techipedia | tamar weinberg

Awhile ago, I used Twitter to talk about one of my favorite cold remedy vitamins, Airborne. It was then that two friends suggested Zicam to me. When stocking up on medication for the winter months, the high recommendations of Zicam had me buying the oral mist.

On Sunday night, after a rather interesting Superbowl XLII, I felt the onset of a cold. As most of these cold medicines suggest, you should take the medicine at the first sign of illness. I immediately thought of my Zicam and was eager to try it out to kill the cold before it really gets bad.

Monday morning, to continue to fight off whatever this may be, I took the recommended dosage of Zicam a second time. I went on my day realizing that I had lost the sense of taste. I ate leftover nosh from the game: really spicy salsa and chips. The spiciness did not impact me. I had some Hershey Kisses. The chocolate taste was dull, as if almost not there.

A week ago, I gave a relatively unbiased account of the “Digg revolt,” a response to Kevin Rose’s post that there were to be algorithmic changes to Digg that likely will impact only the top submitters. After seeing how it panned out, I have to say that I’m not impressed.

Here’s a screenshot of a story that became popular with a whopping 235 Diggs. It was taken the night of January 28, 2008 (approximately 11PM EST):

While Digg typically allowed stories to hit the front page within 80-120 votes (the latter being more rare than normal), it’s now requiring almost double the number.

In comparison, here’s another anomaly (for its time). This is a Digg submission from August 17th:

The problem is quite evident that the most dedicated and seasoned users are feeling the brunt of the impact. And so, it’s time that I acknowledge what people have been saying for a long time: I think Digg has jumped the shark.

Here’s why:

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.