picked up by eBay's StumbleUpon, however, can drive sweet, sweet traffic for weeks and months. So search-engine optimization expert Dharmesh Shah and social media marketer Lyndon Antcliff's "28 Tips to Make You a StumbleUpon Superstar" would be worth reading, if it weren't 1,400 words long. Here's a version you can read in less time than it takes for fanatical Digg users to bury your story. More »
reddit
Leaked screenshots of Wired's redesigned Reddit
Social news aggregator — that is to say, Digg clone — Reddit is working on a redesign. Online media consultant Brent Csutoras landed leaked screenshots. We've annotated them for your convenience. More »
social news
If you make your living publishing content on the Internet, you live and die by the pageview. One way to drive huge amounts of traffic to your site is through "social news" sites like Digg. If I write something interesting, the theory goes, someone may submit my article to Digg. If it gets enough votes, it hits the front page and I suddenly have enough money to buy a new hibachi. The reality: I often submit stories I've written myself, or get friends to do it, and I then harangue coworkers to vote for my story on Digg. Digg has been making it harder to score this way by detecting how "diverse" your voters are. If it's the same old gang Digging your story every time, you get downgraded. But there is one virtually foolproof way to beat the system: throw tons of traffic at your Digg link.
More »
How I gamed Digg -- and laughed all the way to the bank
If you make your living publishing content on the Internet, you live and die by the pageview. One way to drive huge amounts of traffic to your site is through "social news" sites like Digg. If I write something interesting, the theory goes, someone may submit my article to Digg. If it gets enough votes, it hits the front page and I suddenly have enough money to buy a new hibachi. The reality: I often submit stories I've written myself, or get friends to do it, and I then harangue coworkers to vote for my story on Digg. Digg has been making it harder to score this way by detecting how "diverse" your voters are. If it's the same old gang Digging your story every time, you get downgraded. But there is one virtually foolproof way to beat the system: throw tons of traffic at your Digg link.
More »
social news
Fark gets 1001 Diggs, still not "popular"
Digg founder Kevin Rose typically cites "the need for diversity" when questioned or criticized about the promotion algorithm that controls what stories make it to Digg's front page. "One of the keys to getting a story promoted is diversity in Digging activity. When the algorithm gets the diversity it needs, it will promote a story from the Upcoming section to the home page. This way, the system knows a large variety of people will be into the story." Oh, really? A Digg submission linking to headline aggregator Fark.com received over 1,000 diggs but still hasn't been promoted to the front page. The problem? The submission is 11 days old. Why are old stories so penalized? If there is a significant surge in Diggs on a story, it should be promoted to the front page just like any other upcoming submission. So much for the vaunted "algorithm."
valleywag labs
What happens when you digg a Digg?
Everyone's seen the iPhone stopwatch reach a thousand hours. With that in mind, we decided to Digg a Digg story. Would it rip a hole in the fabric of our existence?
social news
Fark.com gets Dugg, threatening collapse of space-time continuum
Some enterprising young lad submitted Fark.com to Digg — eight days ago. Fark predates Digg by several years. It has elements of social news like Digg, but it's more in the spirit of the Daily Show than Digg's Slashdot-inspired tech obsessions. Submitter "topsyturvy" described it on Digg as "Fark: the not news news — News that doesn't matter. Not even sure if half of it is true, but it's funny." As of this morning, it had only garnered four Diggs. But that's not the saddest thing of all. More »
the chart
Forget news -- Digg users in it for Lohan's latest nipple slip
As far as Digg users are concerned, Ron Paul, Steve Jobs and slobbering dogs have nothing on Britney's latest baby. Digg and StumbleUpon users click most on stories related to celebrity gossip, videogames, and online clips, according to clickstream data from metrics firm Hitwise. Digg accounts for half of all visits to to news aggregators. eBay's StumbleUpon comes in second with 24 percent of the market. Conde Nast-owned Reddit takes third place.
social news
Digg proves masses are stupid with "Falling Hillary" game
I like Digg: sometimes I find good links there. However, the people who claim that "social masses are the future of news" are barking up the wrong planet. The masses are stupid. A flash game with an animated Hillary Clinton falling through bubbles got more than 4,000 diggs yesterday. Now, that's nothing compared to a slobbering dog, but it received more votes than most stories on Digg did yesterday. Social news sites reflect the true interests of their readers, and that rarely maps to what's on the front page of the New York Times. Strangely though, the falling Hillary mesmerized me for more than 10 minutes. I guess I'm stupid, too. Catch a video of the companion site, a falling George Bush, after the jump.
social news
Ask.com news site shows why Digg can't deal
IAC's Ask.com launched its Digg-infused answer to Google News today. But there's surprisingly little evidence of help from Digg in Ask's Big News, despite the project's all-too-long time spent in development. Why is that? More »
social news
IAC's plan to clone Digg unfolds
Digg and IAC's Ask.com search engine are getting close to launching an Ask-branded version of the popular headline-voting site. We'd heard in December that the two companies were working together. Indeed, the delay in the project's launch may have contributed to Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone's ouster. Without Lanzone, the project is continuing. IAC's hiring a general manager to run an unspecified website — which could well be the Digg-like news site.
spam
Rupert Murdoch's newspaper caught spamming social media
The News Corp.-owned Times of London has been paying a search-engine optimizer to do the dirty work of shilling Times Online stories to social media sites like Mahalo, StumbleUpon, and MetaFilter. We can't believe it either — that The Times is actually paying an outside firm to submit stories. My boss makes me do it the hard way. More »
"A lot of these community news sites are all about Ron Paul. Ron Paul may be a valid candidate. But what that is really demonstrating is that you are seeing 1 or 2 percent of a community shaping where the whole community is going. A small dedicated group of people can manipulate these sites very easily... With sites like Digg, it's the wisdom of the crowds or the tyranny of the mob. You never know what you're going to get." — Slashdot founder Rob Malda on Digg and other social news sites. [Bits]
breakdowns
Why Google is for search and Digg is for laughs
After users submit a story, image or video to Digg, the site asks users to review similar submissions and make sure the new item isn't a duplicate of an existing article being voted for on the site. The tool is a marvel of modern precision. For example, notice how, in this accompanying screen shot, Digg's algorithm pairs a story on USB 3.0 with one on how "Men Aren't Washing Their Hands in The Restroom." Admit it. As a mere human, you never would have made the connection. Click to expand the image.
social news
I've always preferred editorially controlled news sources like Fark and the Drudge Report. I'm more likely to find links that I think are interesting. On "social news" sites like Digg, readers get endless Ron Paul and Apple links, as fanboys constantly vote for their preferred subjects. Occasionally though, something else makes it to the top of the social news pile.
More »
Slobbering pup uncovers Digg's true purpose
I've always preferred editorially controlled news sources like Fark and the Drudge Report. I'm more likely to find links that I think are interesting. On "social news" sites like Digg, readers get endless Ron Paul and Apple links, as fanboys constantly vote for their preferred subjects. Occasionally though, something else makes it to the top of the social news pile.
More »
followup
Kevin Rose doesn't deny Digg has secret editors
"Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate." So reads the creatively capitalized disclaimer now placed on the Digg discussion page for "Digg's secret editors," in which I revealed that Digg's so-called moderators use their own judgment to override Digg's supposedly all-powerful algorithm. The consequences are stunning: Digg is not a democracy of news, and the way headlines make their way to Digg's homepage are neither fair nor transparent. Digg cofounder Kevin Rose weighed in with an oddly worded nondenial. More »
exclusive
Digg's secret editors
Why do some stories abruptly disappear from Digg? Duncan Riley of TechCrunch suspects "super users." But there's a much simpler explanation: Digg's shadowy moderators. Digg cofounder Kevin Rose has admitted that the social-news site, a supposedly democratic venue where users pick the headlines, employs moderators: "We have site moderators that ban spammers, remove illegal content, and keep an eye on things. Always have, always will." But what, exactly, does keeping an eye on things entail? More »
3:29 PM on Thu Jan 17 2008
By Owen Thomas
22,064 views,
19 comments
