In case you missed our announcement on Think Vitamin earlier in the year, we’re giving every attendee the opportunity to spend an evening with some of the web’s finest at the Future of Web Apps Vegas (FOWA).

When you buy any pass (excluding the Video Pass) to FOWA, you will automatically be entered into the draw to attend our exclusive Speaker Dinner taking place during the conference. Not only that, but the winner will also receive free web hosting for life and two runners up will receive free hosting for a year!

The winner will be whisked away by the Carsonified team to a fabulous location and will spend the evening wining and dining with the likes of Jason Calacanis, Tony Hsieh, Kevin Rose and Tim O’Reilly to name just a few!

The prizes are all courtesy of our friends over at Media Temple who are hosting this years dinner – Thanks guys

The winners will be picked at random and announced on Monday 20th June. To be in with a chance of joining us simply register now.

Go to Source

Digg founder Kevin Rose has resigned from his role in the company, according to a report published on Friday by TechCrunch.

UPDATE: Rose has confirmed this news in a tweet, which reads in part, “I’ll continue advising Digg [and serve] on the board of directors and taping Diggnation (as I have been since [Matt Williams] joined).”

Rose founded Digg in December of 2004, and quickly saw the social news site become one of the hottest in the then burgeoning Web 2.0 space. Over the years, however, Digg’s prominence has declined, and Rose has spent less time with the company and more time on other projects, like the newsletter/podcast “Foundation.”

TechCrunch says that Rose is close to completing funding for a new startup.

Rumors of Rose’s departure from Digg have swirled around the echo chamber for months. In light of the various challenges faced by the company — including layoffs, management changes and plummeting traffic — we aren’t especially surprised to see Rose moving on.

Almost immediately after the launch of “New Digg” in August, users responded by revolting and leaving the service en masse. Competitors like Reddit and StumbleUpon have benefited from the user exodus, and though Digg has tried to realign its vision, it hasn’t had much success in winning back users.

We’ve reached out to Digg for comment and will update if we learn more.

More About: digg, kevin rose, startups

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Read more

Learn more about Rinnku.com in Dataopedia.com

Find out how much Rinnku.com is worth with Stimator.com

Have a business question? Ask Startups.com

Go to Source

It’s time for our best news of this week. We have a lot of graphic and web design, a bit of architecture, ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuff! So take a look at the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to keep you updated about what’s going on out there!

<!–break–>

We want to give a big thanks to our sponsors:
Wix, Taste of Ink Studios, Shutterstock,W3-Markup, P2H.COM, VectorStock™, inkd, Site24x7, Skwibble and SiteGrinder. A special mention to Media Temple for the excellent service and support with Abduzeedo!

You can keep sending me your suggestions via Twitter twitter.com/FabianoMe or twitter.com/abduzeedo, and include #abdz_best in the message.

This post is brought to you by WeGraphics.

Featured set of the week from WeGraphics:

Sketchbook Swirls and Curls

Also, all Abduzeedo users can get a 10% off on all WeGraphics premium account using the coupon code WG_ABDZ, check this out!

Friday 01/07

Engadget interviews 50 Cent: inside the mind of a hip-hop mogul techie

Ford unveils Focus Electric with MyFord Mobile smartphone integration

More iPad 2 rumors. Kevin Rose tells us what we already knew.

Quora Answers The Question: How Will You Avoid Becoming Yahoo Answers?

Hulu Plus is Coming to Android

Ask Unclutterer: Tips for moving in together

Vectorfunk Rorschach Poster Series. A…

Casa Cedeira – MYCC

I Shot The Serif / Vote for your favourite Sans-Serif typeface

DeadBuryDead

A Starbucks Polemical New logo

Duchesse – 20 bewitching photographies by Julie de Waroquier

30 Best Prints of 2010

Lego

Star Wars Complete Saga Blu-ray news: release in September, 30 hours of special features, available for preorder now (video)

LinkedIn reportedly preparing to go public this year

Skype acquires Qik, a video streaming service for a rumored $150 million

Thursday 01/06

4 things Apple needs to improve in the Mac App Store

Twitter For Mac Is Like Massively Multiplayer IM — Will It Alter Twitter Itself?

Apple Goes After The Parody @CeoSteveJobs Twitter Account

1 million apps downloaded from the Mac App Store in 24 hours

Inspiring Web Design

Why the Mac App Store Sucks [Downloads]

Victorinox Swiss Army debuts Slim, Slim Duo and Secure SSD USB drives, we go hands-on

Official Google Video Preview Of Android 3.0 Spied Briefly

Apple’s Mac App Store Opens With More Than 1,000 Apps

A Watch for Automotive Enthusiasts

AD Classics: Cathedral of Brasilia / Oscar Niemeyer

Barnes and Noble launches Nook kids iPad app

Microsoft Touch Mouse unveiled, available for $80 in June

Google shows off Android 3.0, the ‘Entirely for Tablet’ Honeycomb (video)

Drupal 7 Released, With Improved UI and Semantic Technology

7 Reasons Quora Could Be The Breakout Star of 2011

Wednesday 01/05

How Restaurants are using the iPad

Meet the LG Optimus Black, the “world’s thinnest smartphone”

Asus Announces A Family Of Upcoming Tablets and Slates

Deal Of A Lifetime: First Marriage Proposal On Groupon

Guinness – Dark Life

7 Cheap and Easy Home Office Improvements

For Sale: The House From Ferris Bueller

Guangzhou Opera House by Zaha Hadid Architects.

Urban Biophillic Pavilion / studio d’ARC

Advertising: Clever Automobile Ads

Cooper & Ford

Rio 2016 Polemical logo

Tuesday 01/04

The art and science of color forecasting

Web Design Predictions for 2011

O making of de “TRON: Legacy”

How to create accessible web app forms

Design a futuristic 2011 wallpaper

iPhone app Turns Your Daily Activities Into Stats

Are you a business or a company?

Why mobile apps will get you out of the house in 2011

Apple: Actually, $50 Billion Isn’t Cool Either. You Know What’s Cool? $300 Billion.

Twitter And Facebook Really Are Killing RSS (At Least For TechCrunch Visitors)

Monday 01/03

Dear Facebook, We Need Fun Photo Filters Now

Winnipeg Library Addition / Patkau Architects and LM Architectural Group

Casa Pez – Guz Architects

33 of Amazing and inspiring typography designs

Webkit Font Smoothing

35 New Clean & Minimalist Websites to Inspire You

The Creative Workspace: Kicking Cubicles to the Curb

The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People

Carlsberg: O (provável) melhor anúncio do mundo

Seven Technologies That Will Rock 2011

Facebook raises $500 million from Goldman Sachs; has $50 billion valuation

Go to Source

(more…)

© TFTS – Technology, Gadgets & Curiosities, 2011. | Permalink | No comment |
Add to del.icio.us

Go to Source

Visit Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/krose/~3/esL8DdetvKA/the-fforward-podcast-is-now-foundation-and-launches-today.html

Go to Source

When you buy a pass to Future of Web Apps Vegas 2011, you could be in with the chance to come along to our exclusive Speaker Dinner taking place during the conference. It’s a golden opportunity to hang out with the FOWA speakers all expenses paid!

Not only that but the winner will also receive free web hosting for life and two runners up will receive free hosting for a year! The winner will be whisked away by the Carsonified team to a fabulous location and will spend the evening wining and dining with the likes of Jason Calacanis, Gary Vaynerchuk, Kevin Rose and Tara Hunt to name just a few!

The prizes are all courtesy of the wonderful Media Temple who are hosting this years FOWA speaker dinner.

The winners will be picked at random and announced on Monday 31st January. To be in with a chance of winning register now.

Go to Source

Former Digg CEO Jay Adelson has joined location-based data startup SimpleGeo as CEO. He will also join the company’s board of directors.

SimpleGeo, which has increased its staff from four to 25 since January and raised $8.14 million in a Series A in May, offers a suite of sophisticated geo-data products for purchase. The service targets individual developers and businesses who want to immediately build or enhance location-based applications in minutes.

Among its employees are former Digg staffers Joe Stump (previously lead architect of Digg), designer Jeffrey Kalmikoff, engineers Ian Eure and Paul Lathrop, and product ambassador Nicole Williams.

SimpleGeo’s current CEO, Matt Galligan, will serve as the startup’s Chief Strategy Officer moving forward, he announced in a blog post.

Adelson resigned from Digg in April, shortly before the company released what’s proved to be a hugely unpopular site overhaul. Traffic has plummeted heavily since then. At a conference in September, founder Kevin Rose said he was “burned out” and refused to confirm that he would still be working at the company by the end of 2010. In mid-October, Digg named a new CEO; later that month, he announced that the startup would be cutting its staff from 67 to 42 — more than one-third of the total team — in an effort to become profitable again. Among the casualties was Publisher and Chief Revenue Officer Chas Edwards.

More About: digg, jay adelson, simplegeo

For more Startups coverage:

• Follow Mashable Startups on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Startups channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Chas Edwards, Digg’s publisher and chief revenue officer, announced Monday that he will be stepping down from his role shortly.

Edwards, who plans to take up a full-time position as Pixazza’s chief revenue officer and development publisher, will remain a strategic adviser to Digg — in particular, with Digg’s ad platform strategy, he said in a personal blog post.

Edwards joined Digg in June 2009 from Federated Media.

Digg has had a tough year, following the departure of CEO Jay Adelson in April, and the delayed release of what’s proved to be a hugely unpopular site overhaul. Traffic has plummeted heavily since then. At a conference in September, founder Kevin Rose said he was “burned out” and refused to confirm that he would still be working at the company by the end of 2010.

Digg appointed a new CEO earlier this month, who immediately apologized for some of the decisions made in the redesign and pledged to continue bringing back features that users miss.

More About: digg

For more Business coverage:

• Follow Mashable Business on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Business channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

If a recent poll from Digg founder Kevin Rose is any indication, Digg is considering bringing back the Bury button.

Earlier today, Rose tweeted a poll asking his follows if Digg should bring back the Bury feature. The Bury button was a popular feature before it was removed in the new version of Digg. It gave users the ability to vote down stories that they believed weren’t worthy of Digg’s front page.

The poll, which just closed, was overwhelmingly in favor of the return of the Bury feature. 69% of respondents (685 votes) said they wanted the feature back, while only 10% (215 votes) said it was better off gone. If you’re wondering about the other 21%, those votes went to the third poll choice, “Cats.” Meow.

After users revolted against the new Digg, the company has been working hard at bringing back some of the site’s old features, but it hasn’t affected the site’s rapid traffic decline.

Bringing back the Bury button, one of the most prominent features removed in the site’s revamp, could be instrumental in convincing its core users to return to Digg. Some of them have already moved on to Reddit and other social news platforms. There are risks involved in bringing back the feature (the Bury button could give power users more control over the site), but at this point Digg has little to lose .

More About: Bury, digg, Digg Button

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

Go to Source

Since Kevin Rose took the helm at Digg, the service hasn’t been introducing new features but killing old ones. First, Digg got rid of the DiggBar, and now a related feature has been (almost) shut down: the Digg URL shortener.

Although Digg calls this move an “update,” the shortener no longer works for any URLs except for the URLs of Digg stories. It’s an expected move, as Digg’s URL shortener was heavily criticized for hurting websites’ search rankings.

From the announcement: “As of May 17th, 2010, the Digg short URL feature will be available only for URLs that refer to stories submitted to Digg. Users will continue to be able to share their favorite Digg stories by generating a short URL via the ‘Share’ button. However, it will not be possible to generate a short URL for a web URL that does not refer to a submitted story on Digg. The ’shorturl.create’ method in Digg API will be deprecated as of that date.”

If you’ve used the Digg short URL feature in the past, you needn’t worry about your links, as all URLs previously shortened by Digg will continue to operate “beyond this date.”

Tags: digg, url shortener

Go to Source

There’s a major shakeup to report at Digg today: Jay Adelson is stepping down as CEO, effective immediately. Adelson will be replaced by Kevin Rose, who founded the site back in 2004 and has to much extent remained the face of the company through his role as co-host of online video show Diggnation.

In a statement to be released shortly, Adelson says that “the entrepreneurial calling is strong, and I am ready to incubate some new business ideas over the next twelve months. As the economy exits a very deep recession, I believe that it is an excellent time for new companies to develop.”

While we don’t yet know what those ideas might be, the news comes in the midst of a major overhaul at Digg. I talked to Adelson in-depth about the new Digg last month, who described his company’s plans to reinvent itself as an aggregator of what people are sharing around the web. Since then, the company has moved swiftly into mobile, unveiling both iPhone and Android apps in recent weeks.

Now, execution of the company’s ambitious game plan falls squarely on Rose, who says of the shakeup that he is “excited to be taking on the role of Chairman and acting CEO, driving Digg forward on our promise to enable social curation of the world’s content and the conversation around it.” Nonetheless, this news comes as a huge surprise given the timing.

We’re hearing that the company held an all-hands morning moments ago to share the news with employees. More to come …

Jay Adelson Statement

Got some news. After five years, forty million users, and an amazing ride, I’ve decided to step down as CEO of Digg. With the new Digg getting ready to launch, Digg Ads doing well, our sales force growing, our hiring ramping, and the company maturing well beyond its startup phase, I feel that now is the right time.

The entrepreneurial calling is strong, and I am ready to incubate some new business ideas over the next twelve months. As the economy exits a very deep recession, I believe that it is an excellent time for new companies to develop. Of course, I will continue to serve as an adviser to Digg. In the interim, Kevin has agreed to step in as Chairman and CEO.

I’d like to thank Kevin, the Digg staff and the Digg community for their support, insight and, most of all, their loyalty in turning Digg
into the force that it is today.

Kevin Rose Statement

I want to be the first to thank Jay for the last five years of amazing work. You’ve been a great friend and mentor, we wouldn’t be where we are today if it wasn’t for you.

While I’ll miss working w/Jay day-to-day I am excited to be taking on the role of Chairman and acting CEO, driving Digg forward on our promise to enable social curation of the world’s content and the conversation around it. We’ve been super busy on the product side getting ready for the upcoming Digg redesign and delivering our mobile apps for the iPhone and Android.

Thank you very much for your on-going support of Digg, I’m truly excited about the next five years, big things coming!

Tags: digg, jay adelson, kevin rose

Go to Source

"We’re making some drastic changes, but they’re much-needed drastic changes," he told The Telegraph. "People are going to be shocked at some of the directions we’re taking. You have to be comfortable with completely tearing down and throwing away a bunch of ideas."

"In the next version of Digg you’ll see stories being presented to you in a more real-time nature, especially stories that your friends have touched. It will not be just about Digg.com, but also embracing all the content that your friends touch on other websites. It’s about being that place where people say, ‘I’m going to take a look at Digg because it provides me insight into what’s trending, what’s popular, what’s hot from all over these different places where people exchange information’."

While that certainly doesn’t reveal too much about what Digg is going to look like (or when it is going to look like tha for that matter), it does look like Digg is going to change quite a bit, and that can be dangerous for a site that is largely focused on users, as Digg is.

This isn’t the first time Digg has made changes by any means. In fact, they seem to make them fairly often, but it sounds like they may be changing how Digg operates completely, and the experience that users have grown accustomed to. It will be very interesting to see just how drastic the changes are.

Digg recently launched new extensions for Firefox and Chrome, and over the past year it has rolled out a new API, launched Digg Trends, made some interesting use of advertising, and improved its search, to name just a few things.

Related Articles:

> Important Product Director Moving From Google To Digg

> More Stories Get a Shot at the Digg Home Page

> Digg to Get All Twitter This Year?

Go to Source

Last year at The Future of Web Apps (FOWA) London we invited Paul Boag, host of Boagworld and author of the Website Owners Manual, along to conduct a series of interviews with speakers from the event. Over the next few weeks we will be publishing some of these here on the blog.

First up is Kevin Rose. Following on from his FOWA keynote “9 Ways to Take Your Site from One to One Million Users” Paul and his co-host Paul Stanton asked Kevin a few questions on community, user testing and advisory roles.

This interview lasts for 19 minutes.

Read the full transcript by Simon Hamp.

Go to Source

Web television has matured significantly in 2009; we’ve seen the introduction of the Streamy Awards, Dr. Horrible seized control of the Emmys, and the launch of more internet TV-related startups than we can count. TV-over-IP is starting to hit television sets thanks to set-top-boxes, TVs, and disc players with built-in streaming capabilities, and like print media before it, traditional broadcast television is beginning to grapple with the inevitability of an Internet-driven future.

Here are several companies that believe they are well-positioned for the transition — big and small, old and new. This isn’t a complete list by any stretch, but these samples will give you an idea of where the industry is headed in 2010.

1. Hulu

Along with TV networks’ own websites, Hulu has been one of the de facto destinations for users seeking network television programming on the web. It’s a joint venture between NBC, FOX, and ABC, and while it still isn’t profitable, it’s arguably the best example of giving users what they want from a site that streams professional content.

At the 2009 Digital Hollywood conference NBC executive Mark Graboff said, “Hulu is basically an anti-piracy move.” If you’re a major TV studio, it’s better that viewers are getting the content from you with minimal advertising than from BitTorrent and RapidShare pirates with no advertising at all.

In addition to shows from participating broadcast and cable networks, Hulu distributes some programming that originates on the web. You can’t be sure where Hulu is ultimately going to go — though premium subscriptions have been discussed — but at the moment it’s a strong proof of concept.

2. Apple

Never mind the fact that the Apple TV set-top box has been a niche success at best, iTunes is the world’s largest online distribution platform for pro-quality videos. You’ll only beat its variety of programming by subscribing to cable or satellite television.

The downside is that it’s expensive — $2.99 per episode if you watch in HD. But insiders have said that Apple is approaching TV studios to sign them up in a new plan: $30 per month for an all-access pass. If you have a set-top box or home theater PC to watch all those HD shows in your living room, getting cable or satellite for twice the price suddenly seems pointless. Oh, and you’ll be able to watch those shows on your iPhone or iPod, too.

If Apple succeeds in convincing the producers of content to cooperate, it’ll be a red letter day for Internet TV.

3. Boxee

Boxee doesn’t produce video content, and it doesn’t distribute anything on the web, either. Instead, it provides an interface for watching the stuff other people have made and distributed on your television set. Boxee software is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux home theater PCs, and you can run it on an Apple TV box too.

Using Boxee’s media center, you can browse videos from all over the Internet in an interface that is usable several feet away from the screen with a remote. Boxee also offers social networking features; you can rate everything you watch and recommend stuff to your friends.

Getting web TV into the living room is critical for the medium’s future, and Boxee is near the front of the line.

4. Clicker

At launch, web TV guide Clicker indexed 400,000 episodes from 7,000 TV shows. It lists content from distribution channels like Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon, and numerous smaller sources. There’s not a better place to search for professionally produced content to watch online and the company has also partnered up with Boxee.

The size of the database isn’t the only draw — Clicker also provides tools for browsing shows without typing in text searches; that will be a big deal when and if the service makes its way to tablets and other mobile devices. The database is organized by network, genre, and several other tags. The idea is that you can go to Clicker thinking, “I’m in the mood for a science fiction comedy produced by the same people who made that other show I like,” and find something to satisfy your craving.

5 & 6. Revision3 and Next New Networks

The Revision3 network was founded in 2005 by several TechTV alums, including Digg founder Kevin Rose. The network produces, distributes, and markets several shows for niche audiences. (Most of them are tech-related talk shows.) Just over a year ago, Revision3 began distributing and marketing shows produced out-of-house.

Next New Networks launched in 2007, and it operates several websites that each push out videos on specific themes. For example, Barely Political focuses primarily on politically satirical music videos, and Indy Mogul runs several film-themed programs.

These two ventures are included here as examples of bona fide TV networks on the web, delivering regularly scheduled programming just like NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, or The CW do. Both Revision3 and Next New Networks employ a super-distribution strategy — that is, they send their content to as many outlets as possible, including BitTorrent, YouTube, iTunes, and numerous others.

Revision3, Next New Networks, and other networks produce shows for niche audiences that mainstream television can’t afford to reach due to limited over-the-air shelf space. The New York Times thinks that might be the strategy that will win the race.

7 & 8. Mutant Enemy and Gary Sanchez Productions

Some Hollywood celebs are trying their hands at this, too.

Joss Whedon’s Mutant Enemy Productions was behind the broadcast TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse. It’s listed here because of just one web project: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. From the Hollywood camp, the three-act show starred Doogie Howser and Barney Stinson himself, Neil Patrick Harris. Opposite him was Felicia Day, Internet-famous as the creator and star of the web TV series The Guild (though she has appeared on TV, including an 8 episode stint on Whedon’s Buffy).

Dr. Horrible won seven Streamy Awards, became a minor pop culture phenomenon, proved that people are willing to watch long-form content on the web, and — as we mentioned earlier — briefly took over the Emmy Awards ceremony when Neil Patrick Harris hosted.

There’s also Gary Sanchez Productions. The company is owned by Saturday Night Live alums Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. Their flagship product, Funny or Die, is a site that streams short comedic videos made by recognizable names like Judd Apatow and Zach Galifianakis. Users vote “Funny” or “Die” when watching each video, and the videos that get good reviews inevitably go viral.

Mutant Enemy and Gary Sanchez have demonstrated that figures from traditional TV media can make a big impact on the web. We’ll see how many more celebs successfully follow in their footsteps.

ALSO: The Superdistribution and Analytics Companies

We’re not going to spend as much time talking about back-end (or at least partially back-end) companies like blip.tv, TubeMogul, Visible Measures, Grab Networks, and Brightcove, however, they deserve a mention because they help producers get their content to viewers.

They offer producers of web TV series content management tools, channels for super-distribution, and analytics. Each of these companies hopes to offer anyone with the right ideas, skills, talent, and entrepreneurial spirit the ability to find an audience.

Do you think these companies will play a part in supplanting broadcast and cable television with Internet programming and distribution, or does someone else have a better shot? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, subjug

Tags: future, List, Lists, ONLINE VIDEO, tv, video

Go to Source

As of today, Digg is five years old. Think about that: that’s around 1825 days of story submissions, front page wrangling, and explosive growth. Hell, Digg is older than Twitter and YouTube.

Now that we’ve had half a decade to digg and be dugg, it seems like a perfect time to reflect on Digg’s history, growth, and struggles. While there are many events that shaped the character of the social bookmarking site, five events across five different years stood out to us as pivotal moments in Digg’s history.

Below is a recounting of some of the company’s major turning points, from its birth in 2004 to its struggle to become profitable this year. Here are five of the biggest milestones in Digg’s history:

1. Digg’s Launch

You can’t start a list like this without recognizing how it all began. In November of 2004, founder Kevin Rose (former host on TechTV), along with Owen Byrne (original developer), Ron Gorodetsky, and Jay Adelson (now Digg’s CEO) helped get Digg off the ground. On December 4th, 2004, it launched to the public with less than 1000 users.

Back then, it was simple, ad-free, and focused on tech, but it was the birth of a social media juggernaut.

2. Diggnation

On July 1, 2005, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht (Kevin’s previous co-host on TechTV’s The Screen Savers), started a video podcast centered around what was popular on Digg. It was one of the first three shows to launch on a new Internet video network called Revision3.

That show was Diggnation, and it quickly grew with the help of loyal diggers into one of the largest and most popular video podcasts around. It helped push Digg and its brand to new audiences while acting as the flagship program for Revision3 at the same time.

Diggnation’s impact on the Digg brand and its community has been tremendous, although it hasn’t helped push Digg into the mainstream consciousness. Still, 231 episodes later, Diggnation has been a big success.

3. Launch of Digg 3.0

The social bookmarking website has gone through several iterations, but perhaps the most important one of them all was when Digg 3.0 launched on June 26th, 2006.

What was so special about Digg Version 3? It was when Digg launched topics and categories, expanding it beyond its technology base. Politics, gaming, business, science, and all of its various verticals have successfully grown and helped Digg exceed its technology roots, although it is still the core that holds the Digg community together.

4. Digg DRM Revolt

While it’s always been known that Digg and its users have a lot of influence across the web, it was made clear to everybody in dramatic fashion on May 1st, 2007.

A group of hackers successfully found a way to crack the Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection of the now-defunct HD-DVD standard. With the encryption cracked, Digg’s users posted the code and instructions on how to copy and crack HD-DVDs

Digg itself was worried that the cracked keys would result in lawsuits and cease and desist orders. Thus, they decided to delete articles referencing it and, in a blog post, stated that “In order for Digg to survive, it must abide by the law.”

That’s when Digg went out of control. Its users flooded the entire website with nothing but the HD-DVD crack or anti-Digg submissions. Digg couldn’t keep up. Eventually Kevin Rose stepped in and conceded to the community’s wishes. From his blog post.

“But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.”

It was on this day that Digg proved its power and really caught the attention of the mainstream media.

5. Digg Ads

At the beginning of this year, Digg was in crisis mode. It laid off 10% of its staff and focused on getting profitable after it was revealed that the company made only made $6.4 million in the first nine months of 2009.

Digg had a plan, however. In June, the company revealed Digg Ads, a new system of advertising where users would control how much advertisers pay for ad space on the homepage of Digg and elsewhere. They officially launched on August 6th.

It’s too early to tell how successful Digg Ads will eventually be, but so far, the future of Digg Ads (and Digg itself) look bright.

Tags: digg, diggnation

Go to Source

Desai – who’s been with Google for about six and a half years – didn’t exactly do unimportant work.  In fact, he led the development of AdWords, which is one of the search giant’s most recognizable products, and was also a force behind TV Ads, which has outlived Audio Ads and Print Ads.

Previously in his career, Desai cofounded a company with Michael Arrington and put in some time at Morgan Stanley Venture Partners, too.

As for what Desai’s supposed to do for Digg, Arrington wrote this afternoon, "He’ll be Digg’s first head of product, a responsibility that has been shared at various times by founder Kevin Rose, CEO Jay Adelson and Chief Strategy Officer Mike Maser."

It seems Desai’s headed almost to the top of the organization, then, and will probably exert a big influence over whatever "ballsy" changes are on the way.

Related Articles:

> More Stories Get A Shot At The Digg Homepage

> Digg To Get All Twitter This Year?

> Digg Does It Again With Advertising

Go to Source

It’s one of the unofficial poster children of Web 2.0, and was one of the first social news sites to come out.

It gets millions of visitors every month (Compete says about 43 million in October 2009), and those visitors vote on thousands of stories every day.

In this article you can learn about how Digg came to be from its humble beginnings to the massive popularity it has now as well as the controversies that have surrounded it.

In case you’re unfamiliar with how Digg works, here’s a very brief overview:

Users can submit stories from anywhere online, giving each submission a headline and synopsis to help other Digg users determine if a story is worth their time.

After a story is submitted, other users can “Digg” (vote up) or “Bury” (vote down) that story. If a story gets a certain number of Diggs within a specified period of time, it might make the popular section within its category or even the home page.

If it gets buried enough times, it will disappear from the site’s main feed (and is only visible if users specifically include buried stories in their searches).

The exact algorithm that determines whether a story makes the popular sections or gets buried is kept a secret, and has been changed and refined numerous times throughout Digg’s history.

Early Development

Digg got started in late 2004 as an experiment by Kevin Rose, Jay Adelson, Ron Gorodetzky and Owen Byrne.

The name “Diggnation” was originally proposed, but the group decided the name was too long, and shortened it to “Digg” (Dig.com had already been registered by the Walt Disney Internet Group, hence the double “G”).

Digg was similar to social bookmarking sites, but had one fundamental difference. While sites like Delicious allowed users to bookmark sites and share them with others, they were aimed at saving sites you’d want to return to again and again.

Digg, on the other hand, focused on saving pages with temporary value: things like news stories and blog posts. Digg was the first true social news site.

The first ten stories on Digg were primarily tech-focused (Blog Box Applications, a CSS cheatsheet, and a torrent search engine were among them), though there was also a post about a buy-one-get-one-free deal at Jamba Juice. The tenth story seems to have disappeared; it’s been speculated it was a spam post and was removed.

Within 18 months, Digg grew to more than 800,000 daily visitors. But they’d also started receiving some negative attention during that time. One early allegation of abuse was over Digg users using the site to spread rumors of a Google acquisition of Sun, which led to artificial inflation of Sun’s stock prices.

Initial Development

The initial site launched didn’t have support for many of the things we associate with Digg today. Basically, the original Digg let users sign up for an account, submit content, and then either vote it up (Digg it) or vote it down (Bury it).

According to an interview with Mother Jones in 2007, Kevin Rose worried for the first six months or so about the content that would make it to the home page.

It was the first time a site had allowed users to become editors and determine which content was likely to be seen. But it ultimately turned out a success, with most of the content on the front page during those first few months being interesting, relevant news.

Digg 2.0
The second iteration of Digg added many of the features we associate with the site today.

It was launched in July of 2005, only about 8 months after the original site was launched. The ability to add friends was included, as well as a site redesign. They also removed the redirect to a “success” page after users dugg a story.

Digg 3.0
Roughly one year after Digg 2.0 was released, Digg 3.0 came out.

The new version included specific categories for Entertainment, Gaming, Videos, World & Business, Science, and Technology, along with an option to view all the categories at once.

Diggnation

Diggnation is the weekly video podcast show Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht produce.

Its primary focus is to talk about some of Digg’s top stories for the week among other things. The show airs online every Wednesday at 6PM.

There are an estimated 200,000 regular subscribers to the show. In addition the website distribution, the show is also available through iTunes and TiVo, and is available on-demand on Virgin America airlines.

Diggnation has received a number of awards, including the 2006 Podcast Award for best technology podcast, the Best in 2007 Podcast from iTunes, and a Webby Award in 2008 for People’s Voice Winner for the Technology in Online Film and Video.

Diggnation is produced by Revision3, which was founded by Jay Adelson, Kevin Rose, Dan Huard, Ron Gorodetzky, and David Prager and is now led by Jim Louderback. Diggnation was their first show, but they’ve grown to include more than a dozen other shows.

Advertising and Revenue

The original Digg site didn’t include any advertising. But as the site grew, the developers quickly added means of generating revenue.

They started out with Google AdSense, and eventually moved on to banner ads. But in the summer of 2009, the moved on to a different form of advertising: sponsored posts showing up within Digg’s regular news feed.

What really set this apart, though, was that these sponsored posts also included “Digg” and “Bury” buttons, like their regular content.

This was a pretty revolutionary new form of advertising. It allows users to vote up or down the ads they want to see, and according to a quote in the Bits blog of the New York Times from Mike Maser, Digg’s chief strategy officer, the response from users has been largely positive.

Considering the history Digg has had with user reactions to changes they’ve made, implementing this kind of advertising strategy was risky to say the least. But so far it looks like it’s paid off—Digg has tripled their ad revenue forecast for the year.

It’s also providing valuable feedback to companies running ads, as they can see exactly what Digg users think of their ads based on how they’re voted up or down. This means future marketing efforts can be better targeted toward the site’s visitors.

The Digg Effect

Digg has grown to such large visitor numbers that websites who make the front page often have a hard time staying up under the onslaught of traffic (if they’re unprepared for it, that is).

This is known as the “Digg effect”, though sometimes this is a result of the story being featured on multiple bookmarking and news sites simultaneously.

The Digg effect can send thousands or tens of thousands of visitors to a site within a matter of a couple hours, and has been known to crash sites on a fairly regular basis.

Numerous articles have been written (here, here, and here for starters) about the Digg Effect, what it really does, and how to prepare for it so your site doesn’t slow down too much or crash.

Controversies Surrounding Digg

Digg has been surrounded in controversy practically since its launch.

Everything from the “bury” option to the fact that it’s a user-moderated site have come under fire from critics.

One of the most common criticisms regards Digg’s algorithm (and changes to it). Digg has always kept its algorithm a secret, which has led many to believe that Digg’s creators often have a hand in censoring or burying particular posts they don’t agree with (or, alternatively, of bumping posts they particularly like).

Digg has always maintained that whether the content makes the front page or is buried is entirely up to the users, and that the developers and programmers have no hand in it.

Other controversies include the use of Digg as a marketing tool by entrepreneurs. While some companies become legitimate parts of the Digg community, others do little more than submit self-promotional posts in hopes of getting extra traffic (those posts are generally either buried directly or just never gain any traction).

Here are a few more controversies surrounding Digg:

Digg Revolt

So far, there have been two major Digg uprisings, one in 2007 and one in 2008.

The first one, in May 2007, revolved around the AACS encryption key used on HD DVDs and Blu-ray Disc.

On May 1, an article made it to Digg’s front page that offered up the encryption key for removing the digital rights management on HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs.

Digg’s legal team recommended the story be taken down. Digg did so, and banned a number of users who had submitted the story.

But Digg users didn’t take this action lightly. Rather than let the issue drop, more and more Digg users started reposting the encryption key, both in comments and new posts.

Soon there were hundreds of stories appearing on the site, and Digg backed down. Digg’s official statement declared, “…you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company.”

They reversed their policy of deleting posts that included the encryption key and said they would deal with whatever consequences that brought.

The second major revolt happened when a change to Digg’s algorithm was announced. Many Digg “power users” felt the new algorithm would give them less power in influencing the content that made it to the front page.

A temporary boycott was called, with some even proposing the users move over to a different site entirely. Digg was also called out for being unresponsive to suggestions posed by users, and a general lack of communication.

Numerous other grievances were cited in letters to Digg, including a lack of transparency and Digg’s purported “auto-bury” list.

Before the revolt, Digg put up a blog post explaining that the changes were being made to create a more level playing field for all Digg users, and to give everyone a fair chance of having their submission make the front page.

Digg Bar

The Digg Bar was released in early April 2009 and immediately came under fire for multiple reasons.

The Digg Bar, for those unfamiliar with it, frames the original webpage rather than redirecting to the page specifically.

One major reason this has been criticized is that it can have a negative effect on a site’s page rank, because the shortened URLs the bar uses don’t give any credit to the original site (some CMSs and blogs have blocked the Digg bar or set it to redirect to the original page).

ForeverGeek-Gate

In April 2006, ForeverGeek called Digg out on a pattern of digging by what has been deemed the “Digg Army“.

Basically, he noticed a pattern of digging by certain users, and that some stories that made the home page had been dugg by a number of the exact same Diggers.

In fact, of the two stories he compared, both were from A List Apart, and were originally submitted by the same user. Of the first 24 users who dugg the story, 22 of them were the same (the first 16 were completely identical, right down to the order in which they dugg the stories).

Only two users were different on each story. Adding to the speculation surrounding this was the fact that Kevin Rose was included in the 22 users who dugg both stories.

A number of high-profile blogs (including BoingBoing and Slashdot) reported ForeverGeek’s findings, many of which verified the claims.

And some more traditional media sources also weighed in (including The Inquirer). And not long after that, ForeverGeek was banned from Digg (it became impossible to submit any stories from the site).

While Digg maintains that ForeverGeek was banned because they were suspected of using multiple accounts to vote up their own stories, there are a number of reports of other users who submitted similar stories who were also banned.

Eventually, ForeverGeek was un-banned. But reportedly a number of users in the “Digg Army” disappeared from the site, too.

The Bury Brigade

It has long been theorized that there is a network of Diggers who act as a unofficial censors to content posted to Digg that does not fit with their ideology. This network is often referred to as the “Bury Brigade”.

In early 2007, a user named David LeMieux figured out how to use the site’s Digg Spy tool to highlight which users were burying stories and why they were doing so. He was able to gather information on more than 1700 buries during a two hour period.

Digg has long kept information about buries shrouded in secrecy, so the data gathered by LeMieux is some of the only such data available. The story itself was then buried on Digg, and one user who submitted a duplicate story even found themselves banned.

Another user, Muhammad Saleem, posted some raw data and his analysis on the Bury Brigade in February 2007. He came to the conclusion that it proved the existence of a Bury Brigade, though other users doubted that conclusion (see the comments to the original article for specifics).

Both the Bury Brigade and the users trying to uncover the truth behind it seem to be grassroots-based and have no central leader or formal organization.

The Bury Brigade gained enough attention there was an official response from Kevin Rose posted on the Digg blog regarding the information released about it.

Basically, Rose stated that the data gathered through using the Digg Spy was only partial data, and shouldn’t be considered representative of what’s happening across the entire Digg community.

Whether a bury brigade actually exists or whether the stories purportedly buried by them are just a reflection of the bias of the majority of Digg users (or just the most involved) is still up in the air.

The Top User List

Up until 2007, Digg had a public list of who the top Diggers were. These were the most influential Digg users.

Stories they submitted and dugg got to the front page more often than those by other users. These top users enjoyed a position of power within the Digg community. So much so, in fact, that some were offered monetary or other compensation for digging sponsored stories.

And that’s where the controversy started. If powerful Digg users were being paid to digg stories, it would change the dynamics of the entire site.

If a sponsor paid ten or twenty of the top users to vote for a story, it could spur other users to vote for it, and the likelihood of it making the front page would drastically increase. The whole thing was at odds with what the Digg community was supposed to be all about (democratic, user control of content).

Those on the list were also accused of manipulating Digg content, paid or otherwise. So, Digg took action. They stopped publishing the list of top Digg users.

This resulted in outrage from some Digg users (mostly those who appeared on the Top Diggers list), who enjoyed the notoriety they gained from being on the list.

Some viewed it as removing any reward for submitting content, and speculated it could lead to decreased participation among some members. Whether the removal of the list had any lasting impact on Digg is unknown (it didn’t appear to).

The Existence of Auto-Bury

There has been ongoing speculation over the existence of an auto-bury algorithm or an internal bury system.

A few bloggers have published anecdotal evidence of some kind of internal bury mechanism, though Digg has maintained that there is no such system.

While some of the evidence against Digg seems pretty compelling, there’s nothing that proves the existence of any kind of auto-bury system. And since Digg’s algorithm is a closely-gaurded secret, it’s unlikely we’ll find out the truth behind this any time soon.

A Brief History of Digg Controversy has more information about controversies surrounding Digg.

Digg Events

Digg founders regularly participate in tech-related events and host Digg meetups.

In 2008 they hosted the Bigg Digg Shindigg at SXSW. Their first meetup was held in San Francisco in 2008, and other meetups have followed in Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle and New York.

They hosted a second Bigg Digg Shindigg at SXSW in 2009 that included a live Diggnation show and live music. It was attended by more than 2000 people.

In addition to live events, Digg also hosts online townhall-style meetings. They’ve held seven to date (you can watch all of them on their website).

These townhall webcasts are hosted by Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose, and included information on new features, answers to questions posed by community members, and site-related news.

The Future of Digg

Digg has reportedly been trying to sell itself for a number of years now, and was even courted by Google at one point (the sale fell through at the last minute). Kevin Rose was quoted in an interview in Mother Jones saying that he’d be happy to continue running Digg without being sold or going public.

A survey leaked in September 2009 gave some hints about the possible future direction of Digg.

It sought user input on things like a customized homepage that shows popular stories that might appeal to specific users based on their interests and vertical channels that would let users discover popular content in specific niche areas.

Other features mentioned included anonymous Digging (without requiring a user account), a “save to read later” function that lets you flag stories to look at later, and Digg groups that let users form groups to share content.

One of the more interesting features mentioned is a “Digg Breaking News” section, which could be targeted at taking some of Twitter’s market share when it comes to breaking news (which Twitter has become very adept at doing).

Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman.

What do you think of Digg and the controversies surrounding it?

If you find an exclusive RSS freebie on this feed or on the live WDD website, please use the following code to download it: n6KR6Q

Go to Source

Every few years the world gets visually assaulted with a trendy new shoe craze. This decade alone we’ve seen the rise (and fall) of Uggs, Crocs and Kashi Kicks. We can now add another shoe to the list: Diggs.

Seriously. The popular social media destination has teamed up with TOMS Shoes to launch a custom Digg shoe.

The shoe was designed by Digg employee Danny Trinh and features the Digg logo on the lining. You can watch Kevin Rose talk about the collaboration in this video:

We might not be big fans of the design, but there is something very cool about TOMS Shoes. Every pair of shoes you purchase from TOMS (Digg or not) will also include a pair of shoes donated to a child in need. Now that’s an idea we can get behind!

Would you wear Diggs? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: digg, shoes, toms shoes

Go to Source

Popular social media destination Digg is no stranger to video production. In fact, they have five different video shows that go out mostly on a weekly basis, best known of which is Diggnation, where Digg founder Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht discuss most popular stories on Digg.

Now, at DiggTV, you can follow all five shows at one place. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but for Digg fans it’s a nice one-stop shop for all their Digg video needs.

Besides Diggnation, the shows include the Digg Reel, in which Andrew Bancroft covers top videos on the web, Diggcetera, which is a mashup of various Digg videos, Digg Townhall, in which Kevin Rose and Digg CEO Jay Adelson answer questions from the Digg community. Finally, perhaps the most interesting show is Digg Dialogg, which features interviews with stars such as Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Tony Hawk.

Tags: Digg.tv

Go to Source

Twitter will steal a bit of Google’s search thunder.

Twitter challenge Google search? You bet. The advantage twitter has over Google search is that Twitter provides almost to-the-second search results so if you want the most recent content, you can hit Twitter. While Google analyzes static content, Twitter provides you the “buzz”, or most recently/frequently talked about links/information in a condensed format. Sometimes fewer options and information is a good thing.

Gmail and GChat will slowly become Google Wave.

Wave is clearly Google’s successor to vanilla email (via Gmail) and instant messaging. Don’t look for Gmail to disappear completely during 2010 but I expect Wave to completely integrate email capabilities by the end of 2010.

Facebook will grow in popularity despite continuing to disappointing its own users; Your mother will join Facebook.

Unfortunately Facebook will continue to add features that make their site more difficult to use and, in doing so, will continue to disregard the fury of its users. Facebook will continue to “out-think the room” in the features it adds. Facebook will also push its “Lite” version more toward an older audience. Your mother, in turn, will join. MySpace will continue to become the Geocities of social websites.

Internet Explorer 6 support will finally be dropped from 90+% of websites.

Many websites have already dropped IE6 support, which I feel is too soon, but we should all be able to rejoice by the end of 2010. Windows 7 will have been out for over a year and IT departments will be pushed into upgrading from XP so as to not allow employees to be two operating system versions behind. Persons with older PCs will also opt to upgrade to a newer system due to highly competitive pricing by Dell, Compaq, and Toshiba.

Webkit-based browsers will overtake Firefox; Mozilla will face a Web Designer/Developer rebellion.

Google Chrome has quickly become a developer favorite during 2009 and there’s no reason to believe that affection will slow during 2010. Expect Chrome to debut a flexible plugin system during 2010 which will meet or exceed the flexibility provided by Firefox. As a result of Firebug’s bugs and memory problems, Mozilla will start to draw the ire of the developers that made them so popular.

Windows 7 will be a giant success (on a Windows level).

Due to the garbage OS known as Vista and continued successful marketing by Microsoft, Windows 7 will become a huge success. Lets not discount the improvements made by Windows 7 though — its UI and functionality improvements are to be recognized. IT departments will most definitely be pushed to update their outdated XP machines, begrudgingly or not. Mac fanboys wont notice a thing.

The MooTools javascript framework will boom in popularity thanks to the plugin forge and MooTools 2.

Having a central repository for quality MooTools plugins will increase the usage of the javascript framework. MooTools 2, with its improvements in every piece of the framework, will turn the heads of developers using other libraries. I also foresee users of other frameworks, looking for a more advanced OOP approach, giving MooTools a solid shot.

Digg will completely lose its developer/designer userbase and become “just another funny pics/vids” site.

Diggers’ habits of promoting stupid pictures and videos will essentially ruin that last shreds of credibility the site has left and users will continue to leave. Kevin Rose will take “less of a role” with Digg in an effort to distance himself from Digg’s direction.

The David Walsh Blog will continue to ascend.

More sweet MooTools, jQuery, CSS, PHP, and AJAX tutorials on the way…but then again, you already knew this.

What do you think? Am I crazy? Are these easy predictions? Tell me!

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and be sure to visit Script & Style for the best Javascript and CSS articles around!

Sponsor the David Walsh Blog and get your brand in front of several thousand users per day!

Bold Web Predictions for 2010

Related posts:

1. Implementing String.Tweetify in MooTools
2. Following MooTools on Twitter
3. Web Predictions For 2009
4. What If: Twitter Started Charging $5/Month
5. Load Your Static Content the Dynamic Way

Go to Source

Ryan Deal is a social media and creative advertising lover who’s got an eye for good design and a passion that won’t quit. He runs the website TopCultured.com, which can also be found on Twitter.

It’s nearly Halloween again and you know what that means: candy, costumes, and carving pumpkins. This year, social media has taken the world by storm with huge acquisitions, traditional media recognition, and thanks to Twitter, news at lightning speed. What better way to pay homage to social media than via a carved pumpkin? We’ve compiled 12 great social-media-inspired pumpkins to get some ideas flowing.

Feel free to share your favorites and your own ideas in the comments below.

1. Fail Whale Pumpkin

Twitter’s frequent bouts of downtime, though less frequent in recent months, have almost become part of the expected user experience for the site, and their iconic “fail whale” has become part of pop culture.

Source: Scott B. on Flickr

2 & 3. Firefox and IE Pumpkins

Firefox recently won our web browser faceoff against Google Chrome rather handily, so we can understand why someone would want to make a Firefox pumpkin. But why spend time carving an Internet Explorer pumpkin? On the other hand, IE is pretty scary…

Source: CyberNet News

4. Digg Pumpkins

You have to be a real fanatic to carve not just a pumpkin homage to Digg, but one that includes the likenesses of Diggnation hosts Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose, as well. Still, these two are very impressive, if a little creepy for their stalker qualities.

Source: Tutorialized

5. Reddit Pumpkins

Reddit’s mascot really lends itself to Halloween. The cute little alien character looks great on a pumpkin, as these two prime examples above illustrate.

Source:Robert Balousek and inecather on Flickr

6. RSS Pumpkin

Even though some people think that RSS is dying and social media is usurping its role in the way we discover and consume news, RSS is still the dominant method that most of us use to keep on top of web site updates. Many people use RSS without even knowing it, via personal aggregator sites like MyYahoo! or iGoogle.

Source: jsiarto on Flickr

7. Apple Pumpkin

Apple has had one heck of a year. They released a new phone, the iPhone 3G S that comes with a built in video camera, and then proceeded to sell 7.4 million iPhones in the last quarter. Oh, and there are these persistent rumors that this tablet computer thing is in the works, too.

Source: RipFire on Flickr

8. Android Pumpkin

The 2.0 version of Google’s free and open source mobile operating system is on its way, and with it the Motorola Droid, which many feel will be the first phone to really potentially challenge the iPhone’s smartphone dominance. Like Reddit’s, Android’s mascot looks pretty great adorning a pumpkin.

Source: David Watson on Flickr

9. WordPress Pumpkin

WordPress won 87% of the vote in our faceoff with TypePad for blogging platform supremacy. ‘Nuff said.

Source: Eric M Martin on Flickr

10. Plaxo Pumpkin

Plaxo hasn’t been in the news too much lately, but their Plaxo Pulse software remains a good social stream aggregator and content sharing platform.

Source: Plaxo on Flickr

11. Threadless Pumpkin

It’s a great Internet success story: two guys take a couple hundred bucks and build a multi-million dollar t-shirt empire by relying on crowdsourced designs and customer voting. And this year they launched Twitter Tees, giving us a reason to like them even more.

Source: cshimala on Flickr

12. Obama Pumpkin

The Barack Obama campaign’s groundbreaking use of social media and the web likely helped propel him to the White House last year, and his historic inauguration broke all sorts of records on the Internet. For those reasons, an Obama-themed pumpkin is also inherently a social media pumpkin.

Source: Darkchild

Header image courtesy of iStockphoto, Kameleon007

Tags: Halloween, List, Lists, pumpkins, social media

Go to Source

There are general social networks with user bases larger than the population of most countries.

There are niche sites for virtually every special interest out there.

There are sites to share photos, videos, status updates, sites for meeting new people and sites to connect with old friends.

It seems there are social solutions to just about every need.

In this article, we’ll review the history and evolution of social media from its humble beginnings to the present day.

Precursors to Social Media

BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems)

The first BBSs came online in the late 70s. Originally these were primarily hosted on personal computers and users had to dial in through the host computer’s modem. Only one person at a time could gain access to the BBS.

While there were legitimate BBSs, most were at least somewhat involved in illicit, illegal, or other shady practices. Adult material, virus code, information and instructions for hacking and phreaking (phone hacking), and materials like The Anarchist’s Cookbook were commonly hosted on BBSs.

But BBSs were the first type of sites that allowed users to log on and interact with one another, albeit in a much slower fashion than we currently do.

Online Services

After BBSs came “online services” like CompuServe and Prodigy. These were the first real “corporate” attempts at accessing the Internet.

CompuServe was the first company to incorporate a chat program into their service. Prodigy was responsible for making online service more affordable (CompuServe had been prohibitively expensive for many, with charges of $6/hour plug long-distance fees that often made the service run $30/hour or more).

AOL started as an online service too and made great strides at making the Internet more universally accessible in the U.S.

IRC, ICQ, and Instant Messaging

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was developed in 1988 and used for file sharing, link sharing and otherwise keeping in touch.

It was really the father of instant messaging as we know it today. IRC was mostly UNIX-based though, limiting access to most people.

ICQ was developed in the mid-90s and was the first instant messaging program for PCs. It was at least partly responsible for the adoption of avatars, abbreviations (LOL, BRB) and emoticons. Other IM clients soon followed.

Dating Sites

Dating sites are sometimes considered the first social networks. The first dating sites started cropping up almost as soon as people started going online. They allowed users to create profiles (usually with photos) and to contact other users.

Early Social Networks

While many people consider dating sites or sites like Classmates.com to be the first social networks, they don’t really fit the definition.

Dating sites rarely allowed you to keep a friends list, neither did Classmates in its early years (and profiles were severely limited). The following sites were the first true social networks.

Six Degrees

Six Degrees was launched in 1997 and was the first modern social network. It allowed users to create a profile and to become friends with other users.

While the site is no longer functional, at one time it was actually quite popular and had around a million members at its peak.

In 2000 it was purchased for $125 million and in 2001 it was shut down.

AsianAvenue, MiGente, BlackPlanet

These sites cropped up in the years following SixDegrees’ launch, between 1997 and 2001.

They allowed users to create profiles and add friends (generally without needing approval to add people). Users could create professional, personal and dating profiles on these sites.

While they were some of the earliest social networks, there were few innovations among them.

LiveJournal

LiveJournal started in 1999 and took a different approach to social networking.

While Six Degrees allowed users to create a basically-static profile, LiveJournal was a social network built around constantly-updated blogs.

LiveJournal encouraged its users to follow one another and to create groups and otherwise interact. It was really the precursor to the live updates we see in social networks currently.

Major Advances in Social Networking

The early 2000s brought some huge developments in social networking and social media.

Friendster

Friendster was really the first modern, general social network. Founded in 2002, Friendster is still a very active social network, with over 90 million registered users and 60+ million unique visitors each month. Most of Friendster’s traffic comes from Asia (90% of it).

Friendster operated by allowing people to discover their friends and then friends-of-friends, and so on to expand their networks.

Its goal was to be a safer place to meet new people than in real-life, as well as being faster. Friendster was, in part, a new kind of dating site.

Instead of matching complete strangers based on shared interests, it operated on the assumption that people with shared friends and acquaintances would have a better chance than those who had no shared connection.

Friendster was most popular with three different groups: gay men, attendess of Burning Man and bloggers.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn was founded in 2003 and was one of the first mainstream social networks devoted to business.

Originally, LinkedIn allowed users to post a profile (basically a resume) and to interact through private messaging. They also work on the assumption that you should personally know the people you connect with on the site.

Gradually, other features have been added, including groups, question and answer forums, and advanced profile features, including real-time updates.

MySpace

MySpace was founded in 2003 and by 2006 had grown to be the most popular social network in the world.

MySpace differentiated itself from competitors by allowing users to completely customize the look of their profiles. Users could also post music from artists on MySpace and embed videos from other sites on their profiles.

Originally MySpace allowed communication through private messages, public comments posted to a user’s profile, and bulletins sent out to all of your friends. Blogs are also a big part of MySpace profiles, with each member automatically getting a blog.

In 2006 MySpace introduced MySpace IM, an instant messaging client that lets users chat with their friends.

Other recent additions to MySpace’s functionality include the addition of real-time status updates and a news feed showing friend activity.

Facebook

While Facebook started out as a Harvard-only social network back in 2004, it quickly expanded to other schools, then to high schools, businesses and eventually everyone (by 2006).

In 2008 Facebook became the most popular social networking site, surpassing MySpace, and continues to grow.

Facebook doesn’t allow the same kind of customization that MySpace does. Facebook does, however, allow users to post photos, videos and otherwise customize their profile content, if not the design.

Facebook has added a number of features over the past few years, including instant messaging/chat and apps (and their developer platform).

Users have a few different methods of communicating with one another. Private messaging is available as well as writing on another user’s wall. Wall posts are visible to that user’s friends, but usually not to the general public. Users can easily change their privacy settings to allow different users to see different parts of their profile, based on any existing relationships (the basic privacy settings are “only friends”, “friends of friends”, and “everyone”).

Users can post notes that are visible to all of their friends. Users can also comment on or, more recently, “like” the posts of their friends, and conversations often occur within the comment sections among multiple people.

Niche Social Networks

As social networking grew, niche sites began cropping up for specific interest groups. There are now social networks for virtually every hobby, passion, interest, industry and group that you could imagine.

Ning

Ning is a platform for creating niche social networks. Networks are hosted by Ning but can take on their own personality and can even pay to have their own branding instead of the Ning brand.

New users can either create social networks for any niche they choose or join any of more than 1.5 million existing networks.

Ning was the first widely-used social networking platform. It’s biggest advantage in the market was that it made it incredibly simple for even non-technical users to set up their own social network.

While most other social networking platforms required coding and programming knowledge, Ning required neither of those.

Company-Sponsored Social Networks

A number of niche social networking sites have been developed by corporations in all sorts of industries.

Authonomy is one example; it’s a writers’ network hosted by the UK division of Harper Collins that has attracted thousands of hopeful writers from all over the globe, but plenty of other companies have created their own networks.

While some of these have active groups, many do not, and end up being shut down due to a lack of activity.

Media Sharing

Social media isn’t just limited to social networking sites. Sharing photos, videos, and other multimedia content is also a popular social media activity.

Photobucket

Photobucket was the first major photo sharing site, launched in 2003.

Photobucket allows users to share photos publically or in password-protected albums. They allow users 500MB of storage (lowered from 1GB in August of 2009).

Pro accounts get 10GB of storage (lowered from 100GB to 25GB in July of ‘08 and then to 10GB in August of ‘09). Photobucket also hosts video content.

In 2007, Photobucket was purchased by Fox Interactive Media (a News Corporation subsidiary). It was rumored to have sold for as much as $250 million, though terms of the sale were never disclosed.

Flickr

Flickr has become a social network in its own right in recent years. They claim to host more than 3.6 billion images as of June 2009.

Flickr also has groups, photo pools, and allows users to create profiles, add friends, and organize images and video into photo sets/albums.

One of Flickr’s major advantages is that they allow users to license their photos through Creative Commons, as well as retaining all copyrights.

Flickr has also recently launched a collection called “The Commons”, which features archived photos and images from a variety of museums and other institutions under a “no known restrictions” license (basically meaning the photos are believed to be in the public domain).

YouTube

YouTube was the first major video hosting and sharing site, launched in 2005.

Users can upload videos up to 10 minutes long and share them through YouTube or by embedding them on other websites (social networks, blogs, forums, etc.).

YouTube now allows users to upload HD videos and recently launched a service to provide TV shows and movies under license from their copyright holders.

YouTube’s major social features include ratings, comments, and the option to subscribe to the channels of a user’s favorite video creators.

Revver

Revver took a slightly different approach to video hosting and sharing.

While YouTube, Metacafe, and most other video sharing sites let you post videos for free and didn’t pay content creators for any advertising revenues their videos generated, Revver has been sharing revenue from the start.

Revver splits the revenue generated by a video 50/50 with that video’s creator. Some other video sharing and hosting sites are moving in the direction of revenue sharing, but Revver still remains the primary one that does it with all content on the site.

Social News and Bookmarking

Sharing photos and videos wasn’t isn’t the only kind of information sharing happening with social media.

The advent of social news and bookmarking sites in the mid-2000’s brought about a whole new way of see what’s going on in the world and discovering interesting content.

News became more widely available thanks to sites like Delicious, Digg, and Reddit, who allowed users to share any news or other content they found interesting with a much wider audience than they might have otherwise had.

Delicious

Delicious (aka, Del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking site founded in 2003. It allows its users to bookmark any content they find online, tag that content, and then share it with other users.

Users can search for bookmarks or browse for them via tags. Delicious also allows users to view the most popular content among other users, as well as up-and-coming content, not unlike most social news sites.

Digg

Digg was founded in 2004 by Kevin Rose, Ron Gorodetzky, Jay Adelson, and Owen Byrne.

Digg users can share links to anything online and other users can vote that content up (”dig”) or down (”bury”). Users can also comment on content posted by others and keep a friends list.

Digg has undergone a lot of controversy in its day, including criticism about the power the top 100 Digg users have over what becomes popular on the site.

The “Digg Effect”—when content makes it to the front page, thereby sending a huge influx of traffic to that site, often overloading its servers—is also well-known and often frustrating to those unprepared for the sudden popularity.

Reddit

Reddit is another social news site founded in 2005. Reddit operates in a similar fashion to Digg, allowing users to vote content up or down.

Users can view popular items, new items, and “controversial” items (presumably those items that have received a lot of both up and down votes). Reddit, like Digg, also allows users to comment on posted items.

Real Time Updates

Real-time updates have become the new norm in social media. With the advent of Twitter in 2006, status updates have become the new norm in social networking. Virtually all major social networks now allow real-time updates.

Twitter

Twitter was founded in 2006 and gained a lot of popularity during the 2007 SxSW (South by Southwest) conference.

Tweets trippled during the conference, from 20k per day to 60k. Twitter has developed a cult-like following and has a number of famous users (Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Soleil Moon Frye, MC Hammer, Oprah, Martha Stewart, and many, many more).

Twitter has also spawned a number of third-party sites and apps, turning it into more of a platform than a single service. There are Twitter clients for updating and managing followers; services that track Twitter trends; and services for posting photos and videos directly to Twitter.

Other Services Adopt Real-Time Updates

As mentioned before, virtually every social networking site now allows for status updates. Facebook has incorporated status updates into their interface for years. MySpace adopted the practice more than a year ago. And most recently, LinkedIn has started to allow users to update their status.

Real-time updates allow users to stay connected to their friends and family on a constant basis and often improve relationships between people.

When you constantly know what’s going on with friends and family, it’s easier to discover shared interests, activities, and other information that might never have come out in real-life conversations. This can lead to stronger relationships offline.

The iPhone’s Role in Real-Time Updates

The iPhone can be largely credited for the rise in popularity of real-time updates. Prior to the iPhone’s launch, mobile browsers were clunky at best, and virtually unusable at worst.

But the iPhone made it easy and even fun to browse the web from a mobile device. Add apps for virtually every social network to the mix and it became possible for users to update anytime, from anywhere.

Other phones have followed suit and there are now mutliple devices available that let users easily update their status on the go (including posting photos and video updates).

The iPhone has taken such a huge role in social media that there are now social networks only available on the iPhone. iRovr is a social networking app specifically for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

It allows users to post photos, updates, links (including to YouTube videos), create polls, subscribe to RSS feeds and more. It was launched in 2007 and is still going strong two years later.

Lifestreaming and Lifecasting

Real-time updates have led to an increase in the number of people who are now lifecasting or lifestreaming virtually everything they do. While some opt to lifestream by aggregating their online activities in a single place (such as with FriendFeed).

Ustream.tv

Ustream was founded in the summer of 2006 and has become the streaming video host of choice for celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Soleil Moon Frye.

While most Ustream users only go live occasionally, there are channels that are live around the clock (mostly security cameras, animal cameras, traffic cameras, and other stationary feeds).

Ustream allows viewers to post comments and ask questions directly to the feed host during live broadcasts, and this interactivity often engages users to a greater extent than other video sites where videos are posted after they’ve been filmed instead of being streamed live.

Justin.tv

Justin.tv is a streaming video host founded in October 2006 that lets lifecasters and live show creators to broadcast to hundreds or thousands of Internet users.

iJustine is probably Justin.tv’s most public user, lifecasting practically her entire life on the site at one time (she appears to be lifecasting a bit less recently, though she’s still very active on the site).

There are more than 400,000 channels on Justin.tv, and they get more than 41 million unique visitors each month.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed, which launched in 2007 and was recently purchased by Facebook, allows you to integrate most of your online activities in one place (Twitter, RSS feeds, and Flickr, among others).

It’s also a social network in its own right, with the ability to create friends lists, post updates, and otherwise communicate.

Other Lifestreaming Sites

There are a number of other lifestreaming sites out there that people are using. Most can be integrated into your blog or website to show your visitors all of your activities around the web.

There are even some dedicated blog plugins for lifestreaming. WP Lifestream is one such plugin, specifically for WordPress. It lets you integrate your profiles from Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm and Wordie right out of the box, and you can add additional modules for integrating more feeds.

Profilactic.com is another lifestreaming application that lets you integrate feeds from 190 different websites, including Blippr, Delicious, Digg, deviantART, Dopplr, Facebook, Flickr, Last.fm, LiveJournal, MySpace, Pandora, Revver, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Tumblr, and more. Sweetcron is a similar app, though it’s opensource and you host it on your own servers.

Social Everything

It seems that nowadays there are social and user-generated sites for just about every activity you can imagine. There are social shopping sites. Social financial planning sites. Sites for getting book, movie, app, and other reviews. Sites to share your goals and meet like-minded people. Sites to plan your travels and share them with others. And sites to help you make decisions on just about anything.

Social media has become a huge part of the lives of millions of people worldwide. Whether it’s something as simple as looking up reviews of movies from real, live people (instead of professional movie reviewers) or getting advice on major life decisions, there are social sites out there to provide you with the information you seek.

Even on general-purpose social networks and social media sites like Twitter there are thousands of ways to get input on just about anything.

Instead of using Google the next time you have a question about something, try asking on Twitter. A lot of the time you get better information from the crowd there in less time than pouring over pages of search results.

Social Media Concerns and Criticism

As social media has grown in popularity and become mainstream, it has been faced with growing controversy and criticism.

The main criticisms seem to fall along a few lines: Social media can be used by stalkers; Social media can be used by child predators; and, Social media sites open up privacy and security concerns.

While there is only so much social media sites can do about the first two, there is a growing trend among many sites to bolster the privacy policies and make users feel more secure.

Social Media Used by Stalkers

Facebook and other social media sites have come under attack for making it easier for stalkers to track their victims or even to find new ones. This kind of accusation is not entirely unfounded.

Many social media users don’t take advantage of privacy settings and leave their entire profiles public. While this is often a good idea for professional profiles where you want to make connections with people you don’t necessarily know, personal profiles can benefit from hiding some information from public display.

Social networks make these privacy settings available to users to help prevent stalkers and predators from being able to see their updates.

But they can’t force users to use them, so in the end much of the responsibility falls to the individual users, not the networks themselves.

Social Media Used by Child Predators

MySpace is the most publically attacked social networks accused of being a haven for child molesters and pornographers, but the site, and other social networks, have made great strides in protecting the identities and information of minors using their sites.

Again, this is one of those situations where much of the problem came from users not making their profiles private.

MySpace took a major step to prevent predators from friending underage teens by requiring friend requesters to know the email address or another personal identifier in order to send a friend request to a minor.

They also require the profiles of teens under the age of 16 to be private, not allowing non-friend users to view them. Other sites have taken similar steps.

Privacy Concerns

Facebook recently came under attack for changes to its privacy policy that were worded ambiguously enough to effectively grant rights to Facebook to use any of your content, private or public, for their own purposes (such as advertising) even after you’d delected your profile.

While the company maintains that was never their intent and it was simply unfortunate wording, the backlash was severe enough that Facebook changed their privacy policy back to its previous version and then solicited user input for revisions. It was a harsh lesson in how concerned many users are about the information they provide online.

When you consider that many people post information about all aspects of their lives online, mostly on social media sites, it’s no wonder many are concerned about what companies can do with that information.

Social networks and other sites have to rapidly respond to user concerns over privacy and security. With the information in an average social media profile, it would not be inconceivable for a hacker to illegally gain enough information about a person to steal their identity or otherwise cause problems.

Security concerns have also cropped up as average people have found their profiles hacked and embarrassing information posted about them.

While this type of thing was once relatively confined to celebrities and well-known people (or people who had a personal vendetta against them), it has become more widespread and it’s not unheard of for regular people to be targeted (such as this woman on Facebook recently).

The Role of Social Media in Pop Culture

Social media has, in the past year or two, become a mainstream online activity. In 2007, social media activities overtook pornography as the most popular online activity in the U.S. (the two industries continue to battle it out, alternately gaining or losing ground on a monthly basis).

Celebrities now use Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks on a regular basis. And it’s not just their publicists—stars are updating their status themselves and interacting with fans on a daily basis.

It’s not uncommon to see Twitter-inspired t-shirts, and there has been at least one “fail-whale” tattoo (I’m sure there are more out there).

When Twitter and Facebook both suffered a DDOS attack in early August ‘09, there was a real sense of loss among many users until the sites were back up.

Social media has become an integral part of how people communicate, stay in touch, keep on top of new developments, and otherwise connect with the world around them.

The Evolution of Social Media

Social media has come a long way since the days of BBSs and IRC chats. And social media continues to evolve on a daily basis.

With major social networks and social media sites making changes and improvements on an almost daily basis, it’s sure to keep evolving in coming years.

The one thing we can be pretty sure of at this point is that social media is not just a phase, and likely won’t go away any time soon…at least until something better comes along.

Further Resources:

• A Brief History of Social Media
• The history of social media in a blink
• Mashable: The Social Media Blog
• Wikipedia’s Social Media article
• 6 of the Best Lifestreaming Solutions
• Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship

Written exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman.

Where do you think social media is heading and how do you use it? How much influence does social media have in your life?

If you find an exclusive RSS freebie on this feed or on the live WDD website, please use the following code to download it: O3vi0O

Go to Source

In this video from The Future of Web Apps London (FOWA), Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, WeFollow and Revision3, shares 9 things he did to increase his users to 1,000,000 and beyond.

Here’s a quick bullet-point summary. You can watch the video for the complete presentation or view the presentation slides here. We’ll be uploading just the audio for you to listen to soon.

Editor’s Note: We’re bringing The Future of Web Apps to Miami on Feb 22-24th 2010. Speakers include: Alex Payne (Twitter), Aaron Patzer (Mint.com), John Resig (jQuery), Steve Huffman (Reddit) and more. Mega Early Bird tickets go on sale on Wednesday and they’ll sell out immediately (only 20 tickets at $200, which is 56% off).

#1. Ego

1. Ask yourself: Does this feature increase the users self-worth or stoke the ego?
2. If a user is contributing to my system, what emotional rewards do they walk away with? What (visible) rewards will they receive?

#2. Simplicity

1. Stop over building features
2. Pick 2-3 things to focus on
3. Ask yourself: Is there anything I can take out of this feature?

#3. Build & Release

1. Stop thinking you understand your users
2. Learn from what they’re actually doing on your site, not what you think they’ll do
3. Decide on what you’re going to build… and build it (avoid analysis paralysis)
4. Build, release, iterate, and repeat

#4. Hack The Press

1. Invite only system (Pownce, Digg v3)
2. Talk to the junior bloggers
3. Attend parties for events you can’t afford – network w/influencers, bring a demo

#5. Connect with your community

1. Start a podcast (it’s OK if not everyone listens)
2. Throw a launch party, then yearly/quarterly  events – invite the press/influencers personally – don’t tell the bar
3. Engage w/the community, be an active participant your own ecosystem

#6. Advisors

1. What technical problems are you going to have?
2. Advisors can be helpful in a whole slew of areas (marketing/hiring/bizdev)
3. Stock compensation, typically not a board seat, solid advisors help during fund raising

#7. Leverage your userbase to spread the word

#8. Does your product provide value for 3rd party sites?

#9. Analyze your traffic

1. Install Google analytics
2. Entrance sources (search?)
3. Paths through site
4. Top exit pages

The Video

Go to Source

Digg is set to debut a new iPhone app, according to an interview with the news site’s founder, Kevin Rose.

The revelation was somewhat unintentional: video podcasters Arnt Eriksen and Thomas Moen were interviewing Rose during the FOWA conference in London and spotted him playing with the new app. When the pair inquired about the application, Rose replied: “You’re not even supposed to know about that…nobody knows about that”. He was, however, happy for the pair to leave the revelation in their podcast.

Separately, Digg is planning to expand to the “long tail” of content, Rose explains, serving up home pages for many different subject areas. The change could mean that Digg becomes a more reliable traffic source for publishers: currently it’s an all or nothing scenario.

Will you be using the Digg iPhone App? Let us know in the comments.

[via Digg]

Go to Source

As you all probably know, we also run a conference called The Future of Web Apps. Just wanted to give you a quick heads up that the event in London next week is about to sell out. There’s only about 45 seats left.

You can check out the topics, speakers and ticket prices here.

The tickets will probably be gone by Friday, and it’s the best show we’ve ever done.

You’ll Learn …

• How to Build a Web App from A-Z
• How to Take Your Users from One to a Million
• How to Improve your Web App with HTML 5
• Unleashing Full Object-Oriented Capability
• The Future of Agile: Merb + Ruby on Rails
• How to Build with Facebook Connect and add Social Context to Your Website
• Copywriting Fundamentals for the Web
• Kick-Ass Online Marketing Techniques
• How to Manage the Growth of your Web App
• How to Increase the Accessibility of Your Web App

Awesome Speakers …

• Twitter
• PayPal
• Facebook
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Kevin Rose
• FreshBooks
• Six Apart
• And more …

First Live Appearance by Gary Vaynerchuk

We are also delighted to be hosting Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary TV. He will be in town for his first ever UK appearance and will be riffing on why it’s time you all start “Crushing It” as well as giving advice on why now is the time to turn your ideas into a business. He’s one of the most inspiring speakers we’ve ever seen and you shouldn’t miss him.

The Kevin and Gary Show

The conference will end with “The Kevin and Gary Show”, a one time only show for FOWA attendees. Kevin Rose and Gary Vaynerchuk will bring their take on the web, marketing, wine, beer and who knows what else in this one off live event from the FOWA stage. Who knows, they might even invite you to join them on the sofa and share in the fun.

Huge Party Hosted by PayPal

We’re going to have a rocking huge party on the first night and it’s one you don’t want to miss. There’s going to be free alcohol, great music and tons of fun to be had.

Hope you can join us! Feel free to checkout the topics, speakers and ticket prices here.

Go to Source

Fallon, who recently took over Conan O’Brien’s 12:30am time slot on NBC, has a big presence across a multitude of social sites, including Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. He also makes use of these tools during his show – for example, using Twitter to determine questions to ask his guests, and assigning fictional Facebook status updates to members of his studio audience during one of his skits. Recently, Fallon even had Diggnation co-hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht on the program (video below).

Some other notable individuals winning awards included Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, who has been outspoken about technology issues and made one of his band’s albums available for free on the Web, and Seth MacFarlane, who won an award in Video and Film for his Web-exclusive release of “Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy.”

Ultimately, all three of these individuals did make significant contributions to the Web in 2008, so, we’re not surprised to see them taking home the hardware from the Webby’s, which is now in its 13th year. The prohibitive favorite for next year’s awards? That would have to be Ashton Kutcher.

Tags: jimmy fallon, social media, Trent Reznor, webby awards

But that large-scale transition is accompanied by a feeling of loss for some: like a small town becoming a big city, some sense of community, of commonality and shared culture, is lost along the way.

Shaquille O’Neal, who engaged with the community before it became the “new cool thing”, is being championed for his takedown of Oprah. An #unfollowfriday trend was started in an effort to reduce Ashton Kutcher’s follower count. And a new site, HereBeforeOprah, attempts to separate the “pre-Oprah” users from the newcomers. Why would the Twitter community react in this way?

The answer is largely cultural. Being a Twitter user used to identify you as something not quite quantifiable – an early adopter, perhaps, someone passionate about the web and new technologies. It was the street where everybody knows their neighbors. It was the bar on Cheers, with Kevin Rose playing “Norm!”. It hasn’t been that way for a long time, of course – years, in fact – but just like the parent that laments “they grow up so fast!”, this week has been one in which those early users must learn to let go.

Let’s invent a hypothetical indie band…we’ll call it “Twttr”. You went to every one of Twttr’s live shows, despite the band’s many technical difficulties and the fact that some nights…they just plain sucked. You bought every CD; stocked up on Twttr t-shirts; started the unofficial fan site; wasted your nights in the Twttr forums debating whether their second album had more psychedelic post-punk influences than their first.

And then, one evening, you turn on the TV to see Twttr playing on Letterman, as your roommate runs in and declares: “OMG have you heard about this new band Twttr?? I’m their number one fan!!”

At that point, you don’t declare that Twttr has jumped the shark, and you don’t start bragging that you were “here before Oprah”. Instead you declare, humbly and sincerely: “Great job, Twttr, I always knew you’d make it.”

–

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Miss_PJ

Tags: herebeforeoprah, twitter

Immediately after the DiggBar was launched, some content publishers and search engine marketers started an uproar, voicing concern about Digg stealing traffic and links.

A little bit later, Digg responded saying that Google and SEOs were consulted and Digg adhered to the "leading best practices." Furthermore, Digg said it would be launching additional updates to further address the "Google juice" concerns.

Not everyone was satisfied with that response, and Digg has responded yet again, this time with some changes to how the DiggBar works.

For one, only people logged into Digg will be shown the DiggBar automatically. "While the vast majority of Digg users find the DiggBar valuable (only a very small number of users have disabled the feature or hit close with any frequency) we understand that many folks were confused when opting out. We want you to be able to have the option to permanently disable the DiggBar with ease," says Digg’s John Quinn. "For registered Digg users receiving the bar, we are also making a few changes to make the process more obvious."

They are also changing the treatment to the behavior of Digg short URLs. Now all anonymous users will be taken directly to publishers content via a permanent 301 redirect with no toolbar, straight to the site. Only logged in Digg users who have not turned it off will see the DiggBar.

Now, maybe the controversy will die down a bit. Quinn also shared some interesting stats regarding the Diggbar:

- 45% of all digging activity is happening on the DiggBar

- 25% of all DiggBar users are discovering new content they otherwise wouldn’t have by viewing related stories and content from the same source

- There’s been a 10% increase in users sharing short-URLs across Twitter, Facebook, email, and other places

If you’re still not familiar with the DiggBar, here is a video showing how it works:

Do you think Digg has done the right thing with its latest DiggBar updates? Do you think there was that much cause for concern to begin with? Tell us what you think.

It’s time to our best news of this week. We have a lot of graphic and web, a bit of architecture, Ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuffs! So take a look on the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to keep you updated about what is going on out there!
<!–break–>

It’s time to our best news of this week. We have a lot of graphic and web, a bit of architecture, Ads, tech news, awesome reads and other crazy stuffs! So take a look on the links we’ve selected for your inspiration and to keep you updated about what is going on out there!

We want to give a big thanks to our sponsors:
Mosso, Wix, Light CMS, W3-Markup, XHTML4U, PSD2HTML, Harvest and VectorStock™. A special mention to Media Temple for the excellent service and support with Abduzeedo!

You can send me your suggestions via Twitter twitter.com/morpheu or twitter.com/abduzeedo, and include #abdz_best in the message.

Friday 04/10

Is this the Zune HD?

Pega prego

Song of the Day : [04/10]

Playboy: Obviously Not A Leg Man

Del.icio.us Finally Gets Some Respect from Yahoo

Kevin Rose: New Digg Search Destroys the Old Stuff

iPhone cake: Happy birthday RS and JF!

Pablo de la Penya

O que seus livros têm a dizer?

Carreira em Publicidade

Stunning High Speed Photography

Vintage Porsche Posters

Thursday 04/09

moxon architects: ‘hedgehog’ building planning permission granted

22 Radiant Red Websites

Tylenol Campaign

The Smashing Book: Vote For The Book Cover Now!

Table Layouts vs. Div Layouts: From Hell to… Hell?

Watermelon-Inspired Design

The Timemachine Firefox Add-on

The Retro Enigma Desktop [Featured Desktop]

8 maneiras de melhorar a tipografia em seus designs

# Sabiam que # rabiscos aumentam a concentração?

Dan Luvisi Digital Artist

Wednesday 04/08

Tabbed Navigation, and What Makes it Useful

37 Examples of Unique Navigation

Seesmic Unveils A Formidable New Twitter Client To Rival Tweetdeck: Seesmic Desktop

Gmail Mobile Gets Performance Tweaks, New Look

15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website

Twitter first impressions: Five things I like, five things I don’t

Meet Jos Buivenga: The Designer of the Museo Font

The GUI Godfather

Better Cutting, Better Cleaning

Silesti

Tuesday 04/07

The New FriendFeed: Real-Time, Direct Messages, Better Filters

Showcase Of Well-Designed Tabbed Navigation

Process Post / Student Project

tham & videgard hansson arkitekts: apartment at humlegarden, stockholm

Mtv Switch

Weekly Review March 30 – April 6

The View from Book Hill

Monday 04/06

Gordon Ramsay Demonstrates the Perfect Scrambled Egg Breakfast

KISS: Música ou Marketing?

Honest Ed’s

Google’s New VC Fund Lacks Domain Name

10 Tips to Design Usable Shopping Carts

25 Examples of Cool Coming Soon Page Designs – Part II

Yes, we kern

Web Trend Map

The Next Web Is Just Around The Corner (The Conference, That Is)

About the author

I’m from Brazil, co-founder of Zee with Fabio. Nowadays I like to play with Fireworks, Photoshop and improve my skills in CSS. If you wanna request some posts, please feel free to contact me or follow on Twitter.

Sponsored Links:

While the average Digg user will probably find lots to like about the DiggBar in terms of simply using the features, marketers and webmasters concerned about traffic have not all been so enthused.

There has been a great amount of concern that Digg has started hoarding all of the traffic for itself. After all, viewing a page with the DiggBar keeps that page at a Digg-based URL. The cause for concern might not be so great though.

Mike Arrington at TechCrunch notes, "For most purposes those sites won’t care. The page is still rendered and includes the advertising. The way most internal analytics software works means that page views will still be counted. But some services, like Comscore, won’t necessarily see the visit to the site, and will penalize the domain name."

An article from Brian X. Chen at Wired provides some insight from social media all-star Brent Csutoras, that should set some minds at ease.

As for content providers, Csutoras said the DiggBar will only improve traffic to their sites. He noted that the DiggBar features buttons to share Digg links via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail. He said there also shouldn’t be a risk of hijacking traffic: Even though the DiggBar keeps a user at Digg, the content provider’s site is displayed in an inline frame, meaning it still receives a page view and the proper ad revenue for each click.

It’s understandable that the idea of Digg taking all of your traffic would cause some concern, particularly if you are in the business of making money from your content. But the DiggBar might actually be helping your cause. And let’s not forget the amount of exposure your content can get by simply being included in Digg to begin with.

What do you think about the DiggBar? Tell us.

Have you noticed a change in traffic? Good or bad?

In an article this week, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter made some very compelling arguments for why URL shorteners might be bad for the web. However, I want to make some points for the opposite argument: that URL shorteners are good for web culture and the growth of the Internet. Here are my top five reasons for why URL shorteners are useful to the web:

1. They make links more manageable

What is easier to share?

- This: http://friendfeed.com/e/b17ab777-ceb6-f7fd-8411-ca3a6ca9c9d4/Flutter-Mocks-You-Me-and-Our-Microblogging/
- Or this: http://bit.ly/wPKks

No, not all of the web’s links are that messy. However, many links are long and wordy for SEO reasons. SEO, or search engine optimization, is about ranking higher in Google, and one of the factors Google and other search engines consider are keywords in the URL. This creates a conundrum for the user – the URLs help describe the content, but are lengthy and are not easy to share on emails, web pages, and especially social media services like Facebook and Twitter.

URL shorteners help solve the problem of making links more manageable to share. And certain services, such as ➡.ws allows users to add keywords to describe the link.

2. They can track and compile click data

One of the reasons that bit.ly has received so much attention lately is because of the comprehensive data Bitly provides in the form of live click data, geographic location, the webpage the link where the link was clicked, and more. This type of information is invaluable to webmasters and companies – it shows where customers are coming from, when they are coming, and what interests them.

This type of information helps companies develop better products and webmasters produce more targeted content. Detailed information makes the economy more efficient.

3. They can be transformed into social media services

There was a good piece on GigaOM that discussed how Bit.ly could launch its own version of Digg. While this may or may not be Bit.ly’s eventual goal (just like Digg, a URL shortener could be gamed), it’s clear that the data that URL shorteners can accumulate, coupled with the rise of short URL sharing on Twitter and other websites, could amount to some innovative social media services that display popular links, rank domains, and act as a filter or aggregate of social media content.

URL shorteners, in their own way, work as aggregates of information. This can lead to some useful mashups and innovations in how people share and digest content.

4. They can provide users useful features

Explanation of the DiggBar from Digg founder Kevin Rose on Vimeo.

A new URL shortener, Pagetweet, caught my eye. It’s a little more complicated than other URL shorteners (I don’t understand why it requires a security code), but when you look at an actual page via Pagetweet, it provides a useful interface for sharing via social media, seeing the number of views, and more.

Because it’s so easy for companies to enter this space, innovations are constantly being made that improve the user experience. Digg recently launched a DiggBar and Digg URL shortener, which provides information on the number of Diggs and comments any article has received. This is only the beginning.

Users also have a choice – they can follow links that will provide features, or simply choose ones with only the necessary functionality to get them to a web page. All in all though, URL shorteners can improve the browsing experience.

5. They promote sharing

You can simply fit more links and content in less space with URL shorteners. A tweet can describe and then link to a webpage in under 140 characters, while a full URL might not even come with an explanation.

Even more important is the rise of mobile smartphones, texting, and mobile Internet – it’s far easier to text in a short URL than a long one. As Twitter, social media, and mobile Internet become more popular, the need to make sharing web content easier will increase. Shorter URLs are becoming more and more integral to that cause.

Innovation in the world of URL shorteners:

Despite the useful qualities of URL shorteners, I still have reservations. As Schachter stated in his blog post on URL shorteners, a URL shortening service being hacked could instill havoc across the web: destroying links to websites or (worse) turning them into malware links. This and other possibilities are frightening, which is why entrepreneurs need to lead the way in creating new innovations to make URL shorteners faster, more secure, and more friendly to the users. It’s clear that URL shorteners are here to stay: the challenge for the web community is to find ways to enjoy their benefits and protect against their downfalls.

Good news: innovation seems to be accelerating. Bit.ly recently raised approximately $2 million in venture funding, Digg just launched its URL shortener, and StumbleUpon is coming out with its own as well. But more innovations, in the form of WordPress plugins, shorteners not reliant on 3rd party redirects, and social media features, are needed if URL shorteners are to be a mainstay of the web. I predict that there will be a day when every domain has URL shortening capabilities, lessening the load on the web and DNS. And don’t be surprised if Twitter comes out with a URL shortener of its own.

Do you have thoughts or predictions on URL shorteners? Want to share an innovative URL shortener? Let us know about them in the comments.

Tags: bit.ly, digg, TinyURL, twitter, url shorteners

Well now we get a closer look at that as Digg prepares to roll out the DiggBar. Kevin Rose posted about it at Digg the Blog today and included the following video, which shows just what it does.

According to Rose, the Digg Bar allows users to:

- Digg directly on the destination site: No more awkward toggling between the story page and Digg.

- Easily share stories: You can now create a shortened Digg URL to share on Twitter, Facebook or via email. You can also type digg.com/ before the URL of any page you’re on to create a short URL.

- Access additional analytics: See how many times a story has been viewed.

- View comments while on the story page: Clicking the ‘Comments’ button expands the DiggBar to show the top comment, latest comment, and most controversial without leaving the page.

- Discover related stories: Clicking the ‘Related’ button expands the DiggBar to highlight similar stories.

- See more stories from the same source: Clicking the ‘Source’ button expands the DiggBar to show you more Digg stories from that source site.

- Discover random stories: Click the ‘Random’ button and you’ll be brought to an entirely new, unexpected story.

So basically it is StumbleUpon meets TinyURL meets Digg with even more. I think this toolbar is going to be quite popular. It even gives you direct access to post shortened URLs on Twitter and Facebook. This thing’s going to get a lot of use.

It’s not available to everyone just yet, but from the sound of it, you won’t have to wait much longer if you can’t get it yet. Starting today, Digg is rolling out the DiggBar.

In the same blog post that Kevin Rose announced the DiggBar in, he said to "Also stay tuned for some big changes to Digg search!" Digg has not exactly been known for its search feature, but perhaps that will change.

TechCrunch was able to get a screenshot from Digg showing what the new search will look like. TC’s Mike Arrington says, "The new search appears to have much more relevant results, taking into account the popularity of the story as well as the newness for ‘best match.’ Other simple filters include ‘most dugg’ and ‘newest first.’ Compare that to the very old, not very relevant results you get now."

He also notes that the left sidebar features items like aging, number of stories with a certain number of Diggs, and stories broken out by media type, and by topic.

Between this and the DiggBar, it seems like Rose is holding to his new year’s resolution of building a better Digg. Perhaps that lost Digg enthusiasm is starting to pick back up.