Comments on: What Are The Unspoken Rules of Social Networks?

By: Carlos Edwards

Carlos Edwards — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:08:46 +0000

I really Just wanted to say that I liked your blog & Thanks for keeping it on point!

By: Sam With Traffic Is King

Sam With Traffic Is King — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 14:17:26 +0000

Here is my feeling with social networks. To me they are like offline network functions. You go out to these places like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, StumbleUpon, etc and become social. Meet and interact. I wouldn’t even try to promote or become sale-zy in my interactions. What I would try to do is form relationships, share, make funny comments when in the mood and invite people over to my blog to read my post. I’ll ask them to comment and dialogue over there and let them know other things I’m into. From there they can decide if I’m worth having around or not.

By: Student Loans

Student Loans — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 07:15:39 +0000

Here you will find everything you need to know about student loans, how to apply for them, where to go for them, and details about loan repayment. There are many kinds of loan available such as federal student loans, nursing student loans, low interest student loans, no credit check student loans, government student loans, direct student loans, bad credit student loans and so on, and the resources on this site help you to decide exactly which kind of loan is the right one for you. There are many helpful links on this site to other information resources on student loans, and also which kind of loan you are eligible for. http://www.get-student-loans.info/

By: Phreaked

Phreaked — Sat, 24 May 2008 05:23:28 +0000

Interesting post, but again, what are the ‘rules’? I think I missed that part.

Also, please don’t reference Wikipedia in an otherwise thoughtful essay, it just makes me groan.

By: stephanerd

stephanerd — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:51:22 +0000

Thank you so much for this post! I’ve been struggling a lot lately about whether or not I should “stumble” posts of mine that I’m especially proud of. I blog on four different blogs at this point, and one of the sites allows me to earn bonuses based upon post views.

I’m a frequent SU user, regularly stumbling other people’s pages, and was worried about a little self-promotion possibly turning off other stumblers.

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:26:09 +0000

“Decentralised” is already used for social networks like blog networks that run across multiple websites (instead of sites like facebook which want you to give all your data and energy to their site). Might it be worth calling the networks “collecting” and “distributing” social networks instead?

By: Tony

Tony — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:05:24 +0000

Interesting take, great article. Social networks will and already are a large part of many lives

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:55:36 +0000

What about a plugin that enables your blog to be part of a distributed (descentralized) social network ;) ? Minerva Wordpress plugin ( http://minerva.sapiensworks.com ) adds this funcitonality to your blog with a single click.

Basically, once you activated the plugin you are in an ad-hoc social network where you can add friends or create and manage your own networks.

You don’t have to register anywhere and you don’t need an openid account, your blog is the only account you’ll need.

This also means you have complete control over your privacy, an area that every ‘clasic’ social network likes to keep it gray (why does one social network have to know my name or my address or my birthday? Who can really guarantee that it won’t sell my private data or it won’t spam me?).

And since many people already have a blog why shouldn’t they use that instead of registering to yet another social network?

By: Leon Westbrook

Leon Westbrook — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:43:23 +0000

I want to utilize twitter more, but I dont’ want to be seen as a serial adder or worse a spammer.

I have a pretty good ratio now, but not all of them are interested in my blog posts. How do I go and find relevant people.

Keep in mind I would only consider following vloggers who happen to have a general interest blog like mine. Although I am planning a blog for a certain niche.

By: Daniel Scocco

Daniel Scocco — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:05:53 +0000

@Miguel, you can submit news that matter to you or talk about you, as long as you are not the author of that news.

By: Felex Tan

Felex Tan — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:04:36 +0000

I have been stopped using SU for a while,well,i am using twitter occasionally .My point of view is ,all social have their strength and weakness,it all depends how constantly you involve in,you can join all social network,but a simple question to you,do you have time on doing this?Stick one or two social network and build up your reputation,it is good enough.

By: Bibokz

Bibokz — Tue, 20 May 2008 05:53:36 +0000

Stumbleupon have many users compare to digg.. I better focused on how to be on stumbleupon frontpage.

By: Dimitri

Dimitri — Tue, 20 May 2008 05:32:37 +0000

Thank you for the tips, great post…

By: Lane

Lane — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:12:33 +0000

@ Wick-edly Sent Scented Candles:

I think your approach to Digg is what’s wrong with Digg and other social networking sites. Really, only front-page worthy content should be on the front page.

Sure, I’ve manipulated the system and pushed stuff to the front page before to get those page views. It’s also backfired on some of my sites and irritated Diggers.

I really don’t use Digg anymore because I’m really not interested in the community (something you should be IMO if you’re using it) and I found the traffic to be “low value” visitors. I’m much more interested in getting Google traffic, at least they’re looking for something relevant to the visit to my sites. Conversions and new readers are much more common from Google.

To reiterate, if you’re Digging for profit, you’re Digging for the wrong reasons. If your content is Digg-worthy, go ahead and submit it – better yet, have a third-party review it and evaluate whether it should be submitted to Digg . . . then, let them submit it. The best Diggs happen naturally though.

By: Wick-edly Sent Scented Candles

Wick-edly Sent Scented Candles — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:13:18 +0000

Thanks for posting this, there is so much you can talk about. I personally use Digg and StumbleUpon. Twitter I tried with no success. The Digg feature is great, however, I have so much friends that digg everything that I cannot have time to read. I’ve been taking them off my friends list, and every time I send something to shout, I only get a few people digging my stories. It is very difficult to find the right medium. The “you digg mine and I’ll digg yours” method goes out the window because I do read others and have a lot of interest, but others do not, e.g. just digg what interests them only.

It’s amazing how people find time to do so much of this. I admit I do it for business, but I also read and digg stories I am genuinely interested in.

By: Daniel Scocco

Daniel Scocco — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:13:39 +0000

@Muscle Post, I agree, that is what I mentioned that you do can get away with the occasional self promotion.

@Masked Millionaire, take Zenhabits.net into consideration. He gained around 50k rss readers in 6 months. I think that half of them came via social media, because his blog was on Digg pretty much every other day.

By: Alex D

Alex D — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:06:17 +0000

I personally thing that twitter is the safest way to promote your blog if you have a big number of people following you. Why I am saying safe? Well, we all know that many websites were banned from different social media websites like stumbleupon and digg.

By: Miguel

Miguel — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:55:06 +0000

What this suggests is that businesses should never “Digg” news that matters to them or talks about them? That doesn’t make sense to me. It would be unethical to have a built-in network that elevates “diggs,”but as long as you introduce a story and allow the story to increase in popularity in an organic matter, I don’t see the issue.

If I am wrong, I’d love to hear how businesses should incorporate building social networks verus social bookmarking sites.

By: The Masked Millionaire

The Masked Millionaire — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:52:14 +0000

I’m just not convinced that social networking sites are as helpful (over the long run) as they are be portrayed as.

Live From Las Vegas
The Masked Millionaire

By: Muscle Post

Muscle Post — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:50:37 +0000

I don’t think people should completely avoid promoting their own content. In the beginning, it’s important to promote your content on these sites because nobody else knows about your blog. After you build a steady following, and people start to notice your site, then others will be able to promote it for you. But until then, you are left to do a lot of the legwork yourself.