TheWayoftheWeb
Content and Digital Marketing Specialists
By Dan Thornton
I could have sworn I’d mentioned Neil Perkin‘s great efforts to collate thinking with his regular ‘Think Tank – Post of the Month’, but it looks like I might be mistaken.
So, take a look at the ‘Think Tank – December 2008‘ and vote for your favourite.
By Dan Thornton
At a time when I’ve been writing about Mumbai terrorist attacks, and the way that Twitter is providing a place for updates, connections between local residents, and calls for blood donations etc, I’m particularly pleased to have seen some news on how social networking and bloggers may have helped to save the life of a young lady.
A few days back I spotted people on Twitter retweeting messages about the daughter of Twitter user and blogger @domesticdiva, whose was desperately trying to find a kidney donor for her daughter, Marielle. Turns out that after reaching out through Twitter, Facebook, websites and blogs, and ending up on TV news, a contact found via Ebay is likely to be a perfect match.
‘our transplant coordinators say we clogged the phone lines with requests for donor evaluation forms! They have received an unbelievable amount of kidney donor applications for my daughter from all over the world–Africa, Saudi Arabia and every state in the US!”
That really is the power of the network – now how do we find ways to help more people?
By Dan Thornton
Easier said than done, but in the unavoidable discussion of the current state of the economy, I’ve noticed a few people discussing whether things are as bad as people perceive, and which industry will be best placed to surive etc. And in the grand scheme of things, I’ve decided I’m not an international finance expert or politician – so the best thing I can do is to focus on the things I can to do to improve my position as an individual and just get on with life.
For starters, I’m currently cutting down and quitting cigarettes, with the aid of nicotine lozenges, and some positive thinking inspired by the 7 Habits of Effective People. I haven’t gone cold turkey, but after 13 years of smoking, I’m happy that over the last four days I’ve gone from 20 cigarettes a day to four, and then to two for the last two days. I’m aiming for one or less over the next couple of nights and to be smoke free by the end of the week.(I’ve also had plenty of support on Twitter, which is helping!)
I’ve also seen a reward for some effort in keeping up the content on this blog, and on my microblogging site, www.140char.com. I’ve recently published an interview with the creator of Twitter advertising tool Twittertise, and by the time this is published, there should be a feature on Mobatalk on 140char. Not only is this leading to more traffic to the site, but I’m also getting to chat with some really cool people who are innovating around microblogging. It means I have more useful tools and networks at my disposal – and it’s inspirational.
Plus I appear to have more RSS subscribers here and on 140char.com than ever….thanks everyone – it’s great encouragement to try to constantly improve the content and frequency of both blogs.
I’ve also had a fun conversation with someone today, who explained they got a new job recently due to the fact ‘someone’ persuaded them to join LinkedIn. After a bit of prompting, they remembered the invite came from me! And I’ve gained another practical example of how social networking works. (Funnily enough, Venturebeat has reported the shakey economy has boosted traffic to LinkedIn!)
I’ve also finally taken some steps to make my working life a bit easier, and streamlined some reporting which I’d meant to improve for ages, but hadn’t prioritised – it was in the Important not Urgent section of life which the 7 Habits teaches you to work in. And it’s starting to make a difference and allow me to work on some interesting projects and plans without getting as distracted.
And I’ve even got back into Facebook, after a group was formed for some people I haven’t seen in about 15 years – it’s quite funny to see responsible 30-something adults with similar features and the same names as the nihilistic hooligans with whom I spent much of my formative years.
And putting social media in with a shoehorn, there really are two ways to go at the moment:
If you’re doing one, or both of those things, you should be on the right lines. The flip side is to stay calm and ensure that you’re measuring the effect and highlighting what this does for the bottom line correctly – the more you can show social media is a cost effective way to help your company/brand survive through any hardships, the better off you are.
One of the things I’ve been meaning to do is to compile the tools available for measurement and reporting, so if you want to recommend any for inclusion, drop me a comment.
By Dan Thornton
I’ve been thinking about a comment by Ari Herzog on my post ‘Is Digg’s Day Done‘. As part of my discussion, I used the comparison with the ease of use and personal recommendation element of Stumbleupon. Ari raised the valid concern that Stumbleupon is intended for recommending index pages, and Digg is intended for deep diving into articles.
(Clarification from SU in the last 3 paragraphs clarifies index and deep level pages are both fine. The following still sets out good reasons for why the confusion has arisen)
But certainly a lot of users are using Stumbleupon for sharing and recommending individual articles and images. The question is whether this is a bad thing, or whether it benefits Stumbleupon?
A cause for confusion:
Stumbleupon itself has to share some of the blame for this in the terms used for explaining the site. While the submission tool has a ‘submit site’ option, elsewhere ‘site’ and ‘page’ are used interchangeably. For instance, the SU About page.
‘StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. As you click Stumble!, we deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended by your friends or one of 5,946,251 other websurfers with interests similar to you. Rating these sites you like automatically shares them with like-minded people – and helps you discover great sites your friends recommend.’
Bearing in mind a website can have thousands of pages, you can understand why there’s a little confusion. Again:
‘A simple 2-level rating system gives users the opportunity to pass on or give their opinion on any webpage with a single click.’
And certainly the Getting Started page clearly seems to say either choosing websites, or webpages is fine:
‘When you Stumble! a page or site, first thumb it, then click to see reviews & comments made by other Stumblers, and to add one of your own‘
I’ve contacted Stumbleupon for clarification and an official answer, seeing as I can’t find one in About, FAQs, or the Discussion Forum!
Why Stumbling pages makes sense to individual users:
Stumbling individual pages makes more sense in a lot of circumstances than recommending an entire website on the basis of a single encounter with an article or image. If I’ve read some text or seen an image I can make a quality assessment on that piece of work immediately via the toolbar.
But to give an accurate assessment of a website could mean visiting 10, 20, or 50,000 pages or items to be able to get an idea over consistent quality – and that’s not taking into account how random a large site can be when it accepts a wide variety of authors or content submissions. Could you rate the entire Youtube site on the basis on one video? And how much would depend on whether your first encounter was with a rickroll or an mwesch anthropological study?
Why it makes more sense to publishers:
As user recommendation and rating systems become more mainstream and more numerous, publishers either need to offer the world’s longest drop down list – or pick the sites they’d most like to appear on. A site like Yahoo Buzz makes complete sense, as it’s a big gamble with big rewards of hundreds of thousands of visitors to a single article. Stumbleupon makes sense because it tends to drive a significant amount of traffic over longer periods, and with lower bounce rates, than many other sites (such as Digg), but the results are still somewhat transient. The only way to increase the amount of regular readers from such a site is to frequently have good quality content placed in front of them – which only happens when numerous pages are being submitted and highly rated.
And without the ability to raise the profile of a site with numerous pages submitted in this way, Stumblers (and users of other ranking systems) would be far more limited in sources, and only the established large scale sites would get publicity and traffic boosts of enough to make a difference.
My opinion is that Stumbleupon accepts and promotes both page and website submissions, and that’s the correct usage of the site.
Official clarification in a quick time:
And in an incredibly quick time, a message to Mr-SU got a prompt and comprehensive response:
‘Submitting an index page or a specific page that’s levels deep in a site are both appropriate uses of StumbleUpon. We want our members to submit the best-quality pages they discover so they can be shared with others.‘
So there’s some clarity. You can submit an index page, or a deep page to Stumbleupon. Therefore Stumbleupon conclusively is the best social website recommendation service as far as I can see!
By Dan Thornton
There’s a tendency to look at User Generated Content and online collaboration as an easy way to create content, products and services without some of the hassles of a traditional business.
And it’s easy to understand why: No ground rent, no equipment or infrastructure costs, no limitations on who can be involved etc. And no need to necessarily pay contributors.
But it isn’t an easy option, and there are several major risks to any online collaboration which requires more than one or two people:
Trust: How quickly do you place your trust in people to deliver on their promises, to deliver them on time, and not to take good ideas elsewhere?
Management: Is there some kind of leadership or guidance to keep things moving, and to clearly articulate the vision and strategy etc – which may have been decided democratically. How do you keep momentum going and inspire people to continue even when things can be tough?
Politics: How do you deal with disagreements? Infighting? Rivalry?
Reward: How do you supply a justifiable return to contributors for their time? Financial or otherwise?
Communication: How do you keep people updated, and make things simple and easy to contribute?
Those are just the first few problems off the top of my head. The reason they come to mind is that I have basically decided to cut all responsibility for Disposable Media, leaving only the possibility of contributing the occasional blog post or article at some point.
It’s been a lot of fun, particularly when I was given the honour of being Editor, and we had a fast growth in audience – all from a group of people working for no financial reward and contributing articles, designs etc via a forum. In my time on DM, I only ever met two of my colleagues in real life in the space of two years!
But having realised that I don’t have the time and energy to drive DM forward, I stepped down to take a back seat and a more advisory role. And what then happened was quite painful to watch, as some infighting and sabotage began, communication became worse, trust was lost, and many people started drifting away. I don’t place all the blame on the Editor who replaced me, as there have definitely been people who have used a period of change for their own agenda.
Hopefully it will rise from the ashes, as over the years it’s had some very talented people, and some great articles and content. On the bright side, it’s shown me that although I was far from perfect, and made several mistakes, I did achieve a lot in keeping things going, and always trying to drive more organised and efficient systems to make life easier for everyone – and it also highlighted the need for communication and rewards, which will hopefully help me on other projects.
To be honest, the real risk to online magazines isn’t just the problems of collaboration – it’s also the arrival of new aggregated delivery services in a magazine format – i.e. systems that take your favourites from services like Last.fm, and then produce a custom magazine around them, like Idiomag. It plays on a simple philosophy of mine which is becoming more and more realistic and reinforced – ‘The most effective targeting of an individual, is the targeting they do for themselves‘
Start growing your business today Contact Us