Over at the Blog Herald, Chris Garrett says that Twitter is changing his news consumption habits.

How do you get your news? In the past I have variously read newspapers, watched TV news bulletins, read news.bbc.co.uk and obviously more recently sites such as Digg. Now it seems I get most of my news from Twitter.

Twitter: The Upside and the Downside

Three days ago, Heath Ledger passed away. The actor was found dead in his apartment. He was 28. As more and more people discovered the news of the actor’s passing, Twitter was inundated with news links and statements of surprise. If you were using Twitter at that time that his death was announced in media outlets, you knew that Ledger had died. It was impossible to ignore it with the hundreds of Tweets that were filled with emotions over the talented young man’s death.

If you use Twitter regularly, you’d see that it wins as a social news site that provides instantaneous news — at least of that caliber. As Chris Garrett explains in his post, if you follow numerous feed bots, you can get the news all the time. The issue, of course, is engagement. If you’re not actively engaged, the news won’t come at you. It’s like any other news medium. If you’re not watching the television, you’ll find out the news later.

After Kevin posted to the Digg blog Wednesday evening that there were algorithmic changes to affect the impact of stories that will be promoted to the front page of the site, a “revolt” ensued and an open letter was written. An emergency Drill Down episode was held where numerous Digg users, including regular hosts Andy (MrBabyman), Reg (zaibatsu), and Muhammad (msaleem) spoke with other Digg users, including David Cohn (DigiDave), Karim (supernova17), JD Rucker (oboy), and Jay Fowler (SilentJay74). The initial sentiment was highly negative, and most concluded that the algorithm will penalize users who care much about the community and use it regularly. At first, a Digg embargo was proposed where no Digg users would submit or Digg stories until Monday, January 28th. Eventually, however, founder Kevin Rose and CEO Jay Adelson joined the chat and gave their feedback. Here’s what they said (also covered on Soshable and later posted on Brent Csutoras’s blog):

• With regards to the new algorithm, Jay says, “algorithms are dynamic in nature. Give it time in your analysis of what’s going on. The math takes time to aggregate.” (Lesson: Stop noticing things the second that they happen.)

Often, I hear from people who complain that social media doesn’t do anything for their “marketing” efforts. Well, for one, social media users — that is, users on social news sites such as Digg, Mixx, Reddit — are not particularly enthusiastic about the proliferation of marketers in their community. This is a huge challenge for someone who wants to sell their product using social media.

But there’s a lot more to media than just these social networking sites. In fact, a highly underappreciated but heavily trafficked method works just as well: the blog.

If you get your product name out among many blogs, eventually, the word gets out. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. In any marketing campaign, the more you see the product, the more likely you are to be influenced by it, even if you don’t want to be. The takeaway: if you talk about something enough, people will listen (even if they don’t want to). Repeated exposure builds recognition.

Thought you had enough of the greatest Internet Marketing posts of 2007? Well, unfortunately, your reading list has just lengthened. Matt McGee over at Small Business SEM has compiled his own list of the “best posts of 2007″ in a site with a brilliantly and cleverly chosen title, the SEMMYS (Search Marketing Emmys). In addition to a bit over overlap from my previous post, Matt covers other categories pertinent to search marketing, including local search, search technology (e.g. robots.txt, IP questions for hosting, etc.), small business, analytics (he dedicates a whole section to this one!), rants, and funny posts about the search marketing industry in general.

I’m pleased to announce that I will be judging the category on Blogs and Blogging along with Michael Gray. Since I love blogs about blogging (really, I do!), this is the perfect match. (Thanks, Matt!)

I’m also pleasantly surprised to see that seven blog posts of mine on three blogs have somehow been nominated in six different categories. Here they are, in no particular order:

• Top 6 Ideas for Incredible Viral Content (Viral Marketing, posted here on Techipedia)
• How to Use StumbleUpon for Your Business: The Definitive Guide (Social Media, posted on the 10e20 Blog)

When Digg came out with its new social features, some folks applauded the move while others despised it. Nearly four months later, the social features appear to be here to stay.

But are they secure?

As Digg becomes more of a social network and less of a social news network (or a hybrid that incorporates both elements), it has a lot of obstacles it needs to face. Besides major usability issues, duplicate stories submissions, and ads that literally scream at you, Digg has yet another issue to deal with: privacy.

Ben pinged me earlier today with a very interesting observation. It turns out that your shouts are not private after all, even if you keep them absolutely hidden. Your friends can see them. Actually, anyone can see them, even if they’re not logged in.

Allow me to illustrate. My current Digg settings prohibit anyone from seeing my Digg shouts.

My shouts are blocked for everyone to see, and to ensure this, I’ve saved this selection multiple times.

When I go to my profile, Digg makes a clear assertion that I want my shouts kept private. But look at that red arrow.