I saw a post on Mixx yesterday; Digg considering adding Twitter updates, and thought I would write a nice list post.  Digg should have added some sort of Twitter integration last year when they removed the shouting system and forced everyone to use Twitter instead.

Top ten social media sites that have Twitter integration:

10 Friend Feed Integrates everything, including Digg.  This one is a given.

9 Facebook is another given and they’ve had a facebook app for Twitter for a long time now.

8 Vox even way way back when I posted it on Aug 12, 2007, I knew my blog needed Twitter Cowbell.  Why doesn’t Digg have Twitter Cowbell?

7 Virb added a twitter importer on their latest update last year.  Also note that the Virb layout and design are about ten times better than Digg.

6 Linkedin has a twitter app and you can tweet from Linkedin, but it doesn’t post to your public profile.

5 Mashable has a handy RSS feed importer.  With that you can add your tweets to your Mashable profile (if you have one).

4 MyBlogLog Even Yahoo’s MyBlogLog pulls in your tweets.

3 Mixx a direct Digg competitor has had twitter integration on profiles.  Its not fully fleshed out but it displays my latest tweet on my public profile so its a win for me.  Doesn’t allow for tweeting or reading from the site and the tweets are displayed backwards in the chatter section, but they have Twitter Cowbell and Digg does not.

2 StumbleUpon‘s su.pr is like bitly on steroids.  It promotes, your blog, twitter and stumble upon profile (Being very social while doing it)  Su.pr isn’t just a URL shortener; tweet interface, it lets you schedule tweets and neat stats with Retweet tracking and who liked it on StumbleUpon.  Su.pr completely blows away the diggbar.

1 Myspace Yeah myspace has a Twitter app and its works well for what it is. It is a sad day when Myspace has a feature/app that Digg should have but doesn’t.

At first when I heard about Digg Trends I thought that the Digg Users looking at the front page would bury most of the stories.  Digg Trends are stories showing a high amount of activity (diggs, comments, shares etc).  With Digg Trends the Digg users have ten minutes to decide if the story should be on the front page or be buried.  Digg also put some snarkiness into it as well, “Failed! Just like nü metal, this trend failed. It won’t be promoted.” And, “Buried When time’s up, we’ll tell you if everyone agreed with you.”

I think the clock is a bit big but otherwise I like it.  The design is a over sized in general but I think thats the idea, to get the Digg users’ attention.  It’s definitely a shock seeing this for the first time because I can’t remember the last major change to the Digg front page design (besides them taking away the avatars).

Digg Trending - "For Thrillers, Glenn Beck Is Becoming New Oprah"

Here are the first 16 to hit on Digg Trends:

1. “For Thrillers, Glenn Beck Is Becoming New Oprah” Buried
2. Domain Name Shill Bidding Scheme Uncovered At SnapNames” Made popular
3. “Disney Will Make Over Mickey — Why? To Make Us Like Him” Made popular
4. “Tom Cruise Controls Books and Bottles With His Mind “ Buried
5. “Crabs trade sex for protection ” Made popular
6. “Windows 7 vulnerable to 8 out of 10 viruses” Made popular
7. “Piggy Trouble (INFOGRAPHIC)” Made popular
8. “Darwinian evolutionary theory will help find alien life” Made popular
9. “A Black Hole Engine That Could Power Spaceships [Mad Science” Made popular
10. “False alarm: new Mac OS X 10.6.2 build restores Atom support” Made popular
11. ““Brand New Modern Warfare 2 Trailer Released!“Made popular
12. “More on secret copyright treaty: your kids could go to jail ” Made popular
13. ““Profit “Not Satanic” Barclays Says Buried
14. “Dunce! Judge orders women to hold signs admitting crime” Made popular
15. “Israeli Commandos Seize Hezbollah-Bound Arms Ship” Made popular
16. “Italian court: 23 Americans guilty of kidnapping in CIA case” Buried

Only four were buried of the 16 so far.  I really thought it would have been the other way around, but so far so good.  I hope this trend continues.

And I don’t mean, “Oops, what you’re looking for isn’t here!”

If you are an avid Digg user you’ve seen the recent survey which included some new ideas for features such as ‘Anonymous Digging’ (WTF Could go wrong with that?), Save to read later (sounds somewhat useful and non-sinster), Digg Groups (Let’s turn Digg into Reddit and give a few users more power than they really need), Digg Breaking News (a clever feature for Digg trolls, to trick them into using the upcoming system already in place), and Digg Verticals (Trendy Web 2.0 speak for god knows what).  Here is what I would like to see Digg Improve:

1. Improve the Duplication Engine (Is this story already on Digg?)
2. Improve fairness
3. Digg needs to be far less draconian
4. Improve the Digg User Profiles
5. Improve the Digg User Experience
6. Make Digg more web 2.0 (Steal a page from Friend Feed)
7. Replace the Diggbar
8. Factor in Tweetmeme
9. Digg Twitter Bots
10. Intangibles

Why improve the Duplication engine?   Well it doesn’t work all that well. (Letterman – Kevin Spacey Tweets with Dave and Letterman – Kevin Spacey Tweets with Dave)  And sometimes it doesn’t work as intended at all. Ballmer Peak [XKCD] Should have taken me to Remember Windows ME? Here’s the explanation a friend linked me to an old XKCD post and I thought it wasn’t subbed but was wrong (both link to http://xkcd.com/323/).    I’ve seen some down right dirty things done to the Dupe detector (well heard about them at least) and of course I’ve been screwed by dupes. (Org: Reporter Gets Hit by a Mean Hoe and the Dupe: Grandma Attacks Reporter With A Hoe! )  Coming clean, I’ve unintentionally duped a few times, I’ve seen Digg Dupes POP when my original post didn’t Front Page, even one time I’ve posted the same thing one minute apart from another user and ironically while writing this post, one of my twitter pals duped a story that I had duped because it had been submitted by people that couldn’t get it Dugg.

Is this story already on Digg?

Improve fairness!  Digg needs transparency.   First off we can see who’s digging, let us see who’s burying, this is something Mixx has and it would be a huge game changer on Digg.   Also let us know if a Digg moderator buried it or the Digg users buried the story.

Col Tribune Story - Buried by Digg.com

Digg has to be far less draconian.  now this has nothing to do with design or programming.  Two cases in point:  Don’t shoot the messenger.  Bring back Zaibatsu. Wipe the slate clean.  Un-ban everyone.  No really I mean it.  Instead of banning your loyal users, take a page out of twitter’s page book.  Suspend users for bad behavior or posting stuff that doesn’t fly with the TOS.  Ban users after a third strike offense or five strikes overall.  Or have the suspension time increase progressively as a user behaves poorly.  Maybe make it funny like Orkut Jail used to be.  In a lot of these incidents Digg should punish site owners instead of Digg users.  Send out a few warnings when a user is getting out of line.  Remember you will get farther with positive reinforcement, then you will by being draconian.  Make Digg more transparent and more democratic.

You're doing Great - Digg on!

Improve the User Profiles?  Whats wrong with them and the Digg User Experience?  Well when Digg took away the shouting system it left a gapping hole on all our profiles for months now where the shout box used to be.  I suggest returning with but without allowing shouting of Digg posts.  It would be nice to say Hi to someone that adds you, maybe say thanks for Digging me, etc.  And since you guys have forced us to use Twitter, why not steal a page out of Virb’s Playbook and let the users show their status updates on their Digg profiles?  Remember when you had rel=”me” instead of rel=”nofollow me” (which is like saying I don’t trust myself in Micoformats/HTML, remember be far less draconian) and why not use site favicons instead of hyperlinks?  Maybe take a look at Dailymile.  Put some more social into your social bookmarking site.  Maybe allow for a Flickr importer on the side, Custom top friends, Smaller Friend avatars like Twitter and more of them.  Allow for the customization of  favorites, maybe three to six, instead  of having just three.  Allow the Digg user’s to tag posts, something most other social book marking sites already have; Mixx, Delicious, Magnolia, etc.  And if you allow tags why not add a tag cloud on the Digg user’s profiles.

Missing Shoutbox Area on Digg profile for The Dude Dean

Make Digg more web 2.0 (Steal a page from FriendFeed)  Ajaxify all pages on Digg.  I think it would be great to NOT have to hit F5 to see the Digg trolls in action when a story hits front page on Digg.  I also think it would be great to be able to see the stories move around in upcoming like the way we can when you track a story on the bigg board.

Replace the Diggbar.  Stumble Upon has su.pr urls, I am sure you guys can come up with a system that’s fair for everybody.  I-framing content sites so Digg can up their traffic numbers is a bit lame.  A lot of Digg users aren’t using the Diggbar in their tweets, I for the most part am one of them and will only use the diggbar if there is no way to digg on the site I am linking to.  Make this a win-win for everyone.

Factor in Tweetmeme into the Digg Algorithm.  This would also be a huge game changer on Digg.  If you make us tweet about Digg shouldn’t that factor into the algo?  If you factored in Tweetmeme and it got out that you did this, it might even bring in some new users from twitter that aren’t avid digg users.  Don’t like Tweetmeme?  Use Topsy instead.  Either way, if you are making us Tweet about Digg by removing the shout system, it should factor into the algo.

I like the Digg Twitter bots you guys have and follow a few of them.  But if I can get my web site to say from The Dude Dean instead of from API, you guys can too.  Its not that hard.  I would love to see the bots follow some of the users back.   When the Digg bots post, have them give us credit (Via Username) so maybe we can get some followers since you forced us all to use twitter.  Again put more social into it.  When twitter users Retweet something its good form to give Credit where Credit is due.  Digg should do the same.  Remember be less draconian.  ;-)

Example Tweet:

“30 GOP Senators Vote to Defend Gang Rape” - http://digg.com/d216sfh?t1

“30 GOP Senators Vote to Defend Gang Rape” - http://digg.com/d216sfh?t1 (Via @TheDudeDean)

Lastly Intangibles.  I’ve mentioned the world famous Digg trolls a few times in this post.  This is the most important thing Digg needs to improve upon.  Go take a look at some of these guys.  Their stats suck.  The typical Digg troll doesn’t Digg, has a ton of comments and zero or very little Digg submissions.  Clearly these guys are burying more than Digging.  I suggest that maybe making Digg users earn buries something like 20 Diggs to 1 Bury or 50 Diggs to 1 Bury.  And maybe you can put some humor into the site like Digg does during april fools day and come up with some clever pop up warnings for the Digg Trolls.

I was doing some long overdue maintenance on my Facebook requests this last weekend trying to clean up group invites and application requests. Something bugged me as I was clicking around those application in the wee hours of the morning and I couldn’t place my finger on it. I kept on seeing my social media friends in the ads inside of the applications and it didn’t dawn upon me until I saw one friend in particular, Yvette, (who I know has a thing for her privacy), Ines, Agustina, Maria, Tami and my own avatar in one of those ads. Two years ago I thought I had fixed this issue with Beacon and then it hit me, Facebook is invading our privacy.

From Facebook Principles (Privacy Policy)

1.You should have control over your personal information.

2.You should have access to the information others want to share.

OK sounds good, like Facebook is on your side. Not that facebook is trying to take advantage of Your Good Name, Your Image, Your Avatar, Your Personality and/or Your Online Reputation. Sounds good in theory. In practice however Facebook doesn’t at any time along the way prompt you to lock down your privacy settings nor does it say they are going to use Your photo in ads on their popular Facebook applications throughout the site. Nor does the privacy policy say anything about compensation for use of said images. Read a little bit deeper into the fine print of the Facebook Privacy Policy: Sharing Your Information with Third Parties

*(Bullet point 4) If you, your friends, or members of your network use any third-party applications developed using the Facebook Platform (“Platform Applications”), those Platform Applications may access and share certain information about you with others in accordance with your privacy settings. You may opt-out of any sharing of certain or all information through Platform Applications on the Privacy Settings page. In addition, third party developers who have created and operate Platform Applications (“Platform Developers”), may also have access to your personal information (excluding your contact information) if you permit Platform Applications to access your data. Before allowing any Platform Developer to make any Platform Application available to you, Facebook requires the Platform Developer to enter into an agreement which, among other things, requires them to respect your privacy settings

How do you opt out? Click on SETTINGS up at the top where you see the log out link. Select PRIVACY. Then select NEWS FEEDS AND WALL. Next select the tab that reads FACE BOOK ADS. There is a drop down box, select NO ONE. Then SAVE your changes.

Think your out of the facebook ads? Think again, because I thought I was. “How long have you had your privacy settings on facebook locked down?”. Since Day 1, including the Ads setting. And I check it (and my other privacy settings), every time Facebook does an overhaul. “Am I imagining this? “You may opt out of appearing in your friends’ Facebook ads.” http://bit.ly/k0gp6″ Very interesting, so if Yvette has her account on lock down and I though I had my account on lock down. Then why am I seeing her avatar image along with mine in one of those pesky facebook application ads? Here’s the kicker! Remember Bullet Point Four Above? It goes on;

“Before allowing any Platform Developer to make any Platform Application available to you, Facebook requires the Platform Developer to enter into an agreement which, among other things, requires them to respect your privacy settings and strictly limits their collection, use, and storage of your information. However, while we have undertaken contractual and technical steps to restrict possible misuse of such information by such Platform Developers, we of course cannot and do not guarantee that all Platform Developers will abide by such agreements. Please note that Facebook does not screen or approve Platform Developers and cannot control how such Platform Developers use any personal information that they may obtain in connection with Platform Applications.”

So basically Facebook has a rule that they aren’t able or willing to enforce. Facebook could phrase it such that they can and will delete applications in breech of their privacy policy but that goes against Facebook wanting to have more apps and more clicks on their social network. I informed Yvette of the bad news and she has some interesting counterpoints; “This is wrong, on so many levels. I have not formally endorsed a single commercial product, voluntarily… And, ethically, if I agreed to product endorsements in the FB TOS, I should be informed of what they are. False advertising. And, what if I am morally or contractually prevented from endorsing this or that product, then what? Troubling.” So Basically it falls on the end users to police Facebook and the application developers if they are breaking the Facebook privacy policy and using your images and likeness to sell their wares. Facebook claims these are “rumors” but they are not. But realistically if the setting for this was off by default, would you want to turn it on?

When you catch an app you don’t think isn’t playing by the rules remove and report it. Also Facebook didn’t bother to carry over my setting for Beacon from the older version of Facebook. If Facebook can carry over all the information, apps, pictures from the older version Facebook can remember my Privacy setting for Beacon. We shouldn’t have to protect our privacy EVERY TIME Facebok does an update to their social network.

Facebook’s got you covered! Don’t worry, we’ll leave beacon on FOR you.

Facebook Updated my Privacy Settings for me. Notice its OFF (Or set “Only My Friends”)

Dear staff at Wired and Ars,

Long time reader, love your stuff, its all good. Been reading you guys for a very long time, arstechnica since 1999. I along with others submit Your(meaning Ars and Wired’s) stories on Social Bookmarking sites.

For example:

• Samsung Fields Green, Ultra-Slim LCD TVs (Wired | Digg Front Pager | Made popular 9 days ago 424 Diggs) PR 4
• Ars Cracks TV Fringe Code (Ars – Digg Front Pager | Made popular Apr 8, 2009 | PR 4 | 726 Diggs)
• Avant-Garde Cellist Zeo Keating (Wired | not a Front Pager but a solid showing of votes)
• Ma.gnolia Suffers Major Data Loss, Site Taken Offline (Wired | Made popular Jan 31, 2009 | 514 Diggs)

However I have to let You (meaning Ars and Wired) know whats going on over at one of these Social Bookmarking sites: Reddit. Reddit just recently banned a bunch of users on their social media site. No reasons were given, no warnings were issued. I guess My Grammar needs to improve (a joke from Ben’s post about this issue, see below). Now I tried (Unsuccessfully) to contact reddit about this issue and received no response. This leaves me no recourse but to get in touch with You, Reddit’s sponsors aka “Sister Sites”.

You are going to rectify this situation. You are going to explain to Reddit just how the internet, community and social media work. You are going to teach them how to play fairly and nicely. And most importantly how to build a community. Reddit is going to restore accounts, apologize and send us Hoodies (if they don’t have hoodies explain to Reddit why people on the net like them) and Schwag (and I want LOTS of Schwag, maybe an Ars and Wired Hoodie XXL).

This is going onto Digg and Twitter, so I am certain you will find this VERY quickly. The lesson here is not to mess with the Social Media Elite. By that I mean people that are Digg Elites and “Twitterati” who used to Digg your stuff and Tweet your stuff to 1000s of friends and in some cases 10,000s of friends. Consider this a very clear and transparent message. I am turning the tables on you. But unlike Reddit, I am letting You know that You are now black balled.

As “Sister Sites” of Reddit, I am certain you will quickly resolve this issue. I am sure my schwag; Hoodies (XXL remember?), Wired Subscription, T-Shirts, Wired Subscription, Mugs, Wired Subscription, hats, Wired Subscription, and Red Swingline Stapler are already in the snail mail.

Yours Truly,
The Dude Dean

PS Style, Epicurious, Concierge you guys are next.
PPS Digg and Mixx crew, Don’t sub these two sites, I am declaring a “No-Fly Zone”, if you see noobs subbing from these domains please Bury until reddit, wired and Ars make this right to G-Man, Ben, myself and all the others that were unfairly banned.

**Update**
@arstechnica Good bye Ars! @TheDudeDean Bye! Where are you going? @arstechnica I posted this 17 days ago and tweeted it to you: Open Letter to Wired and Ars: http://digg.com/d1sO8V?t @TheDudeDean Oh right. Bye!

Why am I blogging about George W. Bush and The Bush Legacy on my humble little blog about SEO and SMO? I am bring back Miserable Failure to the internet. Miserable Failure is the real Bush Legacy.

Today Barak Obama was sworn into office as the 44th President of the United States of America. As PotUS44 he has a brand spanking new White House web page. As a patriotic American, I was looking at the new site while watching the Inauguartion and I went browsing for GW’s bio page on the new site and got first Digg on his page and for good measure, I also put it on Newsvine, Reddit, Mixx, and Current.

The terms; “Miserable Failure”, “The Bush Legacy”, and “worst President ever” do not appear on this page. The opportunity cost on all these social media sites, for the most part, they only let you post a link if you do it first. So let’s all bring back Miserable Failure to George W. Bush. He deserves it. Spread the word and give him a vote on your favorite social media site. While you are at it give it a retweet as well:

RT @TheDudeDean: Let’s send Bush off in style. Please digg, fave and RT http://tinyurl.com/82p2ns #miserablefailure2.0

Did you get a bunch of followers on the 20th? Wonder where your new Twitter followers came from? Thank The Busy Brain.

The story begins for me when I posted my Twitter Grade. Then last Sunday (Oct 19th, 12:45AM), I get the following email in my twitter filter in Gmail, TheBusyBrain is now following you on Twitter! I check him out, profile looks good, friends are pretty even, I think nothing of it. I follow him back.

The next day(Oct 20th) it hits the fan. I get around 40 new follow requests on twitter in one day. Most of them are very spammy accounts and all mostly fresh meat looking noobs. I was wondering what the hell was going on and I caught a tweet linking to my new Pal, The Busy Brain’s Blog and I quickly figured out where the twitter noobs were coming from.

The Busy Brain spent some time and figured out how to game the twitter system a bit. He found some Tweople that some might be considered “Twitterati”, people that are active on twitter, that read their email alerts and have a high chance of following back. So he did do some homework on his little Social Media Optimization Experiment.

The Busy Brain failed in at least two ways with his Social Media Optimization Experiment. First he didn’t let the victims know what they were in for. If you are going to have a Social Media Love in, it is only fair that everyone knows they are going to be participating in the Social Media Love in. Secondly the space monkeys he got were all random people in addition to being noobs on twitter and a few of them were down right spammy. The idea behind Social Media Marketing (SMM) is to NOT be spammy, your goal should be to engage people that want to hear about your brand, your products or your ideas. The goal should be to get people to follow you for your content or insight.

The Busy Brain ended up seeing the error of his ways in less than a day and apologized. Next time you get followed on twitter, maybe you should sleep on it instead of following back right away. Now I have some extra pruning to do on my twitter list this week.

I was talking to a designer friend of mine at Superstarch yesterday and Marcus asked me, “How much effort did you put into winning the Macbook Air?” I thought that was a really good question, so it needs a really good answer. How much is a $1800 Macbook Air worth? How much was the Whuffie Factor?

The answer to his question is simple, yet very complex. First I took a look at what the contest was and decided to throw my hat over the wall, join the site and invited some friends. Very quickly I put myself in the a position to get in the running for it by having the most referrals on the site, having the Most Followers, and being the Most Commented. I also had a ton of content from the services that Second|Brain supported.

Once Second|Brain choose me as one of the Six it was all downhill from there.

I took a look at the other competitors none of them had the network or Social Media empire that I have. I was very thankful that someone like Scoble wasn’t in on the Contest and later when they turned it into a vote I knew the Macbook Air was mine, unless all the people on Second|Brain voted against me, I just had more Social Capital then everyone else.

What is social capital? My 474 friends on Myspace, my 320 friends on Multiply, my 309 followers on Twitter, my 146 Followers Plurk, my 538 friends Iconbuffet and my 234 friends Facebook. This is the Whuffie Factor I had in my favor. 1547 or so people (some are dupes), that is about a dollar a person. All my years of social spelunking paid off in the form of Whuffie.

The cost of time was about five extra hours a day between my misc tasks over the course of six days. One of the days I even took off and helped a friend fix up his new house. The real cost was social momentum; one year on Iconbuffet, four years on Myspace, four years on Multiply, one year on Twitter, one month on Plurk and two years on Facebook. All that time spent on these social networks was what won me the contest. I just had more social capital then anyone else in the running. Who knew having a giant SEO Social Media network could pay off so well?

The Whuffie Factor = $1,749.95
The mere fact that I won the Macbook Air in the Second|Brain Contest – Priceless.

I am in the running for a Macbook Air on Second Brain, join up, follow me and vote Dude FTW! Contest Ends on the Third!
http://secondbrain.com/contest
http://digg.com/apple/Vote_for_the_Top_SecondBrainer
Contest ends on the 3rd

Apparently Facebook has started SELLING user information (surprise, surprise!) to third parties. They call it the “Facebook Development Platform.”

To restrict use of your information, do the following:
Click “Privacy” on top right.
Under the “Facebook Platform” section click”Edit Settings”.
Scroll down to the bottom and UNCHECK ALL of the items under facebook platform.

Most creepy is the inclusion of photographs!
(Do your friends a favor and repost this as your own note.)

Does what happen in the Facebook stay in the Facebook?

facebook