All posts tagged ‘digg’

File Under: Software & Tools
Aug
19
2008

Sizzle or Fizzle – Will Yahoo Users Buzz Up?

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Yahoo BuzzToday Yahoo opened up their Digg-esque Buzz tool to allow links to any site. Previously, only about 400 publishers were included in the service (100 when it first launched). By allowing anyone to post to Buzz, Yahoo is possibly gaining better content, but also creating opportunities for gaming.

Digg has created a complex algorithm to attempt to combat spammers. The prize for making a link popular on Digg is a trip to its homepage, ensuring oodles of traffic for the linked site. Those that make it atop Buzz could find themselves with a real treat: a prime spot on the Yahoo home page. As Crocodile Dundee might say, “That’s not traffic, this is traffic.”

There’s no doubt, Yahoo is bringing Web 2.0 to the masses. The big question remaining is do they want it? Even though Digg has been doing this for years, it’s important to remember this is brand new territory for most of Yahoo’s user base. It’s still not clear if they’re comfortable “buzzing up.”

During the six months that Buzz was exclusive, Yahoo must have performed many tests to determine that its users wanted to participate. Prior releases would suggest the outcomes of these tests must have been positive.

Yahoo Buzz front page

One upside to Yahoo Buzz is that it’s so far not self-referential. If Digg had an announcement as big as this, you’d bet the home page would have Digg stories galore. That may just take time, the Up and Coming buzz shows a Buzz story is on the way.

As we mentioned when Buzz launched, it has some features that set it aside from Digg. There are a number of factors other than buzzing up that decide what makes it to the top of Buzz. Many of those metrics are Yahoo-specific, such as searches on Yahoo search and the number of times users email the page to friends.

I’m not convinced Yahoo Buzz will be successful as a destination, but the tool could be sprinkled throughout the other channels, similar to Yahoo Answers.

This news for publishers can only be positive. This is another way to get your content out there, and Yahoo’s audience of a half billion is a mighty number. In fact, why not buzz this post now?

[Full disclosure: Wired.com was one of the 100 publishers participating in the beta phase of Yahoo Buzz. Wired is also owned by Conde Nast, which operates Reddit, a potential competitor to Yahoo Buzz.]

[via ReadWriteWeb]

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File Under: Software & Tools
Aug
6
2008

Digg This New Extension for Firefox

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Digg toolbar

Digg founder Kevin Rose announced a new Firefox 3 extension that brings subtle notifications to your browser. The same add-on also includes an update to the Digg toolbar that shows the number of Diggs and comments the current page has. Rose included a slick video (embedded below) that shows off the functions.


Digg Firefox 3 Extension from Kevin Rose on Vimeo.

The notifications feature is cool for anybody who wants to stay on top of what’s on top. The latest popular item pops up, but only for a few seconds by default. The settings for the Digg notifications are robust, offering category/subcategory choices, options for how the notification looks/acts, and the ability to be shown your friends’ activity.

Digg extension settings

Several times in his video, Rose mentioned that Digg wants feedback and feature requests from its community. The characteristically chatty crowd hasn’t shied away. The common suggestions matched the shortcomings I see in the extension, too.

The toolbar places itself at the top of your browser window, near the location and bookmarks toolbars. It’s easily hideable via a Digg icon (to the left of the location bar), but it has expanded itself several times today. Worse, it appears the toolbar is immoveable, so I can’t place it at the bottom of my screen, or change its ordering to be above the bookmark toolbar, for example.

Also, the toolbar does little more than my Digg bookmarklet ever did. Clicking “digg it” takes me to the Digg page, where I have to digg it myself. This may be a conscious decision by Digg to either not collect any personal information or discourage spammers.

Digg notifications

The notifications are a nice way to get a trickle of news from Digg. I’m skeptical of tools that try to grab my attention, but this one does so in a subtle way. Plus, the conveniently location “Zzz” button provides an easily way to toggle the notifications.

Overall, I’m impressed. I wish every web service provided a tool this easy to take a little bit of a site with me.

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File Under: Software & Tools
Jul
15
2008

Diggers, Can You Spare a Dime?

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Imagine a Reddit or Digg where you are charged ten cents for every up vote, knowing the money goes straight to the site. Therein lies the idea behind Tipjoy. Tipjoy makes it possible to tip anything on the web, even email addresses.

Compared to Digg or Reddit, I imagine the voting system might keep you a little more honest. Your votes will hold a lot more value knowing it hurts wallets to go around tipping sites left and right. Oh, and no, voting sites down doesn’t give you ten cents.

I suppose it represents a way to give back to those websites which gave you something of value over the day. Hmm, comforting in a weird way, isn’t it?

If you’re a website owner, TipJoy offers website buttons, an API, Friendfeed and Twitter integration — all for the cause of attracting money to your site. I suppose if your site can’t get by on ads alone, Tipjoy is another way to get money. Tips start at ten cents, but you are given the option to set your own price.

The method depends on the generous, though. I don’t imagine thrifty web surfers will be too eager to chip in for every cute cat picture they see online. Oh well, there goes my latest start-up idea.

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File Under: Programming
Jun
18
2008

Reddit Embraces Transparency, Gives Away Source Code

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Redditfree

Our friends over at Reddit have announced that the code behind the social news aggregation site is now open and freely available to the web at large. By giving away the entire code base, interested developers can see exactly how the site works and use Reddit code in their own projects.

The Reddit team says the move is meant to make the social news site “as open and transparent with our users as possible.” Reddit competitor Digg has often struggled with — and received a fair amount of criticism about — the very secretive algorithm governing its ranking system.

For Reddit users, today’s announcement means that there is no mystery — the site and its algorithms are an open book.

As part of the release Reddit is also encouraging developers to submit code and ideas to improve the social news site. You can download the code from Reddit’s new Trac page. The source code to Reddit is governed by the Common Public Attribution License.

It seems every time you turn around these days someone is open sourcing their code, or at least claiming to be “open,” but what often gets overlooked in the coverage is that it isn’t easy to give your code away.

Forget the business side and the potential gaming that Reddit is opening itself up to (which are big concerns as well), just exposing your code to the world is an incredibly intimidating thing to do — everyone on the web can pick over your code with a fine-tooth comb pointing out all your hurried hacks, klugey workarounds you shoved in to meet a deadline and other potentially ugly bits.

While community feedback can help fix those things, just opening up the code must leave developers feeling exposed. Jeff Atwood recently touched on that issue writing, “sharing your ongoing code with your co-workers is scary, much less the world.” But, as Atwood goes on to point out, “it also results in feedback and communication that will improve your code and draw you closer to the project you’re working on.”

Kudos to the Reddit developers for taking the plunge.

[Disclosure: Reddit is owned by CondeNet, parent company to Wired.com and Webmonkey]

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