Since the start of the month Digg has been experimenting with their new Digg trends. I guess they liked how the beta went since it went live today.

With Digg trends submitted stories which receive a high volume of activity (diggs and comments etc…) in a short space of time will become a trend. When a story trends, it will appear on the home page and give users the opportunity to ‘digg’ it to the main homepage or bury it to the depths of forgotten submissions.

Digg trends will allow stories to hit the front page faster and get quicker coverage. No information has been released yet about how much activity a story needs to trend but, as always, the community gets the final say on what reaches the homepage.

I can see one disadvantage to the trends however. High volumes of traffic can flow from the Digg front page and more than a few black hat marketers know this. Digg bots have been created to create and Digg stories to force them to the front of the page.

With Digg trends, new stories have a quicker route to the front page but so do stories with ‘fake diggs’. All the marketer has to do is fake enough fake activity on the submission and get it to trend. The Digg community can usually pick up on fake Diggs by looking at previous users who ‘dugg’ the story. With Digg trends, this information isn’t shown. Digg trends only show the basics.

The benefit to the Digg social media website is how community orientated it is. Hopefully, even if the system is exploited these stories will get pushed back down and the marketer will only get 10 minutes of exposure on the front page.

A trending story will appear as a trend for ten minutes and only happens a few times a day. If you don’t want to miss trending stories you can follow Diggs new Twitter account specifically for trends @digg_trends.

I’ve seen several submissions which I believe were worthy of the home page but they never took off. Digg trends will, hopefully, get these kinds of stories of the ground.

Image via Wikipedia

 Since I wrote Six Things I Hate About StumbleUpon, some of my views have changed.

1. Stumble the Page, Not the Image

   People who have web comics or put images with cute cats saying something funny, often put it on a web page with a little bit of advertising on the side. The reason is simple, they’re trying to pay for the website that image is on. Don’t deny them the opportunity to show more funny pictures of men in tanks with swords yelling, “Get closer, I want to cut it with my sword”. Stumble the page, not the image.

2. Don’t Stumble Your Own Content

   This is a confusing situation. Many of the members of Stumbleupon don’t like it when you submit your own content. They say it’s in the terms of service. I can’t help but wonder then, why did stumbleupon create buttons for you to add to your website to ask for thumbs up? Worse yet, why did they create http://su.pr? SuPr is exactly what is says, Stumble Upon Promotions. It’s a website dedicated to PROMOTE your own content on twitter. This service shortens links and adds a stumble bar to the linked website.

3. Don’t Spam Your “Friends”

   I use friends in a loose sense. Many people only add you to their friends list because they want to promote their own content. They’ll send you stuff from the same website over and over again. Problem is doing that can get labeled as a spammer fairly quickly. Then your account can be ghost banned or fully banned. If you’re going to send stuff to friends, do it sparingly.

4. Don’t Beg for Stumbles

   Nothing worse than listening to a person beg community users to thumb up content. If you submit your own content, that’s fine. Don’t get greedy and start begging. If you insist, place that little button stumble created (provided in the link above) in your website instead. At least then no one can complain.

5. Don’t Stumble Multiple Times

   Originally I though bulbstorm.com paid for advertising on stumbleupon, when I stumbled it multiple times. I was wrong. Turns out people would submit affiliate links so it would look like they had adverting. However if you signed up, the account that submitted the affiliate link would get paid. A deplorable marketing scheme.

6. Don’t Advertise the Correct Way Either

   The stumbleupon community is a group of fickle people. They hate someone who submits the same website multiple time. They hate people who pay for advertising on Stumbleupon even more. Using Bulbstorm as an example again, this site was believed to have paid advertising on stumbleupon. When someone stumbles it multiple times, bulbstorm received backlash from the community.

Link shorteners allow for quick and easy access to a URL in a place where there is a character limit. For example Twitter has a character limit of 140 characters per Tweet. When promoting a product or a web page the extra characters saved could make the difference between a great advertisement and one that is not appealing.

When compared to other link shorteners StumbleUpon attempts to take a multiple step process and convert it all into one single step. This can save any website owner time. As the old saying goes “time is money”. Not only is this convenient for the person promoting an article but it also prevents excessive link form crowding each followers Twitter page.

In a world where short and simple leads to sharing ideas in an efficient way; the most complex things can be seen in a new way. This new way may give an old or complex idea a new chance at being successful. It may even lead to a new audience which missed an item or article when it was first released.

So you may be thinking, “well I only send Stumbles to others once in a while”. Well that’s fine after all, I myself like to share my own recent works as well as the rare fascinating discovers with others. However, there comes a time when a person over does this leading it to a point where it just becomes annoying. Often times it becomes so annoying that it begins to detract from the StumbleUpon experience from each individual person.

The most common culprits of this ever growing problem are new users who want to “make friends” and “become popular”. However as you may already know StumbleUpon is a very different site form others. Left unchecked these new users can quickly go from being an inexperienced annoyance to a full time StumbleUpon Spammer. Often times some users may not realise that they are becoming annoying; thus, the occasional polite reminder is often all that is needed.

StumbleUpon is an excellent tool for discovering the internet, making friends, and sharing new found ideas. When we work together we can all make this environment more exciting and fun for everyone. A common understanding leads to new knowledge for everyone in a world where we all can benefit from experience.

I read articles written by other people on their experience with Reddit.  Many people also said the same thing – that their articles experienced a big increase in views after submitting them on Reddit. 

The process to submit an article is very simple and only takes less than a minute.  Reddit only allows articles to be submitted every few minutes.

Make the titles very interesting to gain the most number of readers.

I encourage you to submit your articles to Reddit too.  It’s a great way to boost traffic to your articles.

Feel free to visit my profile for more helpful tips and ideas.  Cheers!

• Popular and Interesting Topic To Write About
• 20 Triond Tips to Succeed
• Write Articles on Topics That Will Attract Readers

Though I have read many articles written about Stumble Upon, I am very sure there is no one definite way to achieve the desired views. However, learning from the pro is never hurt. Everyone experiences different result, and draws his/her own conclusions.

28 Tips to Make You a Stumble Upon Superstar

This is a great article about Stumble Upon, and offers 28 tips from the having an avatar to becoming a superstar stumbler! If you are new to Stumble Upon, then this site is for you! Here are some highlights that I learned from this post.

• Make your avatar stands out
• Concentrate on quality
• Market your brand
• Don’t only stumble your own stuff
• Chose your topic carefully

Five Power Tips for Stumble Upon Users

Image Source

This article covers five different areas on Stumble Upon: analyze friends, tags, review friends’ profiles, stumble your friends’ favorites, and stumble through tags. You will learn how to correct the wrong tags to get better result, as well as removing inactive friends.

65 Must Read Stumble Upon Articles

Image Source

Read this post when you have lots of free time! Just as the title said, there are 65 articles about Stumble Upon! This post has an incredible collection of articles discussing from getting traffic, to build super links and traffic with Stumble Upon.

No matter what stage you are at with Stumble Upon, this post can get you start it, and helpful for everyone.

Beginners Guide to Get Massive Traffic from Stumble Upon

If Stumble Upon is your favorite social bookmarking site, then read this article. The author gives many helpful tips on how to tailor your content so it can get indexed by Stumble Upon engine, and thus exposing your article to users. There are tricks and tactics in this post.

Kick Stumble Upon’s Ass (A Mini Guide to Stumble Upon)

Image Source

This article explains a bit about Stumble Upon, and what Stumble Upon is all about. The author covers these six areas below:

• Stumble Upon is personal to personal
• Discover and tumble everyday
• Find Similar Stumble Upon users
• Appreciate other Stumble Upon users
• Article topics and headlines
• Simplicity and traffic

You now have more resources about Stumble Upon. Read up, and be a Stumble Upon star! It’s said that with only two to three thumbs up on Stumble Upon, you can get from 300 to 1000 views. I really doubt the numbers though, since they do not reflect what were in my dash board!

Most importantly, enjoying being a part of the community, be selfless, stumble other articles, and brush up on these tips to avoid being marked as a spammer.

When you sign in to Twitter, go to the third button along the top. Click on Find People. A page will open, entitled: Are Your Friends on Twitter?

Invite From Other Networks

Here’s where things get exciting. You can invite friends from other networks: Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Gmail. You enter in your e-mail address and Twitter checks to see who already has a Twitter account. Neat, eh?

Invite by E-mail

Just thought of that friend over in England? Shoot him an e-mail via Twitter, which tells him that you want to keep abreast of his latest happenings through Twitter. The e-mail explains the Twitter concept of keeping in touch in time-saving 140-word-or-less dibblings and dabblings.

Search

You can also choose the Search tab, which allows you to search for someone by name or location. What I like about this function is that you can also search by subject. What I mean is that if you want to search for something that interests you, let’s say “parrots” you simply type that into the box. A page will open showing those who have used the word in their names, others who have an interest in parrots or who own them, and those who have parrot-related websites or blogs.

Why is Search so Handy?

• Do you like new recipes? Why not type in “recipes” to see what’s up in cyberspace? I did this and found some excellent blogs and websites that included mouth-watering recipes and accompanying pictures of tempting dishes.

• Are you interested in networking with other writers? Try typing “writers”

• Are you interested in tech gadgets? Type in “computers” for computer and software news. You’ll get the gen on fellow enthusiasts and find sites that can further your knowledge.

Whatever your interest, whether in making friends or in finding interesting sites and blogs, Twitter’s Find People button is a fast and painless route to staying in touch and in the know.

All Things Twitter

• How to Use Twitter

• Twitter Gadgets

• How to Add Your Website or Blog to Twitter

• Adding Twitter to Your Website

• Using Twitter to Gain a Following for Your Triond Articles

Cracked

With a caption of America’s only humor & Video site since 1958, cracked.com offers funny stuff. Categories include TV, music, Celebrities, Tech, Sex, sports, News and More Funny stuff. It is very popular at digg and almost every article from this site hit the front page of digg and get thousands of diggs.

YouTube

YouTube needs no introduction. Users can upload videos of their interest, home-made or professional, onto this site. Almost every day there will be videos from youtube on the front page of Digg.

Lifehacker

Lifehacker is a blog that features tips, short cuts and downloads that help you get things done more efficiently. This site publishes over 20 tips per day and offers a free download of lifehacker code (productivity of software applications). Most of the blogs from this website get hundreds of diggs.

Ars Techinca

Ars technica (art of technology) is a specialized website in original news and reviews, analysis of technology trends and expert advices on technology. Most of articles from this site get hundreds of diggs and some get thousands.

Live Science

Live Science offers blogs and articles in space, health, environment, technology, history and strange news. Most of the articles and blogs are very popular at digg.

Steam

Steam offers browsing games of all sorts including action, adventurous, racing and sports etc. Many new games are available here and they are quite famous at digg.

PCWorld

PcWorld offers blogs, reviews, articles about all latest tech gadgets including cameras, PCs and mobiles etc. As this site is all related to latest technology, most of the reviews and articles get popular at digg.

Defective By Design

Defective By Design is a broad-based anti-DRM campaign that is targeting Big Media, unhelpful manufacturers and DRM distributors.

Wired

There are many sections in Wired.com including car, culture, entertainment, gadget, gaming, how-to and politics etc. It offers blogs in Gadget lab, Epicenter etc and they are famous at Digg.

Triond, however, gives its writers a multitude of bookmarking sites, which makes everything so much easier. Rather than having to do a search for each site online, you can access them easily, using the tools Triond has provided.

Okay, let’s get down to business. If the whole bookmarking scenario has you scratching your head, follow these instructions to get started.

How to Bookmark

1. Go to the Triond dashboard where you see your articles
2. Click on the third tab on the top, “Content.”.
3. A page will open and you’ll have the option of viewing your articles 10 at a time or perusing more at a glance, depending on what option you select from the drop-down menu located down in the far right corner
4. Now, look over to the right, where you see “Share” (you’ll see upwards and downwards pointing arrows)
5. On the line on which your article appears, hover your mouse over “Share.” You’ll notice a small menu box appears. To open it fully, click on the Share button.
6. Under “Select a Service” you’ll see a listing of the different social bookmarking sites
7. When you click on one of the sites, a page should open directing you to sign up
8. Do so. Now, whenever you follow this procedure in future, your article title and URL will load automatically.
9. Where it says: “Notes” or “Description” type in a descriptive paragraph detailing what your article is about. I usually copy/paste relevant material from the article itself, to save time.
10. If you’ve used keywords throughout your article (and in most cases, you should have), you’ll want to include these where it says “Tags” or “Keywords.” Place a comma between each keyword or keyword phrase. For example: ape, hairy orangutan, apes.
11. Usually, you then just press “Save” or “Okay” and you’re done

If you decide to bookmark your articles, you should see a big difference in traffic and earnings.

Bookmarking: Yes or No?

All that said, there’s a downside. Some sites frown on this, viewing it as spam; other sites will discontinue your membership. It’s really trial and error, as you go. The best advice I would give is to bookmark and, as time permits, try to also comment, and hit “Vote,” “Digg” or “Stumble” other articles you’ve enjoyed reading, so that you are actually a part of these communities.

The advantages outweigh the disadvantages and you will have to find your own happy medium. Many revenue share opportunities provide these buttons, so it is an option made available not only to readers but to writers, as well.

Further Reading:

Triond: 36 Bookmarking Sites . . . And Monthly Earnings!

Write it: Writing for Triond (How to Improve your Articles)

Writing for Triond How Much Can You Make?

I had ‘dugg’ an article about Eva Peron City: Buenos Aires which collected a lot of reads so I went to Digg to find out if they had come from there. I had a message from someone who was supposedly a fan of mine. I didn’t take much notice of the name of the person because I was interested in their link.

The link was to a video which claimed to show everything there is to see in Buenos Aires, so I clicked on it. A box popped up and told me that I needed a plug in to view the video so I clicked the button and allowed it to install.

At this point AVG virus checker started to flash up virus warnings. I also use the Microsoft virus protection system (the one with the shield)and this started to give warning signals.

Then, I got warning sounds and boxes from a virus protection system that I didn’t recognise. I thought that I may have installed extra protection and perhaps forgotten about it, so when the programme indicated that I had a serious virus infection, I clicked the button to heal it.

At this point all kinds of warning signals were going off on my laptop.

I investigated the virus which had HREU in the name but no other details and discovered that there are fake virus protection programmes being circulated around the internet and some actually introduce trojan horses to your system.

I am not a computer geek by any means but I did know that I shouldn’t close my system down without eradicating these viruses in case they were executable files and they installed on my system when I started it up again. . AVG revealed 28 instances of viruses and Adaware found 40 instances of malware.

My system is checked thoroughly every day and it was clean last night. So, the only conclusion I could come to was that I shouldn’t have opened the video link sent to me via Digg. It had disabled my virus protection and allowed viruses into my system.

Video and other file links sent to you via Digg, StumbleUpon and other social networking sites need to be treated with the same caution you exercise when opening your personal email.

Fortunately, I have been able to clean my system up but it has wasted three hours of my day. Be warned.

I closed my system down thinking that I had cleaned it up. When I restarted it I thought everything was normal but when I tried to get onto the internet I was bombarded with adverts for porn sites, gambling and all kinds of things. My browser had been hijacked and I was being redirected to various website.

I discovered that these sites were all being fed to me by something called ‘adjuggler’. I tried several Adware removal tools including Adaware but nothing worked. Each time I restarted my computer it was back again. I eventually found something called Superantispyware which removed the problem.