Perhaps one of the most coveted aspects of new media are socially driven news and content sites. These sites can drive overwhelming amounts of traffic to your content overnight and make your content visible to the entire web. So important have these sites become, that content producers aren’t reluctant to pay thousands of dollars to the top brass of these sites to submit content for them.

At the same time, to outsiders, these sites can be an enigma. In an effort to better understand these sites, in terms of what kind of content each community likes, I decided to do some searching and present to you research (done by the members of the respective communities) that will help you better understand the preferences of the socially driven news and content (i.e. social bookmarking) sites.

Statistics Freak presents to you the most popular topics from Digg:

Originally posted on December 21, 2006 @ 9:30 am

If I were given the opportunity to be the CEO of Google for one year here is what I would do, how I would do it and why.

The What: I would change the way the world consumes information.
People consume information in today’s world by ‘searching’. Lots and lots of ad dollars are generated as a result of people searching for information. That probably won’t change anytime soon. People want to consume data. I personally use the search engine hundreds of times a day doing searches many of them competive keyword searches, and shopping searches for products I need. But what If I wanted to consume the searches in a different way using RSS. Could I do it? Today I couldnt. If I were CEO of Google. This would all change. Obviously the technology is there to do it. It’s already being done on Google News, and Google Blog Search.

The How: I would enable RSS Feeds for searches on the main Google Search Engine, and Froogle. This would allow power users to consume RSS Feeds in a brand new way. Speeding up my day and my access to important information. Technologically this isn’t a huge change. But its a change that would have some massive effects on our society. RSS Feeds would become mainstream and accepted. More and more users would use the Google Reader, and thus more relevants ads could be displayed within the Google Reader thus increasing ad revenues and allowing Google to further target products, and searches that would be more relevant to me.

Millions and Millions of people use The Google every day. But do they even know about all the other products? Simply educating people by adding RSS Feeds to search would come along way in expanding the RSS User Ratio.

The Why: Empowering RSS Feeds, and Empowering users would create new revenue streams that The Google really hasn’t tapped yet. RSS Feeds have been the next big thing for quite some time. Google owns Search. Now it has to own the other major marketplace and thats how we consume information in the future. Google Reader is by far one of the best RSS Readers. A few simple changes would bring huge revenue, and mainstream acceptance to this simple technology. And keep people on the Google Properties longer every day.

Originally posted on December 21, 2006 @ 1:37 am

Seth Godin and Chris Anderson keep talking about the long tail. What if the long tail didn’t matter? What if they were all wrong?

I understand the long tail. The long tail generally refers to the distribution of information as the currency of the web. Meaning access to information is worth something. And providing such access gives you value. So by monetizing the long tail it means you find a niche that is worth snagging and you own every aspect of it. The long tail implies that certain niches are ‘owned’ by the wealth owners such as those who routinely dominate information online. Good examples of information domination include Wikipedia.

But what if search were not so much about pagerank and authority and the Google dominance and more about the story telling that goes on. What if information were prioritized not by popularity but by relevance to YOU. Would the long tail be important at all ? Because what is important to you is definetly different than what’s important to me.

Deep down I think I just wish there were another player in search besides The Google. The long tail sure as heck wouldn’t mean as much. Thanks Yahoo and MSN for dropping the ball on this one.

Here’s the question of the day:
Would your online business survive without Google Search?

Originally posted on December 20, 2006 @ 1:13 am

Perhaps one of the most coveted aspects of new media are socially driven news and content sites. These sites can drive overwhelming amounts of traffic to your content overnight and make your content visible to the entire web. So important have these sites become, that content producers aren’t reluctant to pay thousands of dollars to the top brass of these sites to submit content for them.

At the same time, to outsiders, these sites can be an enigma. In an effort to better understand these sites, in terms of what kind of content each community likes, I decided to do some searching and present to you research (done by the members of the respective communities) that will help you better understand the preferences of the socially driven news and content (i.e. social bookmarking) sites.

Statistics Freak presents to you the most popular topics from Reddit:

Originally posted on December 20, 2006 @ 2:23 pm

If you think that just by building a good website or having good content, you can draw large audiences, you are mistaken.

The days of setting up shop and automatically getting traffic just by being online are over. Today, if you want to have success on the web you need a unique angle and a reputable brand so that visitors have something to remember you by.

If you want to get noticed, you have to build a brand that will draw the crowd in. And although traditional marketing techniques can be costly and take their time in producing results, this doesn’t have to be the case with the internet.

By using offline and online DIY (do it yourself) methods and some guerilla marketing techniques, you can build, announce, and control your brand without having to spend loads of money.

The following tips should help you get the word out.

Originally posted on December 18, 2006 @ 2:14 pm