Social Media News; Twitter, Facebook and More -

On a friendly meet yesterday, I had discussion about various social media sites with few of my friends. Most of us believed in Facebook and business of app building in it. Few had doubts about Twitter becoming a new Internet Trend for most online people. All agreed in Twitter’s big future, but hardly anyone felt the emergence of huge app building business around Twitter. Reasons –
1) Twitter is too much marketer friendly and marketers rule it
2) Twitter copies all successful features from the aps and integrates to its own site
3) People spend less time reading tweets; they instead spend more time tweeting

When we talked about StumbleUpon, everyone agreed that its a great and unique service but also an outdated one. After the Micro-blogging revolution by Twitter and Facebook, the relevance of StumbleUpon is gone. People hardly find any time for it. The people who Stumble today are the internet marketers searching for some interesting topic to Tweet.

Lastly we discussed about Digg.com. One of the investor told me recently about the inability of the Digg founders to find suitable buyers. He felt that only the internet marketers use Digg, and Digg is nothing but all spam created by SEO companies and their affiliates. Oooops!
When I share this with my friends, all of them agreed. Most of the articles that hit Digg front page are submitted by selected few powerful Diggers. These Diggers work for some companies. So most articles we find in Digg are not necessarily the best articles that people vote or Digg, but the articles that are intended and promoted.

I asked the guys on what they feel about India being the home to second largest numbers of Diggers (According to Alexa). They felt the statistics is obvious as India has one of the largest population of cheap SE Optimizers and Internet Marketers. Genuine use of Digg is minimal in the world, and is far less in India.

The other problem we identified with Digg is the lack of trust even with the Internet Marketers. Most of them get banned and Digg does not give reason for most cases. The only way to know the reason is by writing Digg about the ban; if you are lucky, you get a reply.
There is also no second chance with Digg. If you just become aggressive and keep on adding friends and digging (like you do in Twitter) for a week, there is good chance to be banned. Digg provides no second chance and none of us has heard of any account being unbanned. This is too rude.

I know for a fact that Twitter is more liberal and transparent in such cases. I have seen lots of account being suspended and un-suspended. There are also open rules in Twitter where a marketer develops a strategy for himself and develops his profile. Digg’s actions just give most people a feeling of being biased with selected few. It is just too closed and looks like a black box.

Few friends had feeling that Digg supports US folks and most powerful diggers are paid users. They have special privilege for spamming and doing forced promotion. I have no idea if this is true.

The other problem is with Digg’s unfriendliness with the Application Developers. The APIs are not open like in Twitter, and Digg has tried to cover the Digg Application Ecosystem itself (by building Digg Button and other Apps itself). Thus creating less friends. Small Application Ecosystem also limits innovation in the area. (in pic — Kevin Rose,Chairman, Digg)

Closing Thoughts

There is certainly some problem with Digg. I have noticed most articles in the front page coming from around 20 sites and this cannot be a coincidence. I have noticed for more than 3 months. This can be either the act of SPAM or Digg’s user base concentration.

Digg has also not grown significantly in last few years. And after the emergence of Twitter and Tweetmeme, its position as a site with most loved articles does not remain unchallenged. If I like an article, I Tweet before I Digg or Stumble. I have noticed this behavior in my friend circle too.

Digg’s relevance has decreased but the need is not yet finished. I feel if Digg opens its application platform (like LinkedIn did last week), there is still chance for Digg to come back good. It has to become a partner of Internet Marketers and not enemies. It can neither grow without a Social Media Ecosystem, nor without cleaning the SPAM.

Most importantly Digg needs to be transparent and should be a brand of trust. Then it can grow well, and will be chased by the buyers for sure.

Image Credit: bub.blicio.us, nuknuk7.wordpress.com and mediabistro.com