As bloggers, most of us have experimented with social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Reddit, Sphinn, Searchles and others to garner a wider audience for our work and to possibly get some traffic to our respective blogs. In theory it seems like a good thing but in reality, social bookmarking leaves a lot to be desired. Examining several of the most popular social news and social bookmarking services, it becomes apparent that the genre suffers from the same malaise across the board leaving the impression that using these services is a complete waste of time.
Why do I have this opinion of these potentially enlightening services? It’s simple, the vast majority of them suffer from what I call the “Lord of the Flies” syndrome. For those of us who have read William Golding’s novel about a group of British boys marooned on a deserted island, who govern themselves with disastrous results, it’s a clear comparison to the social bookmarking genre where more often than not the inmates run the asylum.
Digg - Digg is definitely the biggest and baddest of the bunch. With that reputation comes the power to turn unmetered traffic at a story that hits the front page. It’s not uncommon to see a story that hits the front page get so much traffic that the server goes down amidst a flurry of Diggers. With the upside of Digg also comes a darker, more sinister underside. It’s fairly safe to say that groups of people in the elite eschelon at Digg control what hits the front page and what gets buried. In that Digg is loosely based on social networking principles, article writers who have a large group of friends on Digg can easily manipulate the system to put their stories in front of the masses of sheeple who will click the Digg button in effort to build up their reputation in the community. Sometimes I’ve seen the most poorly written articles from the most poorly written blogs float to the top time after time with the same people digging the stories over and over again. How is this truly social bookmarking? It’s not and I think the reason Google left the deal to purchase Digg on the table was that somebody with half a brain at Google realized that the Digg community is falsely inflated and really are not a good indicator of a truly well written article or story that would have appeal to anyone else other than the Digg community.
Reddit - Reddit is a spin-off of Digg that was started by a bunch kids from University of Virginia. Hardly old enough to buy a drink at a bar, these “experts” seem to misconstrue the meaning of the word social with geek culture. It comes as no suprise that people who have spent 1/4 of their lives in a dorm room would have little or no experience with how the real world works. Just like the “hunters” in Lord of the Flies, the school children who manipulate Reddit gradually become more savage, put on their face paint and completely abandon the concept of society in order to empower their tribe. As with Digg, if you’re not well connected at Reddit, you can guarantee submitting an article you’ve writtin, no matter how important or well written, will get buried by the “hunters” who seem more comfortable communicating in netspeak than in a humanly readable language. Once again, in theory Reddit seems like a wonderful experiment in social storytelling, however, the presence of children who live for popularity contests spoils the true essence of Reddit and makes the experiment a total failure.
Sphinn - Sphinn is basicly a Digg clone. It lacks the originality of Reddit or Searchles and is even more tightly controlled than Digg by those with a vested interest in manipulating the front page. Almost routinely, stories are removed from Sphinn by the over-zealous moderators. Why? I don’t know?? It seems to me that removing articles instead of just letting them slip into the fold is a childish action that is certainly not in tune with Sphinn’s self-proclaimed agenda as an “Internet Marketing News & Discussion Forum”. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Sphinn is merely a marketing tool for it’s founder, The Evil Green Monkey, who by chance happens to be a “self-proclaimed” SEO and search marketing expert named Rob Kerry from Britan. hmmm, maybe he is really Jack and is intent on setting the entire SEO island on fire to hunt down Ralph and kill him.
Andy Beard had this to say about Sphinn
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When Launched, Sphinn was described as “Sphinn: Our Social Site For Search & Internet Marketing Professionals”
I first wrote about Sphinn 6 months ago, almost to the day, and my emphasis was on attention, market segmentation and building bridges within the industry. In my personal opinion, Sphinn has totally and utterly failed to achieve that, and in some ways it has helped widening the gap between different online marketing professionals. |
I have the utmost respect for Andy Beard, mainly because he does not fall into cliques nor is he a sheeple who blindly follows the sheep herders to what they believe are greener pastures. Andy is an independant very much like myself and he is well known for calling things for what they truly are. Sphinn is yet another failure. As the officer in the closing scene of Lord of the Flies tells the children on the beach about to kill Ralph, “I would have expected better from British boys”.
Searchles - Searchles is possibly the most creative and well laid out social news and social bookmarking site, however, once again we find the sheeple and hunters clouding the mix with their ignorance. You can almost guarantee that if you submit anything to Searches that somebody would have to read (ie: not a YouTube video), it will immediately get several “1″ ratings from the hunters who prowl the site looking to play games with the rating system. Call it sheer stupidity or a tragic oversight but Searchles has a 1-5 rating system where 5 is the highest and 1 is the lowest. While articles I’ve submitted into the affiliate marketing community on Searchles have achieved numerous 5 ratings from fellow affiliate marketers, there’s always a few jokers who cast a 1 vote on anything as soon as it’s submitted. I find this rather disappointing because there’s no way somebody could have read an article in 30 seconds and decided it was worthy of casting the lowest vote possible at it. Even more disappointing is checking out the low voter’s profile and finding out that it’s some 13 year old kid who has submitted hundreds of stupid YouTube videos and has never submitted any original content in their history at Searchles. How submitting YouTube videos to a social news site is relevant is beyond me. After all, YouTube does have a search function and if somebody wants to watch a video, they can go find it for themselves. Once again, the hunters have taken over the island and the concept of society has been tossed by the wayside by a bunch of children who think life is a popularity contest.
So what is the future for this genre? Where will social bookmarking and social news propel us in the future. I’m not entirely certain but the one thing I do know is that I will not be wasting my valuable time contributing to high school popularity contests because I hated that game when I was in high school and I’m surely not going to play that game as an adult.
Perhaps the children who operate and populate these sites and social networking sites such as MySpace, FaveBook, Twitter, etc should all take a few hours away from their precious online social networking and get out from behind the computer, go outside into the real world and take a few lessons on networking with real people. They might also take the time to read The Lord of the Flies and try to faintly grasp the concepts of Golding’s allegorical novel about how subcultures created by wild children lost on deserted islands are doomed to failure.
Tagged : Digg, Reddit, Sphinn, Searchles, Lord of the Flies
Thanks for the feedback about Searchles. While I agree that we do have a little bit of the mentality you outline within our community of users, it really isn’t what our site is all about. Our environment is designed to be more collaborative, not the same digg/reddit idea of getting your posts to the homepage game. If someone rates your post a 1 it shouldn’t affect you and your point of view of the content unless you are connected to them as a friend. Everybody will see a different homepage based on who they are connected to on Searchles, so if you are connected to people that are highly active, that will impact greatly what you see. The search is also biased towards the ratings of people in your circle. While we can’t really control the user ratings to any great extent, we understand that 1 ratings can be discouraging though, so we are open to suggestions about how we can make Searchles or our ratings system better. Anyone with suggestions feel free to post them here: http://www.searchles.com/misc/suggestions
Hi Kim, thanks for the comment. I have to admit that Searchles is my favorite social news site of th ebunch I mentioned here. Searchles definitely has the easiest to navigate interface and is the most original social news site (beside Mr. Wong) that I currently use.
As far as the jokers who vote down (1 rating) an article, that’s a relatively easy problem to remedy programmaticaly.
I don’t like social bookmarking too much. I always do mostly for new sites. I am agree with this fact that Social News and Social Bookmarking not unlike the Lord of The Flies. Because i have tried many social bookmarking sites but they are useless. I don’t know how they provide traffic. But still there is no doubt that digg & propeller are best only for long tail keywords. Both sites provide instant ranking for long tail keywords but for limited time. You cud say just for 4-5 days. While i don’t think that other Social bookmarking provide any traffic. They are useless. And i totally agree with you Social News and Social Bookmarking not unlike the Lord of The Flies.
Are you sure, Using Social News and Social Bookmarking services for bloggers is a complete waste of time.Can you explain me on Social News and Social Bookmarking services.
hi dave,
I do agree with the term you specified that social bookmarking doesn’t work. I too tried but it doesn’t seems to be more effective.
I have never had any luck using Digg. I can’t even get one or two votes on any articles I submit. I have wondered if there is something I’m missing ??