The internet is growing at an astounding rate and if you take blogs as a prime example, they are growing by the tens of thousands daily. With the increases in the numbers of bloggers, the number of pages being bookmarked each day is incredible, forget the tens of thousands, try the hundreds of thousands.
With this amount of activity growing on a daily basis it will soon become impossible to find anything of value on a social bookmarking site unless some sort of filtering is put in place. Voting no longer works. If social bookmarking isn’t screwed, it is certainly skewed. With certain sites, and Digg is a great example, either you are part of the ‘in crowd’ or you are no-one and your chances of making ‘front page’ becomes impossible.
Some of the newer sites are a little easier to manage. It seems the only way to make an impression on any of the social bookmarking sites is by joining whilst they are new and really becoming an expert on that particular site.
Social bookmarking is rapidly reaching flood proportions. Conversation sites such as Twitter have problems just staying ‘live to air’ as their growth exceeds capabilities. The bigger problem is that some individuals are bookmarking everything they write and then bookmarking as many other pages as possible in an attempt to appear social.
The true concept of social bookmarking seems to have gone out the window. Originally designed to enable users to bookmark their favorite sites online, rather than in their browser, so they had true portability. No matter where you were in the world, you could log in and access ‘your’ bookmarks. As and added bonus, you could share your bookmarks with friends.
That is no more. Rather than social bookmarking, these sites have become, to all intents and purposes, blog plug sites with users submitting their own content with the hope that others will come visiting in their droves. Sometimes they do, often they don’t.
Social bookmarking; skewed or screwed – can it continue in its present state?
Too many people misunderstand the nature of social bookmarking and what it can do for their business. Instead of Digging every article on their blog, they should be bookmarking other sites that they like. By becoming an influence at a social bookmarking site like Digg or StumbleUpon, you build yourself as a person of credibility. When you do that, people will want to know more about you and then visit your website. Let them do the bookmarking for you. Only occasionally should you bookmark your own sites and then you should do so only with the idea that you are sharing something that will benefit others tremendously. If you do that too often, people will tune you out.
I believe that Google will buy Digg and that alone will set things straight. Number one, vindictive groups like the Digg mafia have to go. Google will take care of that little band of bitches.
Next, everyone has to be on an even keel, no power users that run the show while the rest of us fight over a few Diggs. Sorry MrBabyMan. I know you have been responsible for Digg’s success but when you can influence search results and I see Google taking more and more notice of Digg votes, it’s over for the Digg top 100.
Finally many Diggers are doing things that I see as negative indicators to Google and IF Google buys Digg, they already know what these things are and have written it into their algo. In some of my tests I have risen in Google when I stopped chasing Diggs and did things the right way.
I really do hope that Digg becomes part of Google. I would love to see them fix Digg, kick out vindictive bury button clickers and allow Digg to become what it was destined to be: a search engine.
If you do not think that the Digg mafia and their like exist, read this post, just ran across it today.
http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/06/11/why-i-won’t-f’in-digg-or-stumble-that-page-for-you/
That is what is wrong with social bookmarking, people like that.