Last year, I ended 2006 with a great (and still pertinent) list of blog posts and articles that I felt were really the best in their class in the area of Internet Marketing. This year, I present you my favorite timeless posts of 2007, complete with descriptions about each blog post (which more than quadrupled the workload for me this time around, especially because I tripled the amount of links, but I had fun!) (Disclaimer: I’m certain that even with this list in excess of 250 links, I forgot a bunch of posts, so if you have any additional recommendations, please feel free to comment and I’ll add them!)

By the way, I still haven’t fully embraced video yet, so this will only include written articles. Maybe next year, folks!

Social Media Sites: General

• The Big Boys of Social Bookmarking: The Top 20 Sites (10e20): Chris Winfield ranks the top 20 social bookmarking sites by their Alexa rankings and gives a short description of what each does — in case you haven’t ventured beyond Digg.
• 24 Do-Follow Social Bookmarking Sites that Actually Work (Caroline Middlebrook): Get some powerful links on some of these lesser-known social sites.

It hasn’t even been a week and my once positive outlook of Digg has come to a sour end. Yesterday, Brian Clark over at Copyblogger wrote that Digg is dead. You know, for awhile, I was giving Digg the benefit of the doubt. When I reported bugs, I got responses. Of course, when it came to the bury brigade, Digg never acknowledged those emails, neither by stating that there was a bury brigade or not. They simply ignored those accusations. Some might say that silence is agreement.

Not long ago, my friend Erik was banned for submitting a story to Digg that Digg construed as a denial of service attempt. However, when he apologized and vowed not to commit the crime again, Digg reinstated his account. He had to make a promise, but once he did, he was back in. The process took no longer than two hours.

A few weeks later, my friend Mike submitted a somewhat NSFW story to Digg. He, too, got banned. He asked Digg about his banning, and they almost immediately responded to him. When he promised not to violate the rules, they reinstated him. Again, the process did not take long at all.

How do you leverage different social networks? I am fascinated by the amount of social networks that I’m part of, but better yet, I’m intrigued to find that I assume different “personas,” at least in terms of choosing friends (and using the networks), on each social site. Are you the same?

Allow me to explain:

I first embraced social networking in the late 90s when I joined SixDegrees.com. I was pretty liberal when choosing my friends, but the social networking phenomenon didn’t take off and SixDegrees died. They had a great idea, though, and it finally became popular in the last few years.

First (Real) Stop: Friendster

In 2001, I took the plunge into Friendster, and as an early adopter, I befriended just about anyone I had some sort of association with and reciprocated every friend request. I have 148 total friends on Friendster at this time, and as you can tell from the chart below, a lot of them are “random” in the sense that I don’t have a clue who they really are.

When I was at Pubcon last week, Digg launched its highly anticipated images section. And while you’ve all come to expect my rants about Digg, I simply cannot deliver that this time around.

I’ll start by saying that I was at first skeptical about the pictures section. Truthfully, I understand the reasoning behind separating videos and podcasts from news: videos and podcasts require more attention whereas many news stories already include pictures and adding an images section can be construed by some as redundancy. However, I’m not complaining about the new changes — at all. In fact, the new Digg pictures launch has been bunched up with other great features that I’m quite happy about. For example, Digg has finally acknowledged that productivity and lifehack websites deserve a section of their own, so they launched a “Lifestyle” section with its more universal taxonomy. I’m glad I no longer have to put those stories in “offbeat news.”

Let’s walk through the new features and what has changed on the Interface.

First, when you go to Digg’s submit page, you’re now greeted with three options. Are you submitting a news story? Is it an image? Is it a video?

The highly anticipated Las Vegas Pubcon 2007 has come and gone, and I can tell that everyone is waiting for Pubcon ‘08 from the enormous success of this conference. First, some educational takeaways:

• Social media is the “new” medium for businesses to communicate with consumers in a way that is interesting to them.
• Craig Newmark isn’t altruistic, but he sure created a damn good website.
• Every conversation shifted to Twitter, as folks recognized that they can brand themselves and their businesses through a Twitter identity. On that note, if you’re so inclined, you can follow me on Twitter too.
• Good content and copywriting will win over new readers and customers.
• Make sure you have good pockets (or a wallet) if you are carrying cash in Sin City.