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Election’s Over. It’s Picture Time Again on DiggNovember 16

Now that the election and post-election elation is over, it’s time for Digg to go back to basics.

Very basic.

Yes, now that McCain/Palin bashing is over and the Obama love-fest is waning, Digg will rapidly return to its primary reason for existence: funny pictures.  As can be seen at any given moment on the “Top in All Topics” widget on their right toolbar, it’s time for lolcats, funny signs, photoshop ingenuity, and paint by numbers to make its triumphant return atop the most Dugg “media”.

I’m so excited.  Can you tell?

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Read more Digg analysis on Social News Watch.

Related Stories Coming to Digg?November 9

(originally published at Soshable)

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…)

European Politics 2.0: Romanian PM hits Twitter, FacebookOctober 30

This is a guest post courtesy of maxyRO

In America, we’re in the midst of the elections.  It’s a time where the political landscape is changing and everyone is trying to grab a slice of the pie. We, as social media users, have paid a good share of attention to the US elections, sometimes unwillingly.

It goes without saying that social media is a big part of the online campaigns that are helping candidates reach out to its younger audience. But it’s not just the US candidates that have taken up social media and started using it as a political tool.

Countries overseas are also getting into the social media landscape.  Romania has the first Prime Minister in the European Union to get both a twitter and a facebook account along with the launch of his new

BlogRush: RIPOctober 30

Here is an email that I (and a lot of other people) received from BlogRush John Reese:

After careful consideration, we have decided to shutdown the BlogRush service.  If you have the widget code on your blog you will need to remove it.

When BlogRush launched in late-2007 it spread like wildfire all over the Web.  Thousands of bloggers were talking about it and the service exploded to become one of the fastest growing free services in the history of the Web.  During the first year of the service it successfully served 3.4 Billion blog post headlines and the BlogRush widget could be found on blogs all over the world; even up until the moment we closed down the service.

BlogRush didn’t grow without its fair share of problems — from security issues to abusive users trying to ‘game’ the system to much lower click-rates than expected.  We also had some problems with trying to fairly control the quality of the network, and in the process made many mistakes in deciding what blogs should stay or go.  All of these issues, ultimately, limited the service’s full potential.

Our team worked very hard to try and build a service that would truly help bloggers of all sizes get free traffic to their blogs.  This was our

With Great Social Media Power Comes Great ResponsibilityOctober 23

(This story has been updated with a newer idea here: A Plan for Social Media Sites (and users) to Give Back)

Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Slashdot, Newsvine, NowPublic, Yahoo! Buzz.  Between these seven sites, traffic to a particular website can easily exceed 100,000, potentially much higher.

With so much power to drive people to various websites across the Internet, why are none of them greatly involved with charity?  I’m not talking about donating - I’m sure that the companies or their executives donate.  I’m talking about making a difference.  I’m talking about using their power to drive traffic and applying it to charity websites.

The reason that they don’t is that they (other than Slashdot) are strictly driven by the actions, likes, and intentions of the users.  You could argue that there is a human hand or two manipulating the system from time to time, but that’s an entirely different post. (more…)