Written on May 17th, 2008 at 02:05 pm by Darren Rowse
Which Social Bookmarking Site Would You Prefer to Hit the Front Page Of?
Here’s a question that might provoke some interesting discussion over the weekend:
Which Social Bookmarking Site Would You Prefer to Hit the Front Page Of?
Would you prefer to hit the popular page on Digg, hit StumbleUpon’s buzz page, make it big on Delicious, Mixx or Reddit or is there some other social bookmarking page that you’d rather do well on?
Also - WHY did you choose the one you’ve chosen? Is it just about the raw numbers of readers, that it leads to secondary links, that it’s more focused and brings a higher quality of reader?
Now it’s over to you for your say….
78 Responses to “Which Social Bookmarking Site Would You Prefer to Hit the Front Page Of?”
Damien Franco
May 17th, 2008 2:09 pm
Stumbleupon has given me the best results. My site doesn’t really work for digg and I don’t think I’m that interested in that type of traffic. My understanding is that it doesn’t last. While I appreciate the spikes I do get from Stumbleupon, I enjoy my site growing organically.
Keith Dsouza
May 17th, 2008 2:12 pm
I prefer StumbleUpon as Stumble users provide a better conversion rate to regular readers.
Secondly SU traffic is not hit and go, you keep getting stumbles for a long time unlike Digg.
Digg just provides spikes and does not last for even one full day, the only satisfaction you can get is watching a towering graph in your stats service for the day you were Dugg.
Aikyrie
May 17th, 2008 2:13 pm
Digg because I use it over the others! Haha Not only that, I find a lot of quirky reads like recently a digg user asked his prom date out on digg by reaching the front page. It was the sweetest geeky thing ever.
Mark Lancaster
May 17th, 2008 2:17 pm
I’d say Yahoo Buzz.
It would be crazy.
Michael Martine - Remarkablogger
May 17th, 2008 2:17 pm
SU has a low bounce rate, but honestly, I prefer to keep building my profile on Twitter, which has no front page to game. Refreshing.
Shankar Ganesh
May 17th, 2008 2:21 pm
Both StumbleUpon and Digg.
Digg sends lots of secondary links. StumbleUpon doesn’t.
On the other hand, StumbleUpon gets me lots of regular RSS readers. Diggers usually don’t stay for more than a few minutes.
George
May 17th, 2008 2:21 pm
I’d actually prefer to hit the front page of Value Investing News, the niche social bookmarking site in my blogs topic area. It brings me the highest quality traffic. I get some good commenters and premium subscribers that way.
For more more general traffic, I actually really like del.icio.us. It seems to bring my site longer term benefits in terms of traffic and maybe even SEO benefits.
Steve
May 17th, 2008 2:21 pm
Stumble Upon. Here’s why:
When people review your site, they actually have to read your content and put some thought into it.
On the other hand, sites like Digg just ask for votes. Votes are instrinsically useless unless the reader ACTUALLY CARES about your content. Which is most cases they don’t because Digg is more like a popularity contest. Most people will exchange Diggs for Diggs, even if the content completely sucks. Its pathetic.
At least with StumbleUpon you’re getting some readers who actually care about what you’ve written.
I’d rather have a few seriously interested readers instead of a massive amount of uninterested readers.
Aaron from Webspear
May 17th, 2008 2:21 pm
I want a DIGG effective!, but the DIGG categories are so bad, I do not know which category to file my submission under.
Stumble upon can be good in the long term. If you are using Stumble Upon the way I do, you would have browsed dozens of pages with a minute! I think many people do not stay long with a stumbled page.
Arachne Jericho
May 17th, 2008 2:22 pm
StumbleUpon by far. Even after the initial wave has been and gone, traffic still comes through—StumbleUpon is actually set up so that all links still have a chance of getting stumbled. Whereas with most other social bookmarking sites, stuff that passes from memory stays passed from memory—and it’s a very short-term memory at that.
My sites wouldn’t work for Digg—in my side blogs I’m too focused on a specific niche to work as wide appeal. And in my main blog, I blog about blogging—a no-no to the Digg crowd.
StumbleUpon is very friendly to both visitors and site owners, and thus wins hands-down for me.
Brett Kelly
May 17th, 2008 2:23 pm
I prefer SU because the readers are generally in the mood to “gamble”. They’ve selected a few topics they like, but they’re rolling the dice - which means they’re coming in with a (relatively) open mind, not looking for one specific bit of information. They just want something interesting/entertaining.
Not to mention that SU tends to bring consistently lengthy surges in traffic (I’ve had several thousand referrals from them per day for almost 2 weeks in the past). It may not convert all of them to regular readers, but it does so better than Digg.
Speaking of, Digg traffic sucks because half of the people who read your story want to offer their $.02 as to why they think you’re wrong/stupid (which is sort of par for the course when you consider Digg’s average reader).
I’m also a big twitter fan (@inkedmn), as many people who follow you are (theoretically) interested in the same types of things you are, which would generally mean they might be interested in your blog. This all depends, of course, but I’ve had a few posts do well on twitter due to a sufficiently large following.
Stephanie
May 17th, 2008 2:25 pm
I tend to prefer StumbleUpon, in large part because it’s hard to find a Digg category that my topics would do well in. SU is general enough to suit just about anyone, yet you can narrow your Stumbles down to your interests, meaning your traffic has a chance to be interested in what you’re saying.
Not that I’d object to doing well on any of them…
tony dee
May 17th, 2008 2:39 pm
SU does it for me, however with my rash of hard luck, I think I would be lucky to land on the front page of a “Wanted” poster.
Dexter
May 17th, 2008 2:42 pm
I would prefer to be in yahoo buzz.. which I heard could bring you thousand of traffic
Tim Hurst
May 17th, 2008 2:46 pm
I tend to agree with Damien and Kieth and prefer SU popularity over Digg. Digg front page spikes can be nice (I’ve actually got one right now), but they are not sustainable. While Digg traffic will generally not convert visitors into loyal readers, a front page or two can help build a new blog’s brand and its legitimacy.
The two posts I have had go popular on Digg were written explicitly with the Digg community in mind, and I would rather not write all of my posts within the strictures of that template.
kellex
May 17th, 2008 2:47 pm
I think Digg still brings the most traffic but Stumble Upon’s seems to be more of what I’m looking for in a reader which is why I’d go with Stumble.
Still wouldn’t turn down that Digg first page though!
Keith Dsouza
May 17th, 2008 2:49 pm
I agree with the point @Shankar Ganesh put in, with spikes Digg also gives you lots of incoming links.
Sanjo-chan
May 17th, 2008 2:57 pm
I get decent traffic from StumbleUpon, and on occasions, del.icio.us. Material from my blog has yet to get traffic from Digg.
Debt Free or Bust - Sherri
May 17th, 2008 3:07 pm
My votes go to Blogging Zoom and StumbleUpon. Also, Propeller has categories that fit what I write pretty well. I don’t get much traffic from it, though.
I like Blogging Zoom because I’m a blogger and it’s for bloggers about blogs.
StumbleUpon seems to bring in the most great traffic, very targeted.
I don’t like Digg because they banned me and won’t respond to any of my attempts to contact them. I started using it before I understood social bookmarking and made some mistakes that looked like spam, I’m sure, and that’s likely why I was banned. But almost a year later, I still can’t get them to respond. So to heck with them. I’ll stick to the above sites.
Sherri
Michael Kwan
May 17th, 2008 3:08 pm
Digg might lead to some secondary links, but StumbleUpon can bring a sustained level of traffic if the content stays relevant.
yoda
May 17th, 2008 3:10 pm
if it was truly important, probably Digg, but since i had my account deleted and swore that site off (except for random lurking), and since i hit popular on Mixx daily, uhhh…
to be honest, i’ve never really used the others, except reading Reddit once a month or so.
how about the cover of Wired Magazine?!?! that’s the real deal right there…RU Sirius level stuff!
Shawn K
May 17th, 2008 3:23 pm
I’ve had the best results with Mixx. They seem to stay around longer and actually read a post, and are much friendlier within Mixx than many users are of other services.
Julie (calinazaret)
May 17th, 2008 3:30 pm
I only ever use mixx. I love it. Sometimes I make it to the front page and it’s great.
Muscle Post
May 17th, 2008 3:30 pm
I’ve gotten a lot more traffic with StumbleUpon, but the problem is it does not convert to ad clicks well for me at all. There is a high bounce rate and low page visit/site time rate for SU traffic on my site. Much lower than from direct and search engine traffic.
Katy Castro
May 17th, 2008 3:37 pm
StumbleUpon works best for me. I haven’t ever gotten myself active in many others to compare but digg I find to be a bit too difficult to work for good traffic. With StumbleUpon, I have had my site on the “buzz” page many times and the traffic it brought was fantastic, long-lasting, and converted well.
While Mixx, Reddit, and many others are gaining in popularity, they just don’t have the numbers yet to see what the result is to sustain traffic long term. This is something that StumbleUpon has proven it can do.
James
May 17th, 2008 3:37 pm
Since my blog is a homebase promoting my podcast (Nobody’s Listening) my needs may be a little different that most. A visit is not enough, otherwise I might vote for Stumbled Upon or Digg.
I’d rather see my site on Delicious i think. Bookmarks are forever… for the most part. When someone bookmarks you, they’re making a commitment. That’s what a podcaster needs. It’s more than a click or a hit. Podcasters need them to click that ever important Subscribe button… and to listen.
Here’s a short list of other places I’d like to see my show: Podcast Pickel, itunes front podcasting page (currently on page 2 of featured comedy), and PodcastAlley.com.
Neerav
May 17th, 2008 3:40 pm
In general I prefer Stumbleupon.com however for specific topics niche social networking sites can be far more effective eg: http://sphinn.com for SEO and Internet Marketing articles
Simple Mom
May 17th, 2008 4:12 pm
StumbleUpon, most definitely. Like everyone said, it’s much more quality traffic, not just quantity.
Secondly, probably Kirtsy (formerly Sk*rt) - it fits my niche well.
Digg absolutely doesn’t work for me because of the horrible categories. Mine doesn’t fit in any of them.
Mark
May 17th, 2008 4:26 pm
StumbleUpon has given me a great spike in traffic that lingered for a few days.
I haven’t gotten dugg yet so I don’t know the quality of the visitors as far as links and subscribers go.
I have heard digg is more of a one time thing where as stumbleUpon might last a few days.
Brian Auer
May 17th, 2008 4:37 pm
Digg is the best one to hit the front page on. It causes front page placement on all the other sites — none of the other social sites typically cause something like that. I agree that StumbleUpon buzz traffic is WAY better, but getting on the buzz doesn’t typically cause a Digg to happen.
Boris H
May 17th, 2008 4:42 pm
I would like it to be Stumble upon but my results are way better with Digg
Mirko Humbert
May 17th, 2008 4:50 pm
Delicious, I think that the average guy coming from there is more likely to become a regular reader and that the link may be promoted again on the front page. Also people are using delicious more and more as a search engine.
This said, I think that it’s even better to be promoted on several niche social networks, that’s what has worked the best for me so far.
Patty
May 17th, 2008 4:51 pm
Interesting topic, I look forward to seeing the overall outcome. I am still trying to determine the best social networks/sites to spend my time on, what little I have online.
Alex Cristache
May 17th, 2008 5:07 pm
StumbleUpon did the job well so far. Although I use Digg, Mixx, Reddit too.
Mixx is still new and the impact is not that big.
I have to agree with Aaron’s comment about the Digg categories. Most time I’m “forced” to submit articles to “Tech News” which isn’t quite the best place. Not every time. While Mixx has a “Tech Opinion” category, which is definitely better.
Dominique
May 17th, 2008 5:12 pm
Give me Stumble Upon any day, hands down. Simple to use. Great dividends. I am averaging 150 new hits a day and I just signed up in April 2008! Love it, Love it, Love it!
Neerav
May 17th, 2008 5:58 pm
Prefer stumpleupon in general
However I’ve found that niche social bookmarking sites are far more effective eg: sphinn for SEO/Internet marketing articles
Raj
May 17th, 2008 6:13 pm
Stumbleupon & Delicious …
lastminute flüge
May 17th, 2008 6:18 pm
Quirky reads like recently a digg user asked his prom date out on digg by reaching the front page.
Palin Ningthoujam
May 17th, 2008 6:24 pm
StumbleUpon, Sphinn, Digg, Mixx, and region centric ones like Indianpad.
Manpreet Singh
May 17th, 2008 7:06 pm
Stumble and Digg
Michael
May 17th, 2008 7:48 pm
I would like to hit the front page of Digg, of course I would but my worry is that people who come from Digg aren’t usually of the best quality when it comes to being visitors. They are often very rude in comments and just overall don’t seem to be that nice (this is only my personal experience, if you’ve had better experience with Digg users that is absolutely wonderful). So, because of that I think I would rather hit it big on Delicious.
a husband
May 17th, 2008 8:06 pm
I would have said Digg until a few days ago when I had a post get hit by StumbleUpon traffic. I had no idea how much something I wrote could explode so fast. It was very exciting.
Chetan
May 17th, 2008 8:44 pm
Stumbleupon has provided the most poor quality traffic to me. Thousands of visitors a day to one of my posts but none stayed more than a few seconds there.
Digg and reddit gave some better quality traffic :) One of the best i can go with is reddit, but cant ever agree with stumbleupon..
Neil Duckett
May 17th, 2008 8:55 pm
Hands down, Stumbleupon … it is a great provider of fantastic traffic.
Shynobee
May 17th, 2008 9:09 pm
hmm.. i like blogcatalog over digg.
digg is useless to me, i have never tried stumbleupon yet but i shall do so now seeing the good comments that have arisen from it.
But yes so far blogcatalog has worked best for me. =)
Shynobee
May 17th, 2008 9:26 pm
sorry about double posting.. im not spamming im just wondering.. are you able to submit your own site to stumble upon??
or does it automatically have all sites that are on the web in its system?
Kevin
May 17th, 2008 9:57 pm
Yahoo! Digg and Yahoo! Buzz are my favorite. however recent comScore study says that popularity of Yahoo! Buzz is increasing and that of Digg is decreasing… Wake up Kevin Rose!!
Sheamus
May 17th, 2008 9:59 pm
I’m not sure I have any preference about why social bookmarking site I hit the front page of. Just this week an article I wrote about an error with the latest Iron Man torrent hit the front page of Reddit and generated about 25,000 visitors in just a few hours. That’s happened to me twice, now.
I personally think it’s almost impossible to hit the front page of Digg unless you’re very much in the loop there, or already a big name. I rarely submit stuff to Digg anymore. There’s no need when Reddit is so effective for me - as I’ve said before, about 75-80 per cent of my traffic comes from there.
As others have mentioned, however, a quick ego boost aside, social media traffic is basically useless as the bounce rate for those kinds of visitors is almost 100 per cent. It’s better and more consistent from somewhere like SU, as you tend to find the people there were looking for that content in the first place (that led them to check out your site).
Darla (pencil artist)
May 17th, 2008 10:14 pm
I prefer StumbleUpon. As others have said, SU seems to have a ’stick around’ quality. I am also a SU member, and I have found most people to be friendly and positive. Can’t go wrong with the friendly and positive vibe. Of course, I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth either…to get featured on any social networking site’s main page would be very appreciated!
Rebellious Arab Girl
May 17th, 2008 10:16 pm
Stumbleupon is my favorite! I wanna be front page on that!
MrCooker
May 17th, 2008 11:06 pm
Either SU of Yahoo Buzz.
SU will give you quite some traffic even after you hit the front page.
Buzz will give you quality readers that stay on you site longer and will leave more comments.
Robert
May 17th, 2008 11:41 pm
I’m happy jut to get some links passed around on Facebook or MySpace and to then tke advantage of the resulting buzz. I once had a SU spike of nearly 3000 visitors, but my subscriber numbers stayed the same. So all in all I’m not too impressed by the social bookmarking sites.
Bambooclat
May 17th, 2008 11:45 pm
Digg. I have been promoting one of my site which deals with real estate in Huntsville Alabama and every digg I have done seem to do descent in google. I have tried, squodoo, blinklist, furl, and others, but i keep getting better results on Digg
Genesis
May 18th, 2008 12:10 am
StumbleUpon has given me the best results so far and I´ve never even been close to getting a top ranking on there.
Tammy Takahashi
May 18th, 2008 1:10 am
One of the comments by George mentioned niche social bookmarking. I never considered that, but it hits the mark! Very rarely do I have a post that would be Stumble or Digg worthy, but I have tons of posts that are worth submitting to niche sites. Thanks for the idea, George!
Kyle Spector
May 18th, 2008 2:35 am
For tech stuff, I’d say hitting the front page of slashdot is the goldmine. It sent about 25K unique visitors to our site in a single day, and then caused people to Digg, Reddit, Stumble and Mixx our content.
In terms of actual social media, I’ve done fairly well on reddit for quick spikes, can never break into digg, and have only had a few hundred users come from stumbles.
Make Money Talks
May 18th, 2008 2:47 am
StumbleUpon is still my favorite social site! And i like to hit their buzz page ;)
Erika Jurney
May 18th, 2008 2:57 am
Stumbleupon for the traffic, and Kirtsy.com (formerly Sk-rt) for traffic and being in my niche.
team ray
May 18th, 2008 3:12 am
none
Ginkgo100
May 18th, 2008 3:12 am
StumbleUpon. Because of all the awesome buttons in the toolbar, it’s the one I use the most to browse for neat new content. I think (hope) my blog appeals most to the type of reader who would like StumbleUpon like I do, so that would be the best fit.
david cheong
May 18th, 2008 3:38 am
Stumbleupon, for once awhile, it really give an awesome hits to my website while on the other end, news available from stumbleupon, really did a stumble. :)
http://davidcheong.stumbleupon.com
Popular Wealth
May 18th, 2008 4:02 am
Yahoo Buzz.
Just ask Huffington Post Alumni what happens when Yahoo places a top buzzed article on their front page.
Mayhem on the servers I tell ya.
brian
May 18th, 2008 5:01 am
StumbleUpon. It’s the one I use the most. Also, my blog is for my daily comic strip and I gain a lot more regular users from StumbleUpon.
For me Digg is the same as my strip getting some PR in a newspaper. I get a jump in traffic for awhile but it dies down. Maybe a few new daily readers, but I focus my time on laces that bring in people on a regular basis.
Alex D
May 18th, 2008 5:55 am
Digg for sure! Why that? You can monetize the digg’s traffic very good, with adsense and a CPM and there you’ll get many subscribers too.
Noobpreneur
May 18th, 2008 9:51 am
Hi Darren,
I’d say Yahoo Buzz - given the fact that they have enrollment-base system to be included as their publisher - this create the sense of scarcity… and scarcity drives, well, buzz (hence the name :D)
Cheers!
Karen (Karooch from Scraps of Mind)
May 18th, 2008 11:23 am
StumbleUpon for me too. I like that it send me traffic over a longer period of time after the initial spike and that a lot of that traffic is already predisposed to being interested in my site’s topic. So even with a small conversion rate it is still a steady organic growth.
The only frustration I have is when Stumblers choose inappropriate tags for their reviews. That just generates a spike but not any conversions.
CAL
May 18th, 2008 12:46 pm
Im finding SU to be my best option for traffic. Im finding more and more pages are being stumbled now than ever before. I have had one page do very well on SU and it has lead to more subscribers, backlinks (people are adding it to their SU faves) and comments.
Digg hasnt really worked for me, Reddit has done OK. But SU all the way.
Collin LaHay
May 18th, 2008 1:29 pm
Sphinn.com, because it would be very targetted traffic.
I hit the frontpage of Digg with an article getting 5000+ diggs, but out of the 100,000+ visits I only received 100 or so RSS readers. I would rather get 1000 visits but 200 RSS readers.
Would be an interesting case study to say the least.
Suzie Cheel
May 18th, 2008 1:40 pm
This depends on your niche I think
With my new blog, I think Digg as there an ART section, with Law of Attraction blogs SU maybe delicious, an area I need 24 more hours in the day for
PC
May 18th, 2008 6:29 pm
Getting on Yahoo! Buzz for highest traffic, though our servers might not survive it.
Ashley W
May 18th, 2008 7:16 pm
Probably not Digg, its been proven a lot in the past that even if your server (or hosting) doesn’t die within minutes of the front page, you will unlikely get that many new readers, I would estimate at least 30% of Digg users barely read the article if they visit. Don’t get me wrong, get me on the home page any day of the week and I would be happy, but I would love to get on something better. Maybe like Yahoo! Buzz from what I’ve read about it…..RW/W I think said how many comments and returning visits it got after hitting Buzz.
But I still think the best method, which is kind of off topic (its not a “social bookmarking” site), is simply getting on simple blogs.
My blog got a full article dedicated to one of my posts a while back on dev.zend.com, and I got TONS of traffic that week, lots of subscribers, and lots of mentions on other blogs. Not quite as many visits as I would have got on Digg, but it meant more to me, plus 90% of the visitors were generally interested in the post.
Özkan Şahin
May 21st, 2008 7:45 pm
Well, I used to have an English blog but due to lack of time I suspended it.
I generally write articles on personal development, marketing etc.
Since the context I write is not diggy enough (I mean it is not consume and throw away stuff like pictures or current news that will not worth a dime after a week); I think I had better prefer hitting del.icio.us frontpage.
On the other hand, since I blog in my native language (Turkish) and the big guys (digg, del.icio.us etc) are not quite recognized in my niche; I think for the time being I’d prefer a local counterpart.
I’d like to hit linkibol’s popular (del.icio.us clone) or oyyla’s front page I believe.
Cheers from Turkey.
Paul
May 23rd, 2008 4:35 pm
StumbleUpon has generally proven to send me more high quality traffic than say Digg, so that would be my pick.
Russell Fair
June 4th, 2008 5:34 am
I would love to get on Digg’s Front page. Simply because I think that would get me the most recognition among my peers etc. For traffic and profit sake, Yahoo would also be a nice place to wind up for a day. How much would you pay for a Digg?
Cindy Sue Causey
June 8th, 2008 5:00 pm
Haven’t tried all of them yet.. But.. Would want it to be whichever one had a more serious audience.. They’d be more likely to “get” what I type of.. :)
Lipton
June 19th, 2008 4:49 pm
I personally like stumbleupon the most because of the constantly traffic that it sends every day…
I had my first blog post dugged to the front page last week and got over 27,000 unique visitors from that the first day, around 5000 the 2nd day. Now digg barely sends a couple of visits to that post…
I remember that one article you wrote Darran comparing stumble and digg.
timmy
December 5th, 2008 5:52 am
I am new to social bookmarking sites but I am in the process of trying a lot of them out.
So far I enjoy using delicious the most. I haven’t yet harnested the traffic possiblilities, but because I like the concept behind it and I, myself, enjoy using it, I think I will give it my best effort. I figure that I might as well work with something I enjoy and reap some benefit rather than use my energy on something frustrating or that I don’t believe in.
My mind may change later, I AM new, ya know!
Sebastian
April 13th, 2009 6:14 pm
I like semantic web, so I like Twine that is powered by semantic understanding. It automatically learns about your interests and makes connections and recommendations tailored to you. You can use Twine alone, with friends, groups and communities, or even in your company.
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