Digg 4 Is a New Aggregator

At least that is what it is meant to be, based upon my understanding – the site now has content from major publishers being fed by RSS to the site.

Most publishers seem to be opting to submit all their content
I added a feed for selected posts to be fed there which might be suitable for a wider audience

But there are things which really shouldn’t be there.

Techmeme

I love Techmeme, I think it is a great news aggregator, but nearly all the stories – especially the lead stories are duplicates of existing content that is being fed to Digg.
It is just the way it is with Techmeme – sure there are the occasional stories that make it to Techmeme by way of a tip on Twitter, but those are only occasional, and even then often are from a large site that would have made it there anyway.

I am not going to single out internet and tech cebebrities but for instance I have seen Google Buzz RSS feeds submitted.

On one such post I saw this

Pretty clear instructions, and later down there were instructions on how to find posts from Reddit.com

http://digg.com/search?q=site:reddit.com

Sure enough that brings up lots of Reddit stories

And these stories are making it to the front page – even blindly

Effect on Digg Home Page

7 of the 10 stories on the home page are links to Reddit

Will Kevin Rose Offer an Olive Branch?

I don’t think so… at least not yet.

• There is no such thing as bad publicity
• Digg is gaining a lot of good publicity with the people it wants to attract – the people who were not Digg elite
• Digg will end up with their button back on tons of blogs and news media sites that previously abandoned them for Twitter – free advertising as soon as a story is published.
• Casual users will either get
  • News from their friends and personal selection = dumbed down crippled feed reader
  • A front page that updates a few 1000 times per day.
• The Digg elite (who grew Digg) will either get used to the idea, be thrown some kind of bone or will defect to Reddit or Mixx or other communities (many ex-Diggers such as Zaibatsu are huge on Twitter.

Digg On Reddit

Nice welcome message for new mmembers who had never heard of Reddit
A little gloating about owning the fron page of Digg – (they have as much right as Techmeme to be there)
Some interesting traffic stats

Digg Inbox Zero

Over the last few days I have been maintaining “Inbox Zero” in my Digg account, just hiding every story (some after I Dugg them)
Most of the people I still follow are fairly inactive on Digg, so the amount of stories was quite small.

Today for some reason I can’t get the “hide” button to work – almost like it has been disabled.

Will I be adding Digg buttons here?

No idea… maybe I will have a vote for it when things settle down a little. I also need to do the same for Sphinn.

I am also evaluating what to do with 3 Reddits I set up 2 years ago
WordPress (lowercase P dammit)
Blogging
Internet Marketing

Oh and just to be a little ironic – more on Techmeme

WordPress SEO Tips & Hacks

Subscribe to Comments Hacks – I am including this at the top of the list because it is highly important. Emails sent out from your domain could cause you problems with email delivery or spam complaints, and the plugin by default doesn’t comply with CAN-SPAM if you or someone else (a spammer) includes a marketing message in your emails.
The danger of overloading your server with emails being sent faster than your host allows is also worth thinking about. I know multiple blogs that have problems delivering all subscribed comments and I am sure the owners are not aware of this.

Just imagine you have 20 people comment on a post, and then you get 5 new comments in the space of one hour – that would put you over the limit on most shared hosting.

Mine are set up to be delivered by Gmail by SMTP – which email host is going to block Gmail totally?

Spam Karma latest release, and I also speculated that I get less spam using it than if I was using Akismet.

My Ultimate List of Dofollow Plugins first published in February still gains links on a daily basis, and has helped convert 100s of people into removing nofollow from their comments and trackbacks.
I have a followup project planned that I will launch within the next week that will provide a way of highlighting blogs that wish to be highlighted as supporting DoFollow.
The page also now includes information on how to remove NoFollow from blogs using Blogger and I hope to be able to include detailed Typepad and MoveableType instructions (I know of 3 people working on this)

How linking to social media and bookmarking sites could affect your search engine performance. The discussion that followed on is just as informative as the post.

Tagging and How Tagging Can Help SEO is one of the primary topics of this blog. I have written a lot of posts regarding the benefits of using Ultimate Tag Warrior (that is a link to the tag).
My analysis of the Google BlogSearch Patent didn’t gain a lot of links from SEO blogs, but then most SEO bloggers don’t understand the benefits of tagging and are too worried about duplicate content (another tag link)

Do you get linked to by the press? I also highlighted how bad some press agencies are with linking.

My attack on Top Commenters plugins caused some uproar. It is great to provide a way to thank the people who comment on your blog, but I prefer to do that by using DoFollow.
If you can understand my milk bottle analogy, you will go a long way to improving the SEO profile of your blog. If you do use a Top Commenters plugin, at least include it using some WordPress logic functions such as is_home() and is_single()

Top WordPress Plugins

I will be opening up the voting for the first round of my cash donations for best wordpress plugins later today (I need to decide which plugin or service to use). I am giving away real money in large chunks to help support WordPress Plugin Development.

Monetization & Blogging Tips

Warning about using Amazon Contextual Links

PayPerPost vs Jason Calacanis turned into an in depth discussion regarding ThisNext vs PayPerPost on Disclosure (you really have to read the comments)

Performancing Metrics Is a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing for Niche Website owners and why I recommend Clicky instead.

I write a lot about disclosure in affiliate marketing and blogging. Whilst PayPerPost is constantly being highlighted, the people doing the highlighting are actually as guilty of poor disclosure and unethical practices themselves.

Maki asked a number of bloggers why they display a feed counter and I gave what I believe is the most in depth answer. There are some good tips there for those people who already have an existing mailing list to jumpstart their blog subscription for an insane amount of social proof.
Why don’t Aweber and Getresponse offer a decent email subscription to RSS feeds that reports numbers to Feedburner? Anyone who uses their services misses out on the social proof benefit.
They should also offer their own social proof icons for email subscriptions.

In some ways I hate product launch formula style marketing of services. The scarcity factor makes it hard for a potential buyer to make an informed decision despite all the proof.
Sometimes the materials left over are of huge value, and I recommend you watch the videos from Rich Schefren.

Product Reviews

Stampede Traffic

Sponsored Reviews – with this service you can negotiate with me for paid reviews :)

Volusion Shopping Cart – was I too harsh on them?
Auction Ads

Web 2.0

Is this the Future of MyBlogLog when we finally get an API? Smart internet marketers should already be planning on how the data could be best integrated into other applications.

Tips on using Reddit and Stumbleupon. The StumbleUpon post lists my membership details to a number of social networks… lets be friends. I really should include those in my sidebar.

Sometimes it is amazing the knock-on effect of what you blog about.

My How To Use MyBlogLog post sent Cord some traffic, but the important factor is the quality of traffic sent. Eric from MyBlogLog saw the post, read Cord’s 2 part guide, and then listed it on the MyBlogLog blog, along with some more tips.

I wrote a fair amount about Twitter, partially because it was the talk of the blogosphere, and partially because as with all emerging technology, there were a lot of ethical problems in using it for commercial use. The best way to read full coverage is to use my Twitter tag.

I love Technorati, but they really have problems coping with all the new kinds of RSS and micro blog services such as Twitter, and co.Comment

I had some Digg success earlier in the month, with a story I submitted to Digg actually reaching the front page. The discussion is well worth reading with some insight from Michel Fortin and others.

As you would expect from Maki, this article really does go into great depth on how to use Reddit effectively and ethically.

Reddit is a service I honestly don’t have a lot of time for, though I do have an account and welcome more friends.

I listed all my Social media memberships in my post on StumbleUpon, from which I also linked through to Maki.

Maki- congrats on the new writing gig.

I have read lots of guides on how to use StumbleUpon, but Maki has probably just written the Ultimate StubleUpon Guide.

I love receiving visitors from StumbleUpon, and it can come very unexpectedly.

If anyone wants to expand their StumbleUpon network, here is my profile.

You can also find me on Digg, Reddit and Netscape, though the latter 2 sites I am a fairly new user.

He had a great article, he submitted it himself, and it flopped on Digg.

Doesn’t that happen to us all? Multiple Times?

But John didn’t give up, and applied some things he learned on other sites.

He then submitted the exact same article, but with different headline, and a new URL (changed page slug), to all the same sites.

The new version of the article has brought him almost 5000 visitors.