The New Business Blog

Top 3 Ways Digg has Jumped the Shark

Brian Carr — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:55:43 +0000

As I expected, yesterday’s post regarding my thoughts on Digg becoming nothing more than a bad high school clique was a pretty big hit. Within 8 hours of submitting, it had received over 250 Diggs, was listed as the top upcoming story and, judging by the comments on Digg, was causing quite a stir.

It also disappeared for no apparent reason.

So, rather than be discouraged, I thought I’d pick up right where I left off and write another post on ways Digg has “jumped the shark,” which of course is in reference to the popular term (God, that made me sound so old) meaning where things started going downhill.

(As a side note, be sure to check out Jump The Shark. It’s a great waste of time.)

So, without further adieu, here are the Top 3 Ways Digg has Jumped the Share:

1) THE SHOUT SYSTEM

Before Digg sold out and added the shout system, submissions had to be discovered through either browsing Digg’s upcoming sections, or by checking out what your friends had submitted. Either way you found the story, you had to be actively searching for stuff to Digg.

When the shout system came along, all of this went out the window. Yes, you can still do your Digging the old fashioned way - but on top of that, you now have submissions being jammed down your throat by overzealous shouters. I know because I used to be one of them.

The shout system really goes against everything that Digg originally “stood for” because it has essentially done nothing but promote “blind Digging.” What I mean by this is you Digg a story not based on whether or not it was a good submission, or because you want to bookmark it for later reading, but simply because you’ve been asked to Digg the shout.

I’m sure there are a lot of Digg users who ignore most of their shouts, however, there are still plenty of users you try and shout everything that comes their way. This is probably based in the fear that if they don’t Digg, they’ll lose friends and be relegated to Digg’s black holes - after all, it’s widely believed that the best way to get submissions promoted is to not only add lots of friends, but the “right friends,” i.e. the power users.

This leads me to my next way Digg has jumped the shark -

2) BEFRIENDING THE POWER USERS

Full disclosure - I have no proof that any of Digg’s so called “power users” are doing anything wrong.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, it’s pretty obvious they (meaning the power users) have to be up to something fishy and/or in cahoots with Digg administrators. What else explains the fact that front page stories generally come from the same 25 or so users? I really can’t think of anything.

Since Digg was founded as and gained massive popularity for being a social site, shouldn’t the main social circle consist of more than the same 25 users? By allowing itself to become dominated by the power users - therefore moving away from its roots - the “Digg experience” has become an exercise in futility for a vast majority of everyday users.

Now, I can’t speak for everyone, but I don’t have any grand illusions that ALL of my submissions should hit the front page - however, I’d probably be a much more active user if I felt I stood a shot to get one up every once in a while.

3) GOING CORPORATE

One of the things that first, I guess for lack of a better word, attracted me to Digg was the fact that it was sort of a grass roots site, meaning as long as you submitted good content, you stood a shot of getting up on the front page. It didn’t matter if the submission was an article from CNN or if it was just some interesting post from a random blog - good content was good content.

Now, not only do the power users dominate the front page, but so too do the same websites. Cracked, Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Think Progress, Tech Crunch, NY Times, Time, Telegraph - these sites completely dominate the front page. Anything non-corporate doesn’t stand a chance, no matter how good the submission.

Again, I’m not saying that every Tom, Dick and Harry with a blog should get every submission up on Digg’s front page, but at the same time, if they a quality article is submitted from their site, shouldn’t it at least have a fighting chance?

NOW WHAT?

Here’s what will happen next, if everything goes as I expect:

I’m going to submit this to Digg, with an incendiary description
It’s going to get other users like me riled up
The submission will get over 300 Diggs
The submission will then disappear never to see the light of day
When I wake up and check my account tomorrow, it will have been suspended

So, on that note - happy Digging!

Digg - Now Worse Than a High School Clique

Brian Carr — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:48:50 +0000

Currently, I’m still a big fan of Digg. Through Digg I’ve found sites that I check out almost every day - sites like Huffington Post, Copy Blogger, Gas 2.0, etc., so, I can’t say that I haven’t benefited from Digg’s existence.

But now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I have to admit, lately I have become less and less enchanted with Digg. The main reason being, Digg has slowly evolved into nothing more than an online version of some terrible, exclusive high school clique.

Now, before you accuse me of being nothing but a whiner — you would be only partially correct in that accusation; I can do things other than whine — please let me explain where I’m coming from.

THE SAME USERS DOMINATE THE HOMEPAGE

What do the following user names have in common?

MrBabyMan, diggboss, MakiMaki, msaleem, uptick, SirPopper, badwithcomputer, numberneal, zaibatsu, and insaincain02

Give up? Well, go check out Digg’s homepage and chances are, of the 15 submissions, I think it’s safe to bet that five or six of the articles have been submitted by the aforementioned users. And the worst part is, it’s like this almost every time you go to Digg’s homepage.

For a site that has 3 million users, it’s kind of odd/frustrating that the same 25 users have a pretty strong stranglehold over the homepage.

THE SECRETS REGARDING BURIES

As you probably know, I run another site called Daily Fuel Economy Tip, which has grown over the past two years to have a pretty decent following. The last three submissions made to Digg have all received over 300 Diggs, were listed in the “Hot in All Topics” section and were almost always at or near the top of the “most comments” section.

They also all failed to make the homepage and simply disappeared for no apparent reason.

If someone or some group of users are continuously burying submissions from my site, I would like to know about it. I want to know not so I can go on some sort of vindictive burying campaign against said users, rather I would like to be able to contact them and ask how I can improve my site and/or content so that they find it “Digg worthy.”

However, because Digg treats this with a shroud of secrecy, I’ll simply stop getting my hopes up when my submissions cross the 300 Digg plateau.

THE WHOLE “AURA” OF DIGG

I think this might be what bothers me the most. Digg itself, as well as its “power users” seem to have this whole sort of elitist aura surrounding them. They’re working behind the scenes, doing their little networking, pulling strings, keeping everything a secret from you.

I understand the idea of keeping the algorithm proprietary - after all, you wouldn’t expect Google to let you in on how they run their business, right? That being said, it would be nice if Digg would explain themselves regarding how it came to be that the same 25 users dominate the site.

WHAT TO DO?

There’s really no point in bitching and moaning if you don’t attempt to provide some solutions to the perceived problems. So, here’s my shot at it:

GIVE MORE DETAILS REGARDING BURIES. Ok, so maybe Digg doesn’t have to go so far as to tell me who has buried my submissions, but it would be great if they would at least let me know how many times my submission has been buried. I think most users would find this information useful, so in the future, I could avoid submitting similar stories.
CHANGE THE FRIEND SYSTEM. I thought the whole point of Digg was to set up a system so that the best, most interesting stories would make it to the homepage. The way the system is set up now, it’s really all about who your friends are and who you shout to over what you submit. This leads me to…
DO NOT ALLOW BLIND DIGGING OR BURYING. If someone does not click the link to the submitted article, they should not be allowed to Digg or bury a submission. After all, is it really possible to tell if you like or dislike an entire submission based on Digg’s headline and brief description section? Pretty doubtful.

So, that’s my beef with Digg as well as my solutions to fix the system.

On that note, I’m going to go ahead and submit this now, and subsequently spend the next 12 hours hoping it doesn’t get buried (which it probably will).

Gaming Digg’s Shout Sytem - Which Type of Shouter Are You?

Brian Carr — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:36:26 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about Digg - or anything else for that matter. Over the past probably year or so, there have been quite a few changes to Digg, most of which were good, some of which were eh, and a couple that were just plain terrible.

I feel that the biggest and most substantial change has been Digg’s addition of the Shout system. While there are things that could be done to make the system better - I’ll get into these thoughts later - overall, I like the Shout system. I think it makes Digg much more of a social site as opposed to simply a news repository.

For the three of you who may be unaware, Digg’s Shout system essentially allows you to send a submission or message to any, some, or all of your friends and, in some cases, other random users. Before the Shout system, it was hard to communicate with your friends and other Digg users. Now, it’s a breeze.

As one would expect, people have been finding creative ways to try and game the Shout system in an effort to help get their submissions promoted to the homepage. If you’re one of these users, chance are you’re likely one of the following Shouters:

Wham, bam, thank you ma’am: These kind of Shouters send out a story once and only once. They figure if it’s a quality story, it’ll get Diggs and go from there. If it sucks, people won’t Digg. These are by far the best Shouters, and tend to only send the most interesting articles.

Tit-for-Tat: You tend to get lots of messages from these Shouters, because they will let you know every single time they Digg one of your submissions, and in return for their “kindness” will ask you to make sure that you either Digg, comment and/or shout their submission(s) as well. Much of the time, these users are trying to whore their own submissions from their own websites. After all, everyone loves a sudden surge of Digg traffic - with the exception of economy hosting servers.

What have you done for me lately: These guys love to prey on their new friends. If you befriend one of these Shouters, be prepared to receive a message like the following: “Thanks for adding me as a friend! Now, please Digg all of my submissions.” Half the time these guys don’t even add you friend, too, which is kind of annoying.

Zombies: These Shouters simply do not go away. They will shout the same story over and over and over, trying to squeeze one last Digg out of their friend list. Little do these guys know, but many Diggers, upon receiving a submission one too many times, accidentally find themselves hitting the bury link as opposed to the Digg button. Hmm, imagine that.

The Only Child: These Shouters conveniently have set up their account so that they are allowed to send Shouts, however, do not receive Shouts. This way they can annoy everyone into Digging their submissions, however, they don’t have to put up with people doing the same to them.

So, which type of Shouter are you?

My main complaint about the Shout system is it’s still very cliquey. If you don’t have a good number of friends - or aren’t friends with the right people - the Shout system is essentially worthless if you’re using it to try and get a submission some Diggs.

And, even if you have friends, but can’t get any “Power Diggers” to become your friend, you’re still pretty much screwed. Hell, just look at the homepage on any given day and it’s pretty much the same residents occupying the valuable space.

Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot that can be done about Digg’s caste system - it is what it is. There are, however, a couple changes that could be made that I believe would make the Shout system a little better:

Do away with the limit on the number of friends you can send a shout to. It’s really annoying when I want to fire off something to all of my friends to send a shout to half my friends, wait five or six minutes and then send another shout out to my remaining friends. Just let me get it out of the way in one shot.
In turn for this unlimited friend Shout, make it so that each person may Shout a story just one time within a 24 hour period. There’s nothing worse than signing into Digg in the morning and seeing that the same person sent you the same link 12 different times while you were sleeping.
Make it so that you can either send and receive Shouts or you’re out of the Shout system all together.

So, on that note, would you mind Shouting this for me?

The 10 Commandments of Being a Courteous Comment Spammer

Brian Carr — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 23:38:57 +0000

As someone who runs several websites, I can’t even begin to tell you how much time I spend dealing with comment spam. While most of it gets swept up by the invaluable Akismet plug-in, there are plenty of comments that seem to trickle through.

While some comment spammers are creative and/or thoughtful (making it kind of apparent that they might have at least read your article’s title) there are plenty of comment spammers that just need to go away and never return. Obviously, that’s who I’ve directed this post towards.

So without further ado, here are the 10 Commandments of Being a Courteous Comment Spammer:

THOU SHALL NOT USE BOTS OR PROGRAMS. If you’re going to spam someone’s site you should at least have the common courtesy to do it in person. Help bump up the site’s traffic stats by making an appearance on the site, leave your comment and then be on your merry little way.
THOU SHALL NOT LEAVE THE SITE UNTIL YOU’VE PAID YOUR TITHE. Essentially you’re wasting the site admin’s time by forcing them to read your comment and decide whether or not they’re going to let you comment spam. Also, don’t forget the fact that you’re trying to steal traffic from their site, so it seems to me that you can help compensate the site admin for their time and your traffic thievery by clicking on something that will make them a bit of money. Now, in the spirit of not being fraudulent, I’m going to assume that you’re going to click on an advertising link that actually interests you.
THOU SHALL NOT POST IRRELEVANT COMMENTS. Seriously, at least pretend that you’re trying to add something of value. Don’t just post something that says “great site” or “I definitely agree.” God forbid you actually post something that sounds smart. Who knows, maybe if you post something that adds to the article or post you’ll actually generate good traffic leads.
THOU SHALL NOT BAR OTHER COMMENT SPAMMERS FROM COMMENT SPAMMING YOU. I guess this is sort of along the same lines of “judge not lest ye be judged.” So, with that in mind, if someone allows you to comment spam their site, give a dog a bone should they choose to return the “favor” and hit you back.
THOU SHALL NOT INCLUDE MORE THAN ONE LINK TO YOUR SITE(S). There’s no need for you to leave even three or four links in your comment spam. All you get is the little URL box. One and done.
THOU SHALL NOT LEAVE MULTIPLE SPAM COMMENTS. Again, one and done, that’s all you get. The only exception would be if you were posting a legit follow up to someone else’s comment. Other than that, you’re cut off.
THOU SHALL NOT EMAIL THE SITE ADMIN UPON FINDING OUT YOUR COMMENT SPAM HAS BEEN REJECTED OR DELETED. Seriously, don’t waste time with a “hey, I noticed my comment isn’t showing up on your site” email. It was probably deleted for a reason; that reason being the site admin didn’t appreciate your comment spam. Chances are a follow up isn’t necessary.
THOU SHALL NOT COMMENT SPAM THE SAME SITES EACH AND EVERY DAY. Come up with some sort of site rotation so that you’re not constantly hitting up the same sites over and over. You’re probably far more likely to find a forgiving site admin if you comment spam once every two weeks as opposed to twice a day.
THOU SHALL NOT INCLUDE IRRELEVANT LINKS IN YOUR COMMENT SPAM. Let’s say you’re trying to comment spam a site that deals with gardening - do you really think it’s worth it to try and sneak in some comment spam if you’re linking to your car insurance site? Probably not. Now, if you’re linking to your gardening tools site, that’s a completely different story.
THOU SHALL ASK FOR A RECIPROCAL LINK BEFORE COMMENT SPAMMING. Being included in someone’s blog roll will probably generate as much traffic as comment spamming and it’s far less annoying. Try going this route first before you waste everyone’s time.

While following these commandments certainly won’t guarantee that your comment spam won’t be deleted, they certainly should help you sway a site admin to let your comment spam pass through.

Especially if you follow commandment number two.

Should You or Shouldn’t You Post Every Day?

Brian Carr — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:10:55 +0000

As I’m sure you can tell by checking out the frequency of my posts here on The New Business Blog, I don’t subscribe to the theory that in order to have a successful blog you need to post every single day. That being said, I’m sure posting once every six months can be a bit of a hindrance to having a high traffic blog, too.

Anyway, I came across an interesting post today on MarkingProfs Daily Fix, which gave the top ten reasons why you shouldn’t post on your blog or website each day. Aside from the typical “burnout” excuse, the author, Eric Kintz, gave some pretty good advice for those of us who run websites and blogs.

In particular, there were three things that Kintz hit on that resonated with me:

It’s better to post three good articles per week than it is to post a crappy article every day. Not that I’d ever really like to admit this, but I’ve experienced this on several occasions, especially with Daily Fuel Economy Tip. It almost gets to the point where you’re posting for the sake of posting. Once you realize it’s about quality and not quantity, you should see your product improve drastically.
Loyal readers don’t exist. As much as you don’t want to believe it, people don’t come back to your site specifically to see if you’ve posted another article. However, they will come back every once in a while to see if you’ve posted any new quality content, and if they like what they see, they’ll probably scroll through your archives, read some more articles and be on their way. Granted, they may come back in another week or two, but it won’t be based on the frequency of your posts, it will be based solely on the quality of your posts.
You’ve got other things to do. Coming up with new content each and every day is a pretty arduous and time consuming task. Wouldn’t you rather just go ahead and write an article when the mood strikes you or after you’ve done some serious research into your topic? Why sit at the computer and hope for inspiration when you could be outside, laying in the hammock, enjoying a nice fall evening?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not telling you to abandon hope of having the most visited blog or website on the internet (okay, maybe I am) but if you can get the same results (hits, views, traffic, adsense revenue, blah, blah, blah) with less effort, why not give it a try?!?

Turning Your Passions into Your Business

Brian Carr — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 22:27:04 +0000

The other day I read an interesting article on MSN (courtesy of Oprah.com) which talked about ways for people to discover their “true passions.” While the article itself was worth reading, once I looked at it from a business standpoint, I found it completely fascinating.

In going down the ten items listed in the article, I think that each one is something that every entrepreneur has considered, even if they didn’t know it at the time.

Here are three items off the list that I’d like to discuss at length:

Listen to your inner voice. There’s really no point in starting a business if you’re going to run it half-heartedly, or if it’s something that you’re not truly passionate about. Sure, you’re going to have plenty of great ideas along the way, but if there’s some lingering doubt as to whether or not you believe in it, you’re probably better served to let it go and wait until you find something that really “moves” you.
Tune out the voice of the world. In order to become a successful entrepreneur you have to have some pretty thick skin because along the way you’re going to have a lot of people doubting you and your idea(s). Don’t get me wrong, there are going to be instances when the naysayers are right. That being said, if you truly believe in your idea and believe that you have the ability to make it a success, continue to go after it.
Be patient. Out of all the obsticles to becoming a successful entrepreneur, I believe that that being patient is the most difficult. We live in a very NOW oriented society, and many of us expect to reap the rewards of our business once we get it up and running. Chances are that’s not going to happen. For example, they say that for most people who make money off of their websites, it takes at least one year before you start to see all of your hard work pay off. From experience, I can say that this is 100% true.

Obviously, following these steps won’t guarantee that you’re going to succeed at your business. I’m sure there have been plenty of people who listened to their instincts, tuned out the rest of the world and patiently waited for their business to become a success, only to have to close up shop.

That being said, I believe that more often than not, business that ultimately do end up succeeding did follow many of the items pointed out in the MSN article.

Insane Day for Daily Fuel Economy Tip

Brian Carr — Thu, 24 May 2007 00:59:53 +0000

Wow. Who knew something so mundane could cause such a stir?!?
Yesterday evening I wrote an article for Daily Fuel Economy Tip which was about the ways people waste gas when they think that they’re actually saving it; nothing super controversial or over the top. In essence, the post was pretty much the same as every other article I have on Daily Fuel Economy Tip.

Except, it wasn’t. Let me explain…

After finishing the article last night I submitted it to Fark.com, which actually ended up putting the article on its homepage at some point in the middle of the night. On top of that, because of the increased Fark traffic, the same article ended up getting on the homepage of Digg.

Unfortunately, for the first hour the story was on the homepage of Digg, I was having sporadic server problems due to the extremely substantial jump in traffic. Thankfully though, I had just refreshed my bandwidth for the month, so once the initial shock wore off, the site’s server was fully functional.

And if that wasn’t enough, later in the afternoon, I received an email from a radio station in Bloomington, Illinois (which is about two hours southwest of Chicago) asking me to be on their afternoon program. I obliged and actually have a link to share, so if you’d like to listen to the program, click here.

Needless to say, after all of the hoopla, Daily Fuel Economy Tip had about 75,000 hits today, and while I had a dramatic decrease in my click-through ratio, today has certainly been the most profitable day in the brief history of Carr Online Media, LLC!

Big-Seed Viral Marketing

Brian Carr — Thu, 17 May 2007 01:23:25 +0000

One of the most efficient and inexpensive ways for you to market your site or business is through “viral marketing” which is really just a fancy term for word-of-mouth advertising. Unfortunately, it’s a lot harder to pull off than what many unsuspecting entrepreneurs believe.

Today I came across an absolutely fantastic article in the Harvard Business Review which delved into some theories regarding viral marketing and how you might be able to increase your chances of success with it - and hopefully increase your traffic and revenue.

While many of the points brought up in the article were noteworthy and, at the very least, made me nod my head in approval, the following paragraph was probably the most important item I’ve read regarding viral marketing:

“The standard viral-marketing model is based on an analogy with the spread of infectious disease. It assumes that one starts with a seed of individuals who spread a message by infecting their friends, where the expected number of new infectious people generated by each existing one is called the “reproduction rate,” or R. When R is greater than 1, each person who gets the message will, on average, spread it to more than one additional person, who then does the same thing, and so on, leading to exponential growth in the number of people who receive it—an epidemic. By contrast, viral messages with an R of less than 1 are generally considered failures. That’s because purely viral campaigns, like disease outbreaks, typically start with a small number of seed cases and quickly burn themselves out unless their R exceeds the epidemic threshold, or tipping point, of 1.”

While this seems fairly obvious, I don’t think many of us actually think about how we want to implement a viral campaign before we attempt to put one in motion. Most of us just assume that all we have to do is simply get the word out to a lot of people at once and we’ll have ourselves a kick-ass viral campaign. Unfortunately, this appears to only be half true.

Based on the referenced paragraph, it might not be the quantity of people we reach as much as it is the “quality” of people we initially use to get our viral campaigns started. For example, if we get 100 people to participate in a viral campaign for a new site that we want to launch, but only 1 out of 2 people passes on the word (and the trend continues down the line), we should expect less than 200 people to come to our site because of word-of-mouth.

However, if we carefully select people that we know will pass on our site or business, we could easily expect an explosion in traffic. For example, if we carefully selected 10 people to help with a viral campaign, and each of them passed on our site to just three people (and the trend were to continue down the line), we should expect to see over 1,200 visitors in the same amount of time as the other campaign took to fizzle out at 200.

Anyway, if you get a chance, I definitely recommend that you print out the Harvard Business Review’s article and use it as the basis for any viral campaign that you launch.

My First Radio Interview

Brian Carr — Thu, 10 May 2007 00:43:53 +0000

Apparently my “Stop Sending Those ‘Don’t Buy Gas’ Emails” article on Daily Fuel Economy Tip caused quite a stir; not only did it get nearly 2,500 Diggs, but it also caught the attention of a news radio station in Tulsa, Oklahoma - who has asked me to be on their morning program tomorrow to discuss the May 15 gas boycott.

Needless to say, this is really exciting news for me and is the most publicity that any of my sites have ever received.

When I was first contacted by the morning host, I almost told him no, simply because I figured I would be too nervous to talk on air. I mean, who am I?!? Thankfully I came to my senses and told them that I would be glad to be interviewed on their show.

For the better part of this afternoon I have rehearsed my answers even though I don’t know the questions, and have tried to do my best to figure out ways to make sure that my voice doesn’t crack (I’m 25 and just hitting puberty). Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure everything will be fine, it’s just that I’ve never done anything like this before.

Anyway, if you live in near Tulsa, do me a favor and listen to KRMG around 7:45 tomorrow morning. And in the meantime, wish me luck.

The Art of Advertising Bartering

Brian Carr — Wed, 09 May 2007 02:38:33 +0000

First off, I apologize for the abnormally long time between posts. I recently tried to restain my deck, which was something that I thought would take just a couple of days to do. Unfortunately, it took over a week, and has been occupying most of my time.

Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to get back to writing!

Anyway, today’s post is about business bartering, specifically how to trade advertising among websites.

Typically when you think of advertising on someone’s website (or having someone advertise on your site) you think of having to shell out (or receive) a certain amount of money for an ad space in the hopes that your traffic will increase. Sometimes this ends up being a pretty good deal and you get a nice bang for your buck; other times it’s the equivalent to you flushing your business’ money down the toilet.

In other words, you’re taking a somewhat educated gamble that you’ll be able to turn your advertising money into more hits or sales.

Lately, I have been approached by several webmasters that wanted to “trade” advertising - meaning neither site would receive monetary compensation for having the other’s ad run on their site, but both sites would receive the same benefits of a regular advertising campaign.

At first glance, this seems like nothing more than a simple link exchange, but it’s definitely a lot more than that. By trading advertising, you’re giving the other site more than just a link, you’re actually using banner ads and images in oder to drive traffic from your site to their’s (and vice versa).

Due to my love of money, at first I wasn’t too keen on this idea because I wanted to get paid for having the other business’ advertising on my sites. However, I’m starting to get over it as I begin to research the traffic stats of the other sites and realize that even though I’m not getting directly paid for swapping advertising, I’ll probably make that up with extra traffic and Adsense revenue.

So, if you are ever approached to do this type of advertising, please give it a thought before you automatically dismiss it. Even though it’s nice to receive that monthly check for your standard advertising fee, in the end you may come out ahead by simply swapping ads.