Digg Launches ‘Newswire’ Showing User Buries for First TimeDigg users have already started to notice a new Beta feature called ‘Newswire’ that Digg announced on its blog this morning.
‘Newswire‘, a real time Top News section on Digg that ‘allows users ‘to be editors’ and help choose the Top News instead of just reading it.
The ‘Newswire’ section is definitely interesting, but really seems like another attempt to get users into participating more in the curating process, which historically the mass majority of Digg visitors have not done. Past efforts with the Upcoming Section, the Recommendation Engine, and the My News section have really failed to ever get even a small fraction of Digg’s users to do more than just read the Front Page, but this looks like a pretty good effort to finally get people more involved in the voting and commenting process.
Of course, almost all of the features they have put into the section, are aspects that Digg has had all along in the core functions of the site and the various sections like my news, upcoming, and search.
They have finally added real time viewing, which reminded me of Twitter’s search, and took all the various filtering features that were spread across the site into one spot.
There is however, one massive change that is being introduced that has never been visible on the site before, which is to visibly show everyone who has ‘buried’ a story. Digg Labs, before they ended the Labs project, used to show you a claimed ‘small subset’ of bury data, but it never carried the user’s name before.
Reddit has always had an option to turn your voting activity public, but it is not on by default, and until now only StumbleUpon would opening show negative votes on a users profile.
Another interesting addition, that was not mentioned on the Digg Blog post, but is easily seen in the footer, is the Top 100 News page, which based on the lack of formatting and the links not working, might be a section they did not mean to put up live yet, but is there none the less.
It will be interesting to see if the ‘Newswire’ section will help to influence more users into participating in the voting and commenting process, but I have a feeling it won’t change too much. It will also be very interesting to see how the users feel about having their ‘buries’ shown publicly to all, knowing that Digg already has issues with bury groups as it is.
Let me know below in the comments what you think about these changes!
Thanks Brent! Are you spending time in Digg? Would be great to know where you are seeing the best results? If there was 1 social aggregation site to focus on which one would you say would be most valuable?
I do actually still spend time on Digg. Even though it is not the same volume of traffic, it still has the ear of many influencers and there is still quite a bit of value to be had by having your content visible in Digg.
I don’t know that I would say there is just one site to spend your time on, because each has pros and cons that are strong enough to warrant at least a handful.
Definitely think that StumbleUpon is a good place to be and if your content is right for Reddit or Fark, then they can be valuable too. Delicious and at least on of the social profile sites like Facebook, Twitter, or Googl+ are good bets as well.
I am probably not the target audience for Digg, nor even a typical internet user. I work in web development, but I’ve just never seen any value, personally in social aggregation. I haven’t been to Digg in three years, and I’ve never used Reddit or Fark (though I did maintain a StumbleUpon profile 2 years ago, for a contracting project).
I do have an active Facebook account, but I find Twitter to be just annoying and distracting.
I understand Marketers want channels to reach people, and that these places can provide that to some extent. But – to offer some anecdotal evidence – in 10 years of practically living on the web, I’ve never once taken any advice, bought any product, traveled to any location, or changed my worldview, as a result of anything that was voted up by a mob on any social aggregation site.
I hope Kevin remains successful, but frankly, I don’t understand how Digg got him there.
Maybe that’s why I’m still in Web development. :D
Greg,
I can definitely understand the point of view you are coming from, but let me offer two thoughts.
I have never been hard sold on anything. If I walk into a book store and you put all the books up front or have someone try to sell me one, I would never buy it. However, when I see a TED video, an RSAorg speech, or see someone on the John Stewart show for their book that sounds interesting, then I tend to actual purchase that.
I found RSAorg, Ted TV, and even the John Stewart show through sites like Digg, Reddit, and etc, whom had segments of their material in the sites.
Social aggregation is not about influencing you to take an action based on the simple fact that others have voted on it, but rather to use the filtering system as a way of 1) eliminating spam to an extent and 2) showcasing content that is likely to be more timely and interesting, as it is an audience group similar to yourself curating the content.
As someone who dabbles in web dev myself, I have found countless themes, addons, plugins, security fixes or issues, and countless other really helpful aspects of information that I have shared, used, or purchased over the years… all through social aggregation sites.
We are all influenced by what we see and social aggregation is the soft sell of quality topics for you to use or discard how you like.
As a marketer, if you are able to identify which types of people are using the sites, what they prefer to read about, how they prefer to have that content presented, then you can ‘possibly’ create something that would be well suited to succeed in that audience and lead to maybe quality traffic, links, branding, and direct conversion.
Good thread here guy’s. @Greg I hear what you are saying and sort of agree. @Brent, to quote you “Quality traffic, links, branding, and direct conversion” A) Isn’t that the name of the game? to get “traffic” or links so that the search engines see MORE links and give you credit and increase your SERP rankings? and B) Do the general public really use these social aggregation properties and tools or is it just internet savvy marketers that are using the networks and/or each other to vote up/beef up/compliment one an-others inbound link sculpting schemes. I mean the top 100 diggers did at one time have a leg up on generating traffic/inbound links and Search Engine traffic. I am sure they were paid a hefty amount to vote up content so that the company that retained the “Diggers” would own a number 1 position in the SERPS for whatever that [keyphrase] or anchor text was that they were wanting to rank for. This can be said today for top SU users and top Reddit users… It seems like this all equals a zero sum game? Look forward to your reply.
Any reply Brent?
This might help as well –> http://www.blueglass.com/blog/the-value-of-social-aggregation-in-your-online-marketing-strategy/
Lani,
First off, sorry for the delay.
A) It is indeed a part of the strategy but it is only one part of the strategy. Marketing campaigns can have all kinds of goals and links is indeed one of them, but not the only one people seek and not the only one social promotion can provide. On top of links, in regards to SERPS, there are also social signals that succeeding in social promotions will help you achieve.
B) The regular audience is by far… BY FAR.. the larger of the audience base. You are talking about sites like StumbleUpon, whom have 15,000,000 users. God help us all if even a 10th of that is marketers :)
When you talk about the top Diggers or social media site influencers though, you are talking about a different part of the user base. The % of people who are involved in actually finding content to submit and then to participate in the upcoming or new sections of the site is a much smaller.
These ‘top users’ however, are not necessarily marketers. To be honest it is a very delicate balance the ability to be a top participating member in a social media site and be a marketer at the same time, and very few people have that balance.
Digg has a lot of articles about it being controlled by a subset of users, but the truth is many of those top users are just regular people who like the communities. The concept that people would spend their time and participate for no benefit to themselves is not really far fetched, when you consider how many forums still bloom today based on users participating in the sites daily for nothing more than the self satisfaction it provides.
On Reddit, there really are not ‘top users’ and in fact the more prominent your account the harder it is to participate. Many active users have said they often will start a new account on Reddit.
The real end result is that you need to understand the sites, be a real user, and only provide quality interaction, whether it be comments, submissions or votes. You will not just go into these social sites with crap content and spam your way to success, even if you were working with top users.
There is a lot of success to be had from properly promoting on social media aggregation sites, but you really cannot short cut quality and properly understanding the site you are participating within.
Hope that helps.
+1
What is viral marketing? It is an idea that is passed through the community much like a common cold. What is viral marketing? It encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others.Viral marketing is a fancy term for word of mouth advertising it is any advertising that propagates itself the way viruses do.
Thanks for sharing. I haven’t visited my digg account for quite some time now. Time to look at it. Do you think this newswire will be effective for users?
Linksys has been making good networking products for quite some time. I also like Netgear products. Very similar in price/performance to Linksys. Not a big fan of DLink as their user interface is not a easy to use as Linksys or Netgear.
You’r exactly correct with this blog post
Everyone on right here know about them?