Social Craze

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Listible - Social Bookmarking Site


Listible.com (05-09-06)
Google PR: 2
Alexa Traffic Rank: 15,576
Google Indexed Pages: 43,900
MSN Backlinks: 13,223
Backlinks Pass PR: Yes
Niche: No

Listible is one of my favorite relatively new social bookmarking sites. The site is very cleanly designed, fast and well organized. With listible you get all of the features that matter and none of the ones that don’t.

Most bookmarking sites organize the site by tags and sub-tags. Listible gives users a little more control of the category structure by using a list option which basically allows users to create their own categories.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

MyLinkVault - Social Bookmarking


MyLinkVault.com (04-01-06)
Google PR: 5
Alexa Traffic Rank: 136,734
Google Indexed Pages: 29
MSN Backlinks: 683
Backlinks Pass PR: Yes
Niche: No

MyLinkVault is fairly new but it has to potential to be a decent social bookmarking site. It has a clean design which loads fast and the system is very easy for someone unfamiliar with the industry to jump into. I like the fact that dishing out your email address is optional. I’m pretty sure 98% of these sites wont spam you or sell your address but you never know.

I would like to see more features but that is my personal preference. A streamline bookmarking site can be perfectly successful. They also seem to be having a problem getting fully indexed by Google. This is the only thing I think must be addressed in the near future.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Squidoo - Filtering Service

Squidoo.com (03-19-06)
Google PR: 5
Alexa Traffic Rank: 3,515
Google Indexed Pages: 207,000
MSN Backlinks: 17,377
Backlinks Pass PR: Yes
Niche:
No

Squidoo.com was registered in June of 05' by Red Maxwell. I believe Squidoo would most appropriately be categorized as a filtering service although it has potential to become much more. Members are able to choose from several different modules that have either predefined content or customizable content.

I would not consider Squidoo, by any means, a cookie cutter website. The customization level of many of the modules is unmatched in the industry. The site is continually adding new features while offering above average support.

Currently Squidoo is in beta. Once they launch they will be offering a very nice profit sharing system. Users will be able to profit from direct sales generated from their lenses. A portion of the sites total profit will also be distributed to the top lens masters.

Digg.com - Social Bookmarking Site

Digg.com (03-19-06)
Google PR: 7
Alexa Traffic Rank: 432
Google Indexed Pages: 6,980,000
MSN Backlinks: 419,275
Backlinks Pass PR: Yes
Niche:
Technology

Digg.com was registered in Febuary of 2000 by Allindom. The wayback machine shows activity for the domain as early as 98’ with their current system available in January of 05’. In my opinion digg.com is the most prominent social bookmarking site available today. A single digg has the ability to bring 20+ unique visitors with some articles pulling several thousand diggs.

Simplicity is great but I personally prefer a feature rich system. Digg’s base system is simple enough for anyone to use and they offer several advanced features. My favorite is their Digg Spy option. This is a real time display of all articles that are being dugg and flagged.

New Feature: Add Digg News to Your Site.
If you have a technology site this is an excellent way to provide your users with real time quality content. This is very much like an RSS feed that is displayed on your site instead of through a feed reader. It is possible to convert an RSS feed into html but this is far more convenient. I definitely plan to use this feature sometime in the near future.

Friday, March 17, 2006

del.icio.us - Social Bookmarking Site

del.icio.us (03-18-06)
Google PR: 8
Alexa Traffic Rank: 484
Google Indexed Pages: 3,900,000
MSN Backlinks: 430,133
Backlinks Pass PR: Yes
Niche: No

del.icio.us is a subdomain of icio.us which was registered in May of 2002 by Yahoo. Supposedly there have been social bookmarking type sites online since about 96'. Not counting networking sites I believe del.icio.us was one of the early major players. (correct me if I'm wrong)

The simplicity of del.icio.us must account for at least a portion of their success. There is absolutely no fluff. You sign up, tag your favorite pages and thats about it. An algorithm is used to rank each page within the tags. By far the most important factor is the sheer number of users who bookmark an individual page using the tag.

Like anything else, there are a few ways an internet marketer can exploit a system like this. I find some of these methods to be largely unethical. If you would like to use web 2.0 sites as a promotional tool first you need to write solid content. Afterwards I find it absolutely acceptable to submit your article to several social bookmarking sites once with a modest number of relevant tags. From there your article may gain popularity and be thrust into the lime light. If its not please don't artificially increase your popularity. Instead focus on improving the quality of your content.