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Soshable | Social Media Blog

People soshalize. They don't care how it's spelled. They just do it.

Twitter and Blogging, Tips and ToolsYesterday

“Every blog should have its own Twitter account.”

WHOA! Slow down.  If EVERY blog had a Twitter account, the site would be “over capacity” constantly.  Some web hosts claim 99.99% uptime.  Twitter would be at 99.99% downtime considering there’s more blogs on the Internet than atoms in the known universe.

With that out of the way, let’s first say that “every” to me clears out spam blogs, boring blogs, worthless blogs, and blogs about bacon or politics.  Hopefully, this blog doesn’t fall into any of those categories other than the occasional bacon post.  Assuming there are a couple of hundred thousand quality blogs in the world right now, that wouldn’t be too hard for even the Twitter servers to handle.

Where does it all fit in and how can Twitter and blogging work together? We’ll get to that, but first… (more…)

The 7 Most Hated and Loved Sources for DiggDecember 7 2008

It is well known that some sites do better than others on Digg.  Whether it is because of their current base of readers helping to propel their stories to the front page or simply because the submitters who hit the sites are generally strong, some sites will hit the front page often.  Some of them hit almost every time.

Here are some of these sites that get plenty of “Digg love” but that are also hated by many.

Cracked

They are considered as one of the funniest, raunchiest humor sites on the web.  With a winning format of 1 story and 1 video refreshing daily, submissions by strong Diggers are as close as it comes to a “sure thing” for hitting the front page.

Why We Love Cracked

Frankly, they stories and videos are pretty darn funny.  They are also a relatively easy submit - anyone who knows the basic times that the stories refresh has a great opportunity to land a “front page winner” because the stories and videos are posted at low-traffic times.

Why We Hate Cracked

It hits the front page.  A lot.  Many of the stories and headlines are definitely geared towards adults, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but they often tend to be politically incorrect at times.  Whil

Lots of Changes over at MixxNovember 19 2008

Changes, changes, changes.  Somehow, Mixx is able to make changes 10 times faster than any other major social media site on the Internet.  All of the changes (except one) look to improve the functionality and user experience immensely.

On their blog, they explain these changes in detail.  As with any major change to a website, my natural inclination is to a) test it inside and out, looking for flaws, and, b) try to break it.

Tests went fine.  Haven’t been able to break anything yet. (more…)

Digg Related Stories: Coming? CONFIRMEDNovember 10 2008

 (UPDATE: here is the comment from a Digg programmer.  It was deleted from the post, but Yahoo cache caught it.  Here’s the screenshot with all the details)

A reliable source tells me that Digg is finally putting out their related stories interface that will list stories that cover the same topics as the ones discussed in each submission.

(more…)

The Best Digg Tools, Reality EditionNovember 2 2008

One of the best parts about my job is that I get to talk to a lot of the top users over at Digg.  This is important because the Digg algorithm is always in a constant state of tweak (a statement that can be construed properly several different ways).  It changes as fast as, if not faster than, Google and other search engines.  Two questions always pop up with either me asking top users or other users asking me:

“What does it take to get to the front page?”

The answer has two parts: time and tools.  We can go into the time issue later, but for now, let’s assume that you have the time.  The second question is:

“What are the right tools?”

There are dozens of lists of Digg tools out there.  Most of them are nice and quaint, but do top users really use them.  Normally, no.  Here are the tools that they do use.  Some are obviously loose interpretations of the word “tools” but anything that helps to achieve the goal of hitting the front page often should be listed. (more…)