Social Bookmarking: Skewed or Screwed Part II

Writing by Social Marketing Journal on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 Leave a comment

Yesterday I asked if social bookmarking was screwed and a couple of comments confirmed my views on the subject. One comment left a link to a post on Shoemoney’s blog that really does prove my point.

The post, Why I Won’t F’in Digg or Stumble That Page For You, written anonymously, made several good points. They also inadvertently proved my point that social bookmarking is at skewed, if not screwed. A example of this:

Those requests actually make me hit that tempting little “Bury” button, instead of voting you up by one. And know what else? I wield more power since those bury votes can do far more hurt than that single Digg vote would have done for you.

And therein lies the problem. A bury or thumbs down can do more damage than a single Digg or Thumb Up and people use this power to control what is and is not seen in social bookmarking sites.

I agree with the writer, sometimes requests can become quite inconsiderate and in no way ’social’ – they are often demanding. It is still no reason to bury any content. Content should be buried or dug based on its value – and what I consider value you may not, and vice-versa. One comment that was left on Shoemoney’s post I think has the right approach – again anonymous:

For the most part, I agree. However, if you are in this field and have befriended people on Digg, Sphinn, SU etc…then you have to expect that. You carry over your friends list to each network, so it’s going to happen each time. I wouldn’t bury people because of this, then you would have to bury everyone. Just don’t click on it or don’t be friends with those people, it is as simple as that. I have to deal with this all the time, but I do have a choice as to whether I vote, digg, stumble, or whatever the case, their story. If it’s shit, then it doesn’t get my vote. But, to sabotage their efforts is not going to do anything or stop what is going on. Now I say don’t bury, but I do believe in burying stories that are duped, heavily self promoted on top of being shitty, or scraped. Anyway, like the name though, that is great!

And that is the way it should be. If you don’t want to be hassled, remove the hassler from your contacts – simple action – you don’t abuse the system as a form of payback. If everyone removed spammers from their contact lists, the spammers would suddenly find their content going nowhere.

The truth often is, ‘I am going to keep them in my contact list because I know they will digg, thumb, sphinn etc my content when I need it’. You can bet the writer has at times asked for help to promote something.

Social bookmarking is a great tool – it is a shame it is being undermined by a small percentage of (ab)users. Allen Taylor from BlogContentProvider left a comment on yesterday’s post and has the last say on this topic:

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.

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