I wonder if the idea for Twitter came to guys from Obvious after watching that so popular but oh, so annoying Budweiser Wassup commercial back in 2006? Twitter’s simple question “What are you doing?” clearly resembles the one The Bud fans were asking each other.

Who could know that in less than two years such a plain idea of sharing with the world what we’re doing at the moment will turn into a craze where blogging and Harry Potter fail in comparison. Looks like everyone has at least opened an account on Twitter and tried to join the world of micro-blogging. But what can be said in 140 characters or less other than “enjoying a hot cup of java with Baileys”?

Apparently a lot. Humans are very curious and clever creatures, who can create something out of nothing, or turn an unassuming personal communication tool into a powerful marketing and political machine. (Would somebody enlighten @hillaryclinton please, that she needs to at least pretend she’s following some of her followers, or follow the steps of @BarackObama, who follows everyone who follows him?)

There are many tutorials written on how to use Twitter for marketing. Copyblogger has even announced a Twitter writing contest, challenging everyone to write a story exactly 140 characters long. If Hemnigway’s shortest story ever was only six words or 35 characters long, and hundreds of others have tried to follow his steps on Wired, someone should be able to write a novella with 140 characters.

So what is it about Twitter that attracts so many people? Why should we consider opening a Twitter account? CommonCraft did an interesting and entertaining video tutorial on Twitter in Plain English. Though it only covers personal and social aspects of Twitter, it is a good introduction on how someone can start his addiction to Twitter. Oh, yes, there’s already a new term — twitterholic — along with the heated debates on whether a post to Twitter should be spelled twit or tweet.

As for myself, I’m still trying to uncover the Twitter magic that excites thousands of its fans. I couldn’t keep reminding myself to visit my online Twitter page to twit, so I’ve installed several third-party Twitter applications that I found convenient:

1. TwitterBar

   This add-on allows you to post to Twitter from Firefox’s address bar.
   
   Clicking on a small grey/green icon that sits at the end of the address bar will post your twit along with the displayed URI, and you can hover your mouse over the icon to see how many characters you have left.

2. TwitterFox

   This Firefox extension “adds a tiny icon on the status bar that notifies you when your friends update their tweets. Also it has a small text input field to update your tweets”. I like how easy it is here to click and reply to someone’s twit and also click on the tab to see all replies to my twits.

3. MoodBlast

   This is a standalone menubar application that allows you to “blast” your mood, thoughts, activities not only to Twitter but to a number of other apps that makes it really helpful to be on top of your online social life with various social networking sites and IMs like Facebook, Jaiku, Skype, iChat, Tumblr, Prownce. MoodBlast comes with a hand full of useful features, make sure to check out the how-to Screencast on Cicrle Six Design

4. TwitterFeed

   
   Even if you don’t have time to twit, adding your blog’s feed to Twitter will give your site an extra exposure, and to your followers a quick way to check your most recent post.

Hopefully, those four apps mentioned above will improve my Twitter experience and make it less time consuming and more efficient. There are many other popular Twitter apps, which one did you find helpful for your twittering needs?

One thing I’m still trying to figure out is how some people can keep up with following hundreds of other Twitter users? Do you really read everyone’s twits? How much time do you spend on Twitter then?

What are your thoughts on Twitter? What do you like or dislike about it? Do you consider yourself being a twitterholic, or do you find yourself wondering what’s with all that Twitter buzz? How do you use Twitter? What do you twit about? How do you present yourself on Twitter — are you extending your blogging personality or revealing more of who you are and what you do when you’re not “wired”?

Finally, if you like to follow me and my progress to becoming a Twitterholic, or on the contrary, giving up on Twitter, then feel free to do so. You know I always welcome new friends.

Many years ago I read a science-fiction story that reminds me of what we’re experiencing today. Unfortunately, I don’t remember what it was called, nor who wrote it, so if you can recognize it, please let me know. I’d love to read it again.

The story is about the future when someone has invented walls that people can switch on like a TV and see what their neighbours are up to. So naturally, everyone wanted to install those walls, and see what their neighbours eat, listen to what they talk about, how they’re dressed, what their rooms look like. Then people started getting jealous of what others had, and wanted really badly to be keeping up with the Joneses. Their behavour has changed drastically – they were trying to be perfect with their manners, dressing well, talking softly. All that was causing most of them huge stress – after all, we can’t be perfect and nice all the time. Fortunately, one day someone has invented a paint that could be used to cover the walls so that the neighbours can’t see through. Oh, what a relieve that was – everyone started buying that paint like crazy. So for awhile things got back to normal, but people got bored with that, they were itching to find out what their neighbours are doing, talking about, eating. So then someone invented another paint that can cover the anti-see-through paint and make it transparent again for everyone to see through….

Doesn’t it resemble a bit the way we live today? It certainly does to me, including the social aspect of our lives online. We even took it one step further – we’re willingly opening ourselves up to others, sharing stories, personal information, business and financial details, pictures, videos, we want to follow each others steps, and we actually update the world on what we’re up to at any given moment.

Two months ago we started an experiment – a collaborative Social Media Mega group writing project, so that anyone can share his/her experience with social networks and learn from each other.

Today I present you with over 60 submissions on Social Media Mega Project from 9 bloggers, which cover over a dozen different social networking sites. It will definitely take you awhile to go through all those valuable tips from the social universe, so be sure to bookmark this page and all those submissions that you can’t wait to read, on del.icio.us, share them with your friends on Facebook, Twit about them, Stumble, Digg, vote on Reddit, spin them on Sphinn, refer to them your fellow Flickrs. In other words, ENJOY:

Facebook

HOST: Ina from InspiringWear

• Gobala Krishnan from Easy World Press wrote about Getting Blog Traffic From Your Facebook Profile
• Simon from Yeepage.com shares his view of Top 9 Facebook Applications
• Jacob Share from JobMob offers us his article-review I’m on Facebook – Now what?
• Jeremy Lim from Marketing Ruined My Live brings us a very interesting, youthful, point of view in Facebook Ruined My(Social) Life
• We even got a contribution in Spanish – Cómo hago para estar en contacto con mis amigos? Facebook!
• in the latest issue of “Oprah Magazine” there was an article on Facebook as well You’veBeenPoked! by By Liesl Schillinger

Social Photography

HOST: Brian from Epic Edits Weblog

• In Social Media as I See It an amateur photographer pays her gratitude to one of the most popular photography sites, strobist.com, that managed to take the blog to the next level and turn it into a community of passionate photographers.
• In his contribution Blog Writing Project Iain confessed that Flickr gives him angst at first, but then realized that in reality it gives him “an opportunity, and maybe in time, inspiration”.
• Read Utilizing Flickr as a Photoblogging Tool to find out how to use Flickr as a blogging tool.
• Help me Flickr! I want to be a better photographer! is a must read post on how to get the most out of Flickr and improve your photography skills.
• Brian wrote an excellent guide on using photophlow: A Social Experience for Flickr Photographers.
• Twist & shout! is about another social photography site called Shutterchance.
• Virtual community becoming real is just one example of many how virtual friends and social networks are transcended to the real world.
• In the article Flickr is the key to my social photography experience Lilahpops recounts how Flickr helped to become the active member of this photosharing community.
• Audee warns us about Things to Consider Before You Join a Flickr Pool

StumbleUpon, MySpace and YouTube

Karen Zara from a1-fan-fun

• Steven Snell suggests Promoting Older Posts With Social Media
• Tibi Puiu gives us A Guide to StumbleUpon: Understanding and Beating The System
• Simon shares his personal experience in StumbleUpon: My Story So Far
• Tejvan Pettinger reveals Why StumbleUpon is Better Than Digg
• Isabella Mori shares her StumbleUpon finds on Frozen Pea Friday: Breast Cancer Info on StumbleUpon
• Karen Zara has also written her views on StumbleUpon, Networking At MySpace and Silent Interaction With YouTube Users.

Twitter

HOST: Isabella Mori from ChangeTherapy

• Carol from Alphablogs has posted a valuable find – Lee Lefevre’s great video on Twitter.
• Rhett ponders about our lives on Twitter with 140 characters or less.
• Karen talks about why Twitter may not be for everyone.
• Glenda thinks Twitter is much more than instant messaging. it’s about building community.
• Simon on yeepage has a mini-series on Twitter with a step by step approach on all you need to learn about this social network.
• Gregg has written his post about Twitter on yet another microblog, Tumblr.
• Sameer has written about Twitter stats and many other twitter-related posts.

Digg and Reddit

HOST: Vivien from InspirationBit

• How To benefit from Digg by Tejvan Pettinger. Broken up in 13 easy-to-follow steps, Tejvan shares his observations on how to prepare your site for Digg. Afterwards he followed up this post with another article, which is questioning and reflecting on
  Is it worth Trying to Get On Digg?
• How To Get Onto Digg’s Front Page in 8 steps by Jacob Cass. Ever wondered what are the sure-fire techniques on reaching that coveted #1 spot on Digg? Jacob will not only share the secrets but also will make you laugh.
• Experience with Digg by Dexter. This is one of those no-luck-with-Digg-whatsoever articles which actually tell the truth about this social networking site.
• I’m Really Not a Digg Fan by Karen Zara.
  Now you too can join Digg’s NoFan Club, just head over to Karen’s post and share your reasons for not being Digg’s fan in the comments.
• Redditers – What They Tend to Do? by A u d e e. If you’re like me and still didn’t quite figure out how Reddit works and how to tackle that site, be sure to check Audee’s article.
• Can You Dig Digg?, where I contemplate about 8 things that I especially don’t understand about Digg and the obsession with it.

Technorati

HOST: Monica Hamburg

• Simon addressed the purpose of Technorati and how it works.
• In another post Simon shares tips on How to improve your Technorati ranking
• Kriz Cpec contributed his Secrets of Using Blogorati
• Monica has also posted responses to her Facebook query, so be sure to read the results on how bloggers use Technorati.

Sphinn

HOST: Simonne from AllTipsAndTricks

• If you’ve never succeeded with Sphinn, be sure to read Simon’s advise on How to reach the front Page in Sphinn
• Karen Zara briefs us with some Quick Notes On Sphinn
• Simonne gives us an honest and eye-opening review of what goes behind the scenes of Sphinn’s community.

LinkedIn

HOST: Isabella Mori from Alphablogs

• Simonne contemplates about Why LinkedIn And Pen Names Don’t Go Well Together
• Jacob has put together Gigantic Tips Guide for Finding Jobs With LinkedIn
• And Isabella has collected interesting LinkedIn Stories from her fellow bloggers.

Del.icio.us

HOST: Aaron Stroud from On Financial Success

• Simon from yeepage.com shares his Tips on how to use del.icio.us
• Simonne explains why she likes del.icio.us so much in her article They Used To Call It Social Bookmarking
• Karen goes as far as claiming that Del.icio.us Is The Best, so read to find out why.
• Jacob provides us with the Success Checklist To Hit #1 on del.icio.us
• Ronald teaches us how to Share Your del.icio.us Links With WordPress.

Squidoo, Mixx

HOST: Pearl from Interesting Observations.

• Lauren teaches us all there is to know on how to Use Squidoo to Drive Traffic and Make Money.
• Karen shares her Mixed Views on Mixx

Comparative Analysis of several Social Media sites

I’ve decided to list the following four articles separately since they cover various social networking sites:

• In Social Media In My Way Tibor Radványi shares tips on several social photography sites, such as Flickr, photographyVoter.com, Jumpcut and Animoto, Propeller and Squidoo.
• Socializing is about social media sites like Flickr, photographyvoter.com, stumbleupon, technorati.
• What is the best social media website? Digg, SU, Delicious, Reddit?, by Jacob Cass
• In my interview with a local enterpreneur, Social Media as a New Way of Doing Business, Rastin shares his experience with Flickr, Facebook and LinkedIn.

P R I Z E S / W I N N E R S

And now, roll out the red carpet, play a drum roll, the award ceremony begins. As promised, I’ll be awarding five bloggers who excelled in hosting their part of this mega project. Each one will receive $25 cash prize. And the winners are:

1. Karen Zara from a1-fan-fun for hosting the project on StumbleUpon, MySpace and YouTube. She killed me in a good way with her four hour Social Media marathon, where she contributed 10 articles to this social media mega project. Amazing!
2. Brian from EpicEdits for hosting the project on Social Photography.
3. Isabella Mori from ChangeTherapy for hosting the project on Twitter. She also hosted another project on LinkedIn
4. Ina from InspiringWear for hosting the project on Facebook
5. Aaron Stroud from On Financial Success for hosting the project on Del.icio.us

Congratulations to all winners! I’ll be contacting you shortly with your prize details.
And a huge, gigantic THANK YOU to Simonne, Monica and Pearl for hosting projects on Sphinn, Technorati and Squidoo, Mixx respectively.
And of course, a mega colossal THANK YOU to everyone who participated in this social media project, without you there would’ve been nothing – no articles, no valuable tips, no winners. Because of you there are no losers here, we all won by being part of this social experiment, by belonging to this great online community. And with your votes on various social networking sites we will be able to expand this community and make it stronger, so grab a cup of your favourite java or tea and start clicking – reading and sharing, voting and reading, click-click-click….

Somehow I thought that a group writing project on social media would attract lots of attention and get many participants, but I was wrong. Even my part of the mega project, which was dedicated to Digg & Reddit, has managed to get less than ten submissions. I wonder what had happened?

Was it due to lack of promotion from my side? But then I haven’t really promoted much my two previous group writing projects, however they both did very well, getting 30+ entries.

Or was it due to lack of people’s experience with social media? But then I did specify in the project rules that one doesn’t need to be a guru with a particular social networking site, you could write what is it that confuses you, or what would you like to learn more about.

Or perhaps it was due to lack of time? I certainly had this problem, which prevented me from exploring other social networking sites and writing about them.

Any other reasons? What do you think?

Whichever reason prevented people from participating in this social media mega project, I hope you find the submitted entries useful. On Friday, I’ll publish the collaborative results from all other partnering blogs&hosts (Aaron, Ina, Brian, Isabella, Karen, Simonne, Dandellion, Pearl, JHS, Monica), today I’m featuring only the articles on Digg&Reddit.

• How To benefit from Digg by Tejvan Pettinger

  Broken up in 13 easy-to-follow steps, Tejvan shares his observations on how to prepare your site for Digg and how to focus on the content of your articles, the look of your blog and build a genuine interest in social networks.
  Afterwards he followed up this post with another article, which is questioning and reflecting on
  Is it worth Trying to Get On Digg?

• How To Get Onto Digg’s Front Page in 8 steps by Jacob Cass

  Ever wondered what are the sure-fire techniques on reaching that coveted #1 spot on Digg? Jacob will not only share the secrets he uncovered in his study of Digg, but also will make you laugh so hard you’ll never look at the Digg’s front page articles without finding them hilariously ridiculous ever again.

• Experience with Digg by Dexter

  This is one of those no-luck-with-Digg-whatsoever articles which actually tell the truth about this social networking site.

• I’m Really Not a Digg Fan by Karen Zara

  Now you too can join Digg’s NoFan Club, just head over to Karen’s post and share your reasons for not being Digg’s fan in the comments. You know how it is – it’s so much better to talk to a soul mate who can relate and understand what you’re going through.

• What is the best social media website and why? by Jacob Cass

  Now, who could know that only two weeks after writing his humorous and unflattering post about Digg, Jacob, who desperately wanted to experience the Digg effect at least once, would finally write an article that received staggering 2985 diggs and 365 “loving” comments on Digg? See? It could happen to you too. So to prepare yourselves for reaching Digg’s frontpage, be sure to read Jacob’s analysis of the Digg’s aftermath.
  And if you would like to read more comparative articles on various social media sites, you can also check out my own experience with reaching Digg’s and Reddit’s frontpages.

• Redditers – What They Tend to Do? by A u d e e

  If you’re like me and still didn’t quite figure out how Reddit works and how to tackle that site, be sure to check Audee’s article, you will definitely learn more than a thing or two from there.

• Can You Dig Digg? by Vivien

  This is where I contemplate about 8 things that I especially don’t understand about Digg and the obsession with it. If you have answers to my questions there, I would really appreciate to read them, otherwise please share what is it that you can’t quite get about Digg or what is it that annoys you about it, or on the contrary – makes your to be one of its loyal fans and power diggers?

Thanks to everyone who joined us in this small endeavour. Don’t miss my Friday post, where I’ll feature the submissions from my project colleagues, who received articles about 17 other social networking sites, as well as award the Top 5 bloggers-partners whose group writing projects were the most successful ones.

It is easy to get overwhelmed by hundreds of various social networking sites that seem to be growing like mushrooms after rain, each one claiming to be the next big thing that human society won’t be able to live without. Some of them manage to get thousands and even millions of followers, sometimes addicts who indeed can’t see themselves surviving another day without the dose of their favourite cup of social java.

For some of us social media presented the ways to express ourselves, make friends, escape the troubles of the real world or simply feed our lifelong desire to learn. For others social media became the perfect tool in growing and conducting business. I’ve always been curious to find out how do they work that out and how they can be active on so many social networking sites, yet still flourish in business, where do they find time for such an active social life online in addition to their dynamic life offline? It’s not a secret that it’s the effective networking that brings to most businesses the success they never dreamed of achieving.

That is why I thought of interviewing Rastin Mehr, a successful entrepreneur, talented developer and an open source advocate. Sometimes it seems to me that no matter what networking event is happening in Vancouver, Rastin is there – either sponsoring it, or organizing or simply participating and building his ever expanding circle of contacts. He is an avid user of social media sites, and that’s what I wanted to learn more from him about. Besides running his own business, an Internet Technology Solutions company, he’s also a Development Work Group member in the Joomla project. Last year he partnered with Jen Duguay, the founder of Tazzu, to turn that forum into one of the most popular online business, technology, and knowledge networking communities in Vancouver.

V: Rastin, which of the social networking sites do you use on a regular basis?

R: Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tazzu.

V: How about Twitter, Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon ?

R: Oh, sure I use del.icio.us too, but not the social aspects of it. I have installed a Facebook application for del.icio.us, so when I add a bookmark it shows on my Facebook profile. I have registered with the StumbleUpon but haven’t had a chance to actively use it. I’ve opened an account on Twitter, but haven’t been using it yet. There are just so many of them, and so little time. I suppose that is becoming a problem pretty soon – so many social networks to keep track of.

Facebook

V: Do you use Facebook daily? Which other Facebook applications do you find the most useful and benefit from?

R: At least 3-4 times a day. I use Facebook apps that bring some actual value for me, in terms of communication or organizing events. To me that is the good part of Facebook in general, the utility aspects of it. I use Facebook groups, events, pages. I like Flog Blog, because when I update my blog it gets announced in my facebook news feed; photos, posted items, my LinkedIn Profile. One of my most favorite Facebook apps is the Flickr Photosets.

V: What if you receive a request from friends on your FB to activate another facebook app: to compare tastes, rate movies, become the best friend?

R: I just ignore them. I’ve noticed the best all those apps do is to slow down and clutter up my page.

V: How do you find which Facebook apps to use?

R: Sometimes I actively search for an application that I might need. I also check out my friends’ profiles and see what useful apps they are using. I have this intense desire to interlink all the social networks that I am involved with to each other.

V: I know you’ve attended the FacebookCamp in Vancouver, what was the most interesting thing about it?

R: The most valuable and interesting find was my current business associate and partner Ash Sanieyan from PeerGlobe. He was demoing his Facebook app (Class Talk). We met and talked afterwards, and since then have been working together 10 hours a day 6 days a week, mostly at the same desk.

V: I remember you once told me that all your clients use Facebook, otherwise they won’t be your clients, is it always the case?

R: Well not ALL of them use Facebook but most of them do. We develop custom CMS and Social Media, so it would make sense that our clients be familiar with those type of media beforehand to see the value in our services and products or else it would be a very cost and time intensive process to educate those who aren’t using social media technologies yet.

V: Did you have many people approaching you to do business with them via Facebook or do you have LinkedIn for that?

R: Sometimes yes, but they often use Facebook or LinkedIn to learn more about us or find out if they have any common friends with us. Those factors do count in creating more trust. Nobody wants to eat at a restaurant with an empty parking lot. I think Facebook or LinkedIn make really good replacements for CRM applications used by traditional companies.

V: How about you? Do you use Facebook or LinkedIn to get clients?

R: Yes we do use social media to do a background check on our clients. Clients that aren’t somehow in our network of friends are considered high risk, so we need to be more careful doing business with them. Having the right chemistry, a history, and common network of friends, all contribute to the success of a project or business deal.

V: That’s very interesting. Did you actually have a case of declining the work with a potential client who didn’t belong to your “circle of trust”?

R: We did actually pulled away from a few deals, because we didn’t have the right gut feeling about those clients. Not that they weren’t trustworthy, we just didn’t have enough history and common friends to get into projects like those together. In that case we prefer to break a project into smaller stages and create the opportunity to gradually build a history and trust between us.

LinkedIn

V: How are you using LinkedIn on a daily basis, besides updating your profile and checking on potential clients?

R: I use LinkedIn maybe once a day. The level of activity there isn’t as high as FB at least in my network of contacts: mainly to expand my existing network of contacts. And I must admit I kind of like LinkedIn’s Q&A – it is like sitting in the boardroom of traditional companies and eavesdropping on what the old school managers think about the current state of Interent industry. Traditionally having that kind of close encounter required knowing a friend, who knew a friend, who knew a friend within a corporation

V: You mentioned expanding your “existing network of contacts”… what are the different methods that you use in achieving that?

R: I go to networking events and make friends on other social networks such as Flickr or FB, and also add them on the LinkedIn. If I have a significant number of common friends with someone I don’t hesitate to send out an unsolicited request to join their network of contacts. Some of my contacts are people I know through my activities in the open source world. Bottom line: good LinkedIn contacts are the ones that I have some sort of history with. When I receive a new business inquiry the first thing I do I look up the sender in the LinkedIn and Facebook

V: Would you characterize LinkedIn as a more corporate way of doing business, while Facebook is a more casual one?

R: LinkedIn is (and was) modeled after the corporate structure, because it prohibits free user interactions by default – which is a paradox, and it is still kind of rigid. LinkedIn is partially doing the job in combination with Facebook. I think part of the success of LinkedIn was because of Facebook. They’ve even copied some of the FB features recently if you have noticed – mainly how they reorganized their User Interface, and added user avatars and User status update “what are you working on?”. But in general, I think the LinkedIn creators had more money than imagination.

Flickr

V: Ok, now it’s time for Flickr: how long you’ve been using it? Do you use it daily as well?

R: My most favorite of all social networks that is. I’ve been using it for 2 years I think. I use it every hour as a way to reduce my stress, or trigger my imagination.

V: So how do you use it, besides uploading photos, can you give me some examples, please?

R: Photography is my main hobby, and looking at other photographs is a way to reduce my daily stress. I use it for pleasure, for organizing and showcasing my photographs, and making lots of friends, and reading people’s comments. I’ve learned many new photographic techniques and concepts just by looking at other people’s works.

V: How do you go about deciding which photographers to check out?

R: I have a preference, I mainly do glamour, Jazz, street, architecture and interiors photography, and display some of my fashion drawings and illustrations on Flickr too. So people who inspire me in any of those fields become my contacts, and friends of those people often have the same taste as I do, so it becomes a recursive process. Every once in a while I decide to drop a contact, based on the quality of their work and activities, so my list of contacts gets constantly refined.
I also use Flickr as a marketing tool.

V: How do you use Flickr as a marketing tool?

R: First, I like the fact that I can upload and organize all my pictures in one place and then link to them from other websites ( blogs, forums, social networks ). For example when I update my Flickr account, my Facebook profile displays a news item letting all my contacts know that I’ve just uploaded new pictures on my Flickr account. A lot of my clients know me through my photography. It is amazing how many software development projects I have received in the past few years, because some clients found my photography interesting.

When we organize or sponsor events I usually take lots of photographs and upload them on Flickr and Facebook, so people could see us busy at work. I think it is important for developers, designers and architects to document their work at every stage using whatever medium they are comfortable with. It inspires other people, attracts potential partners and clients. It costs next to nothing, yet more effective than many traditional means of advertisement and marketing, not to mention that it is loads of fun and fuels my addiction to photography. I think services such as blogs, YouTube, or Flickr make the costly traditional marketing and advertisement methods obsolete.

V: Are there any social networking sites that you personally consider as a waste of time?

R: No, but I’m sure soon there will be technologies available for people to aggregate different services in one place. I’ve never signed up with MySpace, but I’m sure it has some value for some people. I have seen many copycat social networks. Many sales and marketing people are throwing money building empty shells of so called social networks, and hope to populate them with users using traditional marketing methods ( i.e. advertisement or promotions ), which I think is quite naive.

V: Yes, there are definitely many copycats, but there are some that raise the bar and create an interesting site.

R: It is an evolutionary process – many new social networking sites will be build and some will be successful, the rest will be wiped off by natural selection. As someone who offers social media services and development, I think the best way to learn the concept of a new online community is to join in and play along for a while.

V: What advice you would give to someone who’s just starting to get involved with social media?

R: Not to be afraid if they don’t know the rules of the game. Just play along in small steps, and learn from other people. The ability to interact with other people and make friends will soon be as important as any other social skill allowing to earn a living, make friends, or life partners. So it is worth investing some time into it.

V: Thank you so much, Rastin. Got lots of valuable tips from you.

R: Awesome, thank you very much. That was fun.

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed reading this interview as much as I did. How do you use social media sites for growing your business? Please share with us your experience either via comments or by participating in our Social Media Mega Project. The deadline for that is this Saturday, March 22^nd, so don’t miss it, please.

I was trying to come up with an appealing title for this post when I realized that I’ve been badly brainwashed by the overwhelming number of blogs that bombard us with their top-notch marketable headlines. I’m not saying that headlines like Become a Blogging Wizard – 6 Lessons from Harry Potter or Top 5 Tips For Success in a Crowded Niche don’t work, on the contrary – they get readers flocking to those articles like bees to flowers. But have you noticed that some of those headlines are several times longer than Hemingway’s shortest ever story that was comprised of only six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

The biggest argument behind the need in writing such “killer” headlines is to get noticed, to stand out in a crowd. Perhaps that was true a year or two ago, but now, thanks to Brian Clark, Digg and other high-profiled bloggers and social media sites, everyone is molding their post titles in the same fashion. As a result many readers are getting so prone to those headlines that bloggers have started experimenting with some outrageous mumbo jumbo twists in grabbing people’s attention. In the end we get nothing but catchy though easily forgettable headlines, scannable articles that were written in 20 minutes and can be read in 20 seconds. The same is true for the magazine headlines that the very same Brian Clark advises us to learn from.

Fortunately there are still bloggers out there that don’t follow the herd and direct their work towards a production of highly valuable and mostly original content rather than stating obvious things in an i-bet-you-didn’t-know-that-did-you manner.

I’m afraid to think about how some bloggers who are on a quest for reaching the Digg’s front page with every article they manage to publish would’ve titled Andy Rutledge’s brilliant piece titled Design Psychology or Daniel Mall’s reassuring article Design by Comfort, or John Boardley’s concise straight to the point blueprint A Guide to Web Typography. Probably something like “The Eight Critical Principles In Achieving Perfection In Design”, and “How To Appear To Be An Artist When You Can’t Even Draw”, and “Are You Forgetting About The Four Crucial Doctrines In Web Typography?” respectively, or something along those lines.

So rather than going with “The Most Important Essence of Social Media” or “Connecting People Is What Matters The Most”, I decided to call this post simply “Connecting People”. After all if it worked for Nokia, one of the most recognized leaders in telecommunication in the world, why should it fail for me? Ever since Ove Strandberg has coined this advertising slogan for Nokia, the company has made its name precisely for its ability to Connect People.

Initially I was planning on writing about the social media, blogging including, and talk about one of the fundamental principles of Web 2.0 – connecting people, point out to you that the platinum sponsor of the last year’s Web 2.0 Summit was non other than Nokia with its slogan Connecting People. But then I got sidetracked with this how-to-title-this-post business.

On the other hand, I haven’t really changed the original direction for this article. I wanted to remind everyone, myself including, why we’re all here, what made O’Reilly and MediaLive International to announce the arrival of Web 2.0 in 2004. Of course, there are more characteristics of Web 2.0 than just user interactivity, services and rich user experiences. You can read all about What Is Web 2.0 from Tim O’Reilly himself. But I’ve been noticing a dangerous trend in Web 2.0 or whatever the current version of Web this is. The trend of selling. Everything from selling the brand to selling the article with its headline to selling every possible pixel of the remaining whitespace on the site.

It seems to me that in a hasty chase for the increased traffic numbers, comments and subscribers on our blogs we’re forgetting about the most vital block of the Web structure – about connecting with people, not with the numbers that represent people, but with each other as individuals.

So next time we start writing an article or devising a headline for our blog post, let’s not think about how to attract a crowd, but rather how to express your thoughts in a way that other people can relate to and connect with, let’s reflect on how our contribution can make the blogiverse a better and more inviting place to be for everyone, not just for the chosen few.

Ever since I’ve heard about Digg I was trying to figure out what is it about this social networking site that created such a buzz in the blogging world. So I’ve set up an account for myself over a year ago and tried to dig this site. I’m sorry to say but I just couldn’t get all that excited about it, except perhaps on one occasion, when a post with the final results from my first group writing project on Sources of Inspiration was dugg to the front page.

At first I eagerly started reading different how-to articles about Digg, checked out their cool labs, watched the incoming posts change with the speed of light, studied a few profiles. But after a few days I abandoned Digg for quite some time, only to come back to it occasionally. Then I started getting some shouts from friends, digging the recommended posts and the articles that I found interesting on the Web. But I still couldn’t understand what motivates some digg users to spend countless hours digging the web in search for some digg-worthy pages and build their profiles?

I still can’t comprehend that drive. Can you? There are a few other things that I can’t understand about Digg:

1. Duplicate Submission

How difficult is it to check whether the submitting URL has already been stored in Digg’s database? Why is it every time when I digg a new post, I have to go through a list of previous submissions only because Digg “suspects” that my story has already been dugg before? How come I don’t have to go through that additional checkup with StumbleUpon – whenever I give thumbs up to a page that hasn’t appeared on SU before, I get prompted to fill out the details, otherwise I don’t have to do any extra clicking – that page got my stumble.

2. Limited Categories

Is it so hard to add more categories to Digg? What if the article I’m digging is on Social Media, what category should I pick for it? It doesn’t belong under the Design, nor under News or Technology or Education, or is it? I’m not suggesting to duplicate all hundred categories from StumbleUpon, but a more intuitive approach to classification is in order, don’t you think?

3. Deadly Traffic

I have to admit I had an exhilarating experience watching the incoming traffic numbers when my post here got dugg. Fortunately my server had no problems handling it. Most other sites do crash under the digg-attack. But it’s not all about the numbers. Compared to the traffic from other social networking sites (stumbleupon, del.icio.us, reddit in particular), Digg’s traffic is dead after only a couple of days, RSS feed count drops back as fast as it jumps high, digg users hardly stay on the site longer than it takes them to scan the article.

And all the effort it requires to reach Digg’s front page to get that traffic? On average it takes over a hundred diggs for the article to get dugg to the top. If you take into an account all those hurdles an article has to go through to get those coveted diggs, you may start wondering – shouldn’t I just concentrate on my readers who favour StumbleUpon, since even their ten thumbs up will already bring me a nice quality steady traffic from StumbleUpon?

4. Belittling Comments

I absolutely cannot grasp the purpose of those cynical and insulting comments on Digg. Once again compared to the reviews on StumbleUpon it’s like all the Hydes are gathered together over at Digg, while Dr. Jekylls prefer to hang out and express their thoughts on StumbleUpon.
Did you also notice that strange effect when the more negative comments a submission gets, the more diggs it receives?

5. Unwritten Rules

The things I hate the most about the digg are all those unofficial rules that spread all over the Web: rules like “don’t submit your own posts to Digg”, or “if you digg one article, you should stay on the site a bit longer and digg some other submissions”. Why is it that every post published on Digg’s Blog by Kevin Rose gets thousands of diggs? Why is it that after awhile all Digg headlines start resembling each other, and still bloggers get advice on how to come up with the titles that would attract Digger’s attention?

6. Digg Toolbar anyone?

One of the things I like about StumbleUpon is how easy it is to stumble a post or browse for other stumbled posts. Whoever designed that StumbleUpon bar was usability genius. How come that nobody has come up with a similar toolbar for Digg? There are several add-ons, and that Google Gadget for digg, but none of them are as intuitive and simple to use as SU.

I’ve recently installed two Firefox add-ons for Digg: Smart Digg Button and Digg Firefox Extension. The first one adds either the number of diggs for the current page on Firefox status bar or the words Digg This and takes you to Digg to submit that story. The second one adds a separate section for Digg in the Firefox menu bar, with some extra options like seeing the recent comments, diggers, or the top stories. In either cases I have to be logged in to Digg to cast my vote, unlike with StumbleUpon that logs me on SU whenever I launch my browser.

7. What’s the reward?

What is so rewarding to be part of Digg’s elite – Top 100 diggers? If it’s all about power and recognition, is it really worth it? To me the status of top diggers resembles the one of a celebrity who gets bombarded by paparazzi and fans who want a piece of that star light: everyone all of sudden wants to befriend the top digger and start sending shouts, or simply copying every move he makes. What’s so rewarding about that?

8. What’s with the obsession?

And why so many of us are still obsessed with Digg? With so many new social networking sites on the horizon, how long will that obsession and Digg itself last? What is it that you like about Digg? Is there anything that you don’t like about it? How do you benefit from being active on Digg? How do you stay active on Digg?

I would love to read your thoughts about Digg. You can either share them in the comments below or whip up an article and submit to the Social Media Mega Project. Oh, and if you would like to befriend me on Digg, feel free to do so. Perhaps together we’ll be able to dig Digg better.

At the end of last year I’ve announced a new kind of group writing project in the blogiverse – a collaborative Social Media Mega Project that would unite 10 bloggers from all over the world to organize and host a GWP on their blogs dedicated to the chosen social media site(s). All participating blogs (including myself) are launching those projects on January 21.

Take a look and see which social media site you’re interested in and would like to submit your entry to. Together we’re covering 19 social networking sites, so you’re bound to find something that appeals to you.

• del.icio.us. Host: Aaron Stroud at On Financial Success
• Facebook. Host: Ina at Inspiring Wear
• Flickr & Zooomr (or anything photography related). Host: Brian Auer at Epic Edits
• Twitter, LinkedIn. Host: Isabella Mori at Change Therapy and Alphablogs
• StumbleUpon, YouTube, MySpace. Host: Karen Zara at a1-fan-fun
• Sphinn. Host Simonne at All Tips And Tricks
• Second Life. Host Dandellion at Living in the Metaverse
• Mixx, Propeller (formerly known as Netscape), Squidoo. Host: Pearl at Fresh Perspectives
• Sk*rt, Blogging Zoom, Bvibes. Host: JHS at Colloquium
• Technorati. Host: Monica at Me Like The Interweb
• Digg and Reddit. Host: Vivien at Inspiration Bit

Yes, I am organizing a group project to collect all your thoughts and experience with Digg and Reddit. I’ve previously shared with you my observations about Digg and Reddit after having two of my posts on their front pages. I have to confess though that I was never an active user of Digg nor Reddit, even though at the beginning of my blogging “career” I desperately wanted my posts to reach the coveted spots on their front pages. There were many articles written about Digg, not so much about Reddit, and I was reading them, hoping to get helpful insights on what makes those sites “tick”. Right now I’m not that desperate anymore, but I’m still curious to discover more “secrets” about these two social networking moguls.

Since no one else expressed an interest in these two sites, I’ve decided to challenge myself and within a month learn as much as possible about Digg and Reddit by becoming an active user on those sites and sharing with you all my observations. I am also pleading to everyone to share your personal experience and thoughts about Digg and Reddit and participate in this project. The rules are very simple:

1. Write a post on your blog and share with us how do you integrate Digg and Reddit into your blogging, work, tell us about your good or bad experience, how would you compare these social networking sites with others, what do you like or don’t like about them, how did you benefit from becoming a frequent user of those sites, what secrets have you learned about them, what tips or warnings would you like to inform others about?
2. Contact me with your name, email and a permalink to your post. If you don’t have your own blog, you can always write a guest post on my blog, or simply send me your thoughts by contacting me in person.
3. Once I collect the links from all participants and publish them on my blog, you can write another post and link to either all or only your favourite articles by other bloggers.
4. You are allowed to contribute only one article per project/site. You are more than welcome to visit other participating blogs, listed above, that host projects dedicated to the different social media sites and take part in those projects by submitting your articles about other social networking sites.

The deadline is Friday, February 22^nd.

I will collect all your contributions and publish the results with the links to your articles/sites on Monday, February 25^th.

I look forward to your entries. Please, support other participating bloggers by heading over to their blogs and contributing to their social media projects. Good luck to my fellow bloggers-organizers, and thanks to everyone in advance for your interest and promotion of this collaborative social media mega project.

Prizes

This time it’s the project organizers, who’d be eligible for prizes for their hard work of hosting and promoting the projects on their blogs. As most of you remember, I promised to share the $100 prize I won over at DailyBlogTips. I’ll be also adding to that another $25 that my entry to AllTipsAndTricks project has won. I’ve decided to split it up evenly into five $25 prizes that I will award to the Top 5 bloggers whose projects were the most successful ones in terms of the number and the quality of entries.

UPDATE: This Project has been Extended. Here are the new Dates:

• Start Date: Monday, January 21st
• End Date: Saturday, March 22nd
• Results Publication Date: Monday, March 24th
• Final Collaborative Results will be published on Inspiration Bit on Friday, March 28th

Earlier in December I asked all of you Would You Participate In A Collaborative Social Media Project? Thanks to everyone who has responded so far. This group writing project (and please, if you can think of a better name for it, do let me know) will be different from all others because it will unite several bloggers who will host mini-projects on their own blogs and then all participants will join forces by putting together all the pieces to publish the Ultimate list of resources on Social Media sites.

The rules and conditions

Since this mega project is spread over several blogs, a strict organization is vital here. Hence, all hosting blogs will start and end their projects at the same time:

• Start Date: Monday, January 21^st
• End Date: Friday, February 22^nd
• Results Publication Date: Monday, February 25^th
• Final Collaborative Results will be published on Inspiration Bit on Friday, February 29^th

Each of the partnering bloggers will announce their projects for the chosen social media site(s) on January 21, and list the following rules for project participants:

1. Write a post on your blog and share with us how do you integrate this social media site (fill in with your selected site/service here) into your blogging, work, tell us about your good or bad experience, how would you compare this social networking site with others, what do you like or don’t like about it, how did you benefit from becoming a frequent user of this site, what secrets have you learned about it, what tips or warnings would you like to inform others about?
2. Contact me (the host of that particular project) with your name, email and a permalink to your post. If you don’t have your own blog, you can always write a guest post on my blog, or simply send me your thoughts by contacting me in person.
3. Once I collect the links from all participants and publish them on my blog, you can write another post and link to either all or only your favourite articles by other bloggers.
4. You are allowed to contribute only one article per project/site. You are more than welcome to visit other participating blogs that host projects dedicated to the different social media sites and take part in those projects by submitting your articles about other social networking sites.

Project Promotion

All hosting bloggers are encouraged to promote their projects as much as possible. Each of you will get a head start from Inspiration Bit and each other when we promote every blogger that hosts one of the participating projects. Every blogger must include to his/her group project(s) the links to other project participants. This cross-promotion would allow readers to be informed about other social networking projects that they can contribute to.

Prizes

This time it’s the project organizers, who’d be eligible for prizes for their hard work of hosting and promoting the projects on their blogs. As most of you remember, I promised to share the $100 prize I won over at DailyBlogTips. I’ll be also adding to that another $25 that my entry to AllTipsAndTricks project has won. I’ve decided to split it up evenly into five $25 prizes that I will award to the Top 5 bloggers whose projects were the most successful ones in terms of the number and the quality of entries.

If there is anyone interested in sponsoring this mega project, that would be awesome, I could award bigger prizes. Simply contact me to get the things rolling.

Who is hosting What?

Currently the following social media sites are reserved to be hosted by these amazing bloggers:

• del.icio.us. Host: Aaron Stroud from On Financial Success
• Facebook. Host: Ina from Inspiring Wear
• Flickr & Zooomr. Host: Brian Auer from Epic Edits
• Twitter, LinkedIn. Host: Isabella Mori from Change Therapy and Alphablogs
• StumbleUpon, YouTube, MySpace. Host: Karen Zara from a1-fan-fun
• Sphinn. Host Simonne from All Tips And Tricks
• Second Life. Host Dandellion from Living in the Metaverse
• Mixx, Netscape, Squidoo. Host: Pearl from Fresh Perspectives
• Sk*rt, Blogging Zoom, Bvibes. Host: JHS from Colloquium

There are still some other social media sites left waiting to be claimed and hosted:

• Digg
• Reddit
• Newsvine
• Technorati
• Ma.gnolia
• Furl
• any other site you can think of

You do not have to be an expert in any of those social networking sites. You’ll have almost a month to get acquainted with them and host a project, asking your readers to contribute articles with their experience about that particular social media site.

So, if you are interested in this collaboration, if you’re at least a bit tempted by my prizes, if you want to get some extra publicity for your blog, or if you were always thinking about enriching your social network but never had time for it nor motivation, now you at least will get the latter, as for the time – it’s a precious commodity for everyone nowadays, who doesn’t wish to squeeze in more hours in a day. What I found working for me is a paradox: the more things I’ve got on my plate, the more I manage to accomplish. Perhaps you could try the same, and add this project to your ever growing tasks list? ;-)
You can either contact me or post a comment here what social media site you’re interested in hosting on your blog before January 14, and I will add your name to the above list of hosts. I too will be hosting a mini project on my site, and will choose whatever social media site is left unclaimed. Don’t worry, I’ll exclude myself from the prize pool ;-)

Please, note, that by organizing these social media projects my goal is not to promote them for everyone to use, on the contrary, my intention is to uncover the benefits and drawbacks of using those sites and let the readers decide on which social media site is most suitable for their business or life style, and help them to get a head start on using those sites.

If you have any questions or suggestions about this mega project, please do not hesitate to ask. I look forward to collaborating with all of you, fine bloggers, in the new year. And those of you who will only participate in this mega project by contributing one-two articles to a particular site of interest, I would really appreciate if you too will spread the word about all the sub-projects of this mega blogging collaboration.

Wishing you a Wonderful, Successful, Healthy, Inspiring and Happy New Year!!!!

For quite some time I wanted to host a group writing project dedicated to people’s experience with social media sites. The power and popularity of sites like YouTube, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook grew and continues to rise exponentially on a daily basis. Some of them even brought new verbs into our lexicon: digging, facebooking, flickring, while twittering now applies not only to birds.

There are many resources and articles dedicated to different aspects of social networking sites. SEOmoz.org has put together a well organized list of 30 popular social media sites with a practical break down of their characteristics and tactics. Virtualhosting.com collected a handy list with the top 100 social networking blogs.

Despite all those resources we still find ourselves looking for answers, tips and solutions to a better integration of some of those social media sites with our life and work. That’s why I thought of hosting a group writing project and inviting everyone to contribute to it with their personal experience with some of those sites. This way we can all share and learn from each other instead of spending too much time on figuring things out on our own, comparing and deciding which site would suit our life style better than the other.

However instead of hosting one large project dedicated to dozens of social media sites, how about organizing a collaborative group project by splitting it between several bloggers who would host a project specializing on a specific niche or a social networking site. All those projects would start and end at the same time and their hosts would join the forces together and compile a categorized list with all the entries from every project.

I’ve already talked to two bloggers who are willing to host the individual projects on their blogs: Simon from Yeepage.com would organize the group project dedicated to StumbleUpon (in fact, he’s already collecting articles from his readers written about StumbleUpon) and Brian from Epic Edits has agreed to invite his readers to contribute tips on photography related social networking sites like Flickr and Zooomr.

Now all we need is to find who else is interested in this collaboration? Here’s the list of the remaining popular social media sites that I’d like to include in this project:

• Social bookmarking: del.icio.us, Newsvine and Sphinn.com
• News aggregation: Digg, Reddit, Slashdot, Netscape
• Social networking: Facebook (personally, I’m not too keen on including MySpace here, how about you?)
• Presence applications: Twitter
• Video sharing: YouTube
• Virtual reality: Second Life (dandellion: hint-hint ;-) )

If you think that there are other social media sites that are worth including to this list, please, let me know.

Quoting Wikipedia: “Social media uses the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to connect information in a collaborative manner”. So what do you think of a new type of a group writing project that’s dedicated to the topic of social media, by spreading it among several other blogs, collaboratively connecting them and the collected information?
Let me know, please, if you’re interested in taking on a group project dedicated to any of the sites above? I look forward to reading your ideas and thoughts about this “project of projects” (as Brian called it).

With so many social networking sites on the Web I’m sure everyone is curious about which one is a better promotional tool for blogs. So far I’ve experienced only the effects of the big four: Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and del.icio.us. I thought it would be beneficial to share my observations with others.

It all started with a Group Writing Project – 37 Sources of Inspiration that was dugg to Digg’s front page on May 27, which resulted in over 17,000 visits in one day.

The next big wave of traffic (over 18,000 visits) came on July 7th, when my two-months old post 16 Best-Loved Font Bits In Web Design that was featured on Blogging Pro hit Reddit’s home page.

Both Digg and Reddit brought a secondary traffic from StumbleUpon and del.icio.us. Hence my analysis and comparison of those fours sites based on my personal experience with them.

Digg

TRAFFIC: Digg’s crazy traffic lasted 4 days, starting in the evening (PST) and peaking on the following day. It got kicked out the 1st post within a few hours, from the 1st page within about 15 hours, but my blog was still getting lots of traffic from Digg’s page2 and from digg.com/design, where it was featured for over 3 days.

DAILY: It also boosted my daily traffic from the average of 400 daily visits to 600-700.

RSS: The RSS feed count was trippled – from 101 to 379, but didn’t last very long, dropping to 224 on the following day and to 176 the day after, increasing the average RSS number to 160.

COMMENTS: The article itself didn’t receive any comments from diggers on this blog, but it got 38 comments on Digg’s page, most of them just some out of place jokes.

INCOMING LINKS: within hours of being at the #1 spot, my blog started receiving incoming links from other blogs, totaling to about 8 links.

SECONDARY: “37 sources of inspiration” was bookmarked by 295 people on del.icio.us, bringing another wave of traffic of over 1,500 page views. StumbleUpon has brought another 6,600 page views. Popurls added another 500 views. LifeHack linked to the project post as well, bringing 500 more page views to this blog.

Reddit

TRAFFIC: As you can see from the graph above July’s traffic caused by Reddit was even slightly higher than Digg’s in May. It also lasted longer, the blog was still getting about 100-200 visitors from reddit after a week of being on its front page, even though it was kicked out the homepage after 10 hours.

DAILY: After reaching the first spot on Reddit, the blog’s daily traffic increased from 600-700 to 900-1000 visits.

RSS: The RSS feed count was almost doubled – from 151 to 280. It dropped to 234 the next day, and to 216 on the following day, which became the new average RSS number for the blog.

COMMENTS: The article received only 23 comments on reddit, but about 10 comments on this blog during the first two days and another 10 followed within the first week. Some comments were tactless, others very positive, but overall pretty well researched and thought out.

INCOMING LINKS: It took a few hours longer than in a case with Digg for other blogs to start linking to my 16-bits article, nonetheless that post received about 10 incoming links

SECONDARY: “16 Best-Loved Font Bits” was bookmarked by 560 people on del.icio.us, bringing another 2,963 visits to the blog. StumbleUpon referred 6,282 visitors. Popurls pitched in with 1,169 new visits. The article has also received several votes on dzone.com (a digg like site for developers), bringing another 584 to the site. Also this post has originally received 16 diggs after it’s been published two months ago, but after appearing on Reddit’s front page, it received additional 42 diggs. However, 58 diggs didn’t make any difference for Digg. I think it’s because of the time between the original submission and the new wave.

Note, that all those traffic figures, RSS feed count and the number of incoming links are representing all sources, not just Digg and Reddit. Unfortunately, I cannot tell for sure if someone has subscribed to my blog coming from Digg or del.icio.us, Reddit or SU.

StumbleUpon and del.icio.us

As you could see from the figures above, StumbleUpon and del.icio.us both brought me lots of traffic. But I doubt that it would’ve happened on its own without being triggered by Digg and Reddit. When comparing visitors from SU and del.icio.us with Digg and Reddit, I’ll refer to my stats from Google Analytics.

StumbleUpon users were checking out 1.82 pages/visit on average, but staying only 2 seconds on the site – you can’t help but notice the love-to-click nature of SU users. The Bounce Rate (the percentage of single-page visits) for SU was 35.91%.

del.icio.us users were reading 1.32 pages per visit, but their average stay on the site was 5.5 seconds. The Bounce rate, however, was higher – 86.30%. Once featured on del.icio.us popular or design sections, both articles got a few hundreds more bookmarks: “37 sources of inspiration” are bookmarked by 563 people now (from 295 during the digg effect), and “16 best-loved fonts” are favourited by 790 people (an increase in 230 bookmarks after the big reddit wave).

Reddit users clicked on only 1.10 pages per visit, but staying a whopping 7 seconds on the site. However they also had the highest Bounce Rate – 94.56%.

Diggers were reading 1.22 pages per visit on average, and spending only 4 seconds on the site. However, due to the nature of the article, it was understandable, since they were checking out other 37 sources of inspiration, linked from my post. The Bounce Rate with diggers was 86.47%.

Summary

To summarize, both Reddit and Digg bring lots of traffic to the blog. I’m just happy that my server has managed to survive those attacks. Digg users prefer commenting on their site rather than at the actual source, and being quite nasty with their comments without contributing much to the topic, occasional words of wisdom though can be sometimes found even there. Reddit users like to comment both on reddit and the originating blog. Their comments are much more intelligent and targeted.

Digg’s traffic is one huge wave that doesn’t stay longer than a couple of days, while reddit’s wave takes more than a week to go back to the ocean. They both trigger several other secondary waves of traffic, however Reddit users tend to use del.icio.us more than diggers.

Diggers like to subscribe to the blogs in a big hurry, only to unsubscribe in large numbers on the following day, apparently never remembering why did they subscribe to so many blogs and feverishly cleaning out their RSS reader. Now, in my case, I didn’t post anything for a few days after the post was dugg, perhaps if another “killer” post followed the one that’s been dugg right away, the picture would’ve been different.
Reddit users like to get familiarized with the blog first, checking out posts by categories, and then decide whether to subscribe or not, which shows in a lower number of Subscriptions than Digg, but also the lower rate of RSS subscription removals, even though once again I didn’t post anything for a few days after being featured on reddit.

Traffic from StumbleUpon and del.icio.us tends to be on a rise for the first few days, and spreading thin but lasting longer for weeks after. But can you get all that traffic without Digg or Reddit triggers? I’ve had other posts bookmarked on del.icio.us, but none of them brought me that much traffic.

As I mentioned before those are just my observations based on my personal experience with the above mentioned sites. There’s also another very detailed and interesting analysis of Digg vs. StumbleUpon that’s worth checking.

I’d love to hear from you about your own experiences with the social networking and bookmarking sites. Which one was more effective for your site and why? How would you compare the “big four”?

P.S. Btw, for all of you on Mac, there’s a new Dashboard widget called Dashalytics that’s linked to your Google Analytics account, so you can track your stats with just one click to Dashboard.