What Social News Sites Drive the Most Traffic?

This is a question I'm trying to answer for myself, but am now looking for empirical research to back it up.

There are all sorts of social news sites around now. Digg, Reddit, Netscape, Newsvine, Slashdot, etc. Which one of them is most beneficial for the content producer, or for the interested individual, to be posting on? Which delivers the most bang for the buck?

I had my own initial results with many different social news services, and the resultant traffic they can drive to one's site. Everyone knows that Digg has the best Alexa ratings out of all these, but is it the best for actually directing interested people to on-topic news?

My initial response to it all would fall under the concept of "publics". In an essay called "Wrong Publics", an essay written for people in business, PR and Marketing, L. Ron Hubbard discusses the need to only promote to correct publics, and not go after wrong distinct publics. The "people" aren't just "the people". They're cynical college kids or high-school girls or they're housewives or whatever. You can't put the same stories up on Digg and expect them to be gobbled up if they're for the 60-yr-old housewife public.

I've noticed this on posts that I've done, and that a friend of mine did on Scientology Volunteer Ministers. Now, firemen nearly escaping death, and excellent stories showing such is definitely a newsworthy item. It's a story of hope, and bravery and camaraderie. Now, you'd think this sort of thing would rise up in social news services. Of course, it doesn't. What does instead? Well, let's take some of the top stories in Reddit right now:

Inkless Metal Pen Never Runs Dry
Duke Nukem Forever approaches *10 years* of active development

It's terrible. Why do dorky articles outpace meaningful ones?

It does come down to who is reading them, and what audience they're destined for. The selfsame article that went nowhere on Digg, erupted on Reddit. Similarly, articles that went nowhere on reddit erupted on Netscape.

It is indeed a matter of looking at what you're writing, and then write for the people that will be reading it. I.e., if you're writing for the 22-yr-old Linux hacker, definitely post on Digg.

Integrating Reddit Buttons Onto your Blog

I've become quite enamoured with Reddit of late - partially because it's so easy to use, and partially because it does seem to have an uncanny ability to drive quite preposterous quantities of visitors around -- assuming you have decent content to send them to.

On http://reddit.com/buttons, you'll find a number of little Reddit buttons that you can add to news stories, web pages or blog posts. These put a nifty little reddit box onto your page, like you see on this post.




This is done by adding a tag like this to the HTML code of your blog post

Now, one thing that I've noted which is an impediment to using a service of this nature is that just about every blog provider I've seen will strip out the "" tags out of your HTML. Wordpress does it, Live.com does it, Clearblogs does it, etc. Now, Blogger seems to do it too -- and gives you a big, gnarly "dangerous code detected..." warning when you go to post. However, if you simply check the checkbox that says to ignore further errors, the post will post, and the script tags will end up on your blog post. The only other one that I've seen work is on www.xeeks.com, where it still allows you to just slap script tags right on to the HTML.
I still haven't gotten the Digg JS to work on Blogger, but the Reddit JS seems to work like a bomb.

Another nifty article on Duplicate Content and SEO

This is another such article I've found on duplicate content, for those who have found themselves nailed by Google's duplicate content filter:

http://www.mariosalexandrou.com/blog/?p=169

From the article, "This duplicate content that I’m reporting on should provide some good insights. Why? Because these sites aren’t attempting to spam the search engines. Instead, they’re just typical efforts by business units to brand something on the web with no consideration of the SEO consequences. You might also ask why, as someone involved with SEO, I’m not doing anything about it? Partly because the sites are eventually going to disappear as they are replaced by yet another recipe search and partly because examining the data should be quite educational."

Outstanding SEO Guide

Browsing around, I just found this incredible site on search engine optimization, which has one of the better explanations of things like duplicate content, importance of titles and backlinks, and so forth.

Here is their mini-book on SEO - which I would definitely encourage any SEO to study up on.

I. Introduction – What Is SEO

1. How Search Engines Work

2. Differences Between the Major Search Engines

II. Keywords – the Most Important Item in SEO

1. Choosing the Right Keywords to Optimize For

2. Keyword Density

3. Keywords in Special Places

a. Keywords in URLs and File Names

b. Keywords in Page Titles

c. Keywords in Headings

III. Links – Another Important SEO Item

1. Why Links Are Important

2. Inbound and Outbound Links

3. Anchor text

4. Link Practices That Are To Be Avoided

IV. Metatags

V. Content Is King

1. Topical Themes or How to Frequently Add Content to Your Site

2. Bold and Italic Text

3. Duplicate Content

VI. Visual Extras and SEO

1. Images

2. Animation and Movies

3. Frames

4. JavaScript

VII. Static Versus Dynamic URLs

VIII. Promoting Your Site to Increase Traffic

1. Submitting Your Site to Search Directories, forums and special sites

2. Specialized Search Engines

3. Paid Ads and Submissions

What are Volts & Amps? The Hydraulic Analogy for Electronics

I had a friend who had a hard time getting the difference between volts, amps and so forth and what it all actually means in the real universe. As anyone who knows L. Ron Hubbard Study Technology will tell you, a misunderstood word can be one of the nastiest things there is, in terms of its impact on one's ability to learn and work. So, here's my favourite analogy which explains this, excerpted from Answers.com.

The electronic Hydraulic analogy (derisively referred to as the Drain-pipe theory by Oliver Heaviside) is the most widely used analogy for "electron fluid" in a metal conductor. Since electric current is invisible and the processes at play in electronics are often difficult to understand in an intuitive way, it is common to teach electronics using analogies to more common sense objects and processes. The analogy is made to a hydraulic system of water in pipes. The "electron fluid" in a metal conductor has many similarities to such a system, and the various electronic components have similar hydraulic equivalents. Electricity (as well as heat) was originally understood to be a kind of fluid. This hydraulic analogy is still of some use in teaching, not only for the fact that the names of the quantities are often struck by analogy. The water analogy is very useful in describing some aspects of electricity, but it breaks down for others.

Basic ideas

There are two basic paradigms:

• Version with pressure induced by gravity. Large tanks of water that are held up high, and the potential energy of the water head is the pressure source. This is reminiscent of electrical diagrams with an up arrow pointing to +V, grounded pins that otherwise are not shown connecting to anything, and so on.
• Completely enclosed version with pumps providing pressure only; no gravity. This is reminiscent of a circuit diagram with a voltage source shown and the wires actually completing a circuit.

Component equivalents

Wires

All pipes are completely full of water, and none ever has an open end. If a pipe were to go somewhere without reconnecting to the circuit, it would have to have a cap on the end. This is because the wall of the pipe is like an insulator, and a wire just sticking out into insulating space/air is like a completely pipe-surrounded rod of water.

Potential

Equivalent to pressure.

Voltage

Also called potential difference. A relative difference in pressure between two points

Current

The amount of charge (i.e. electrons, electron holes or ions) passing through a cross section of conductor per given time, much like a hydraulic mass flow rate.

Ideal voltage source

A pump with a pressure meter on both sides. It varies the speed of the pump to keep the difference in pressure constant.

Ideal current source

Also a pump, but with a current meter (little paddle wheel). The pump changes speed to maintain a constant speed of the little paddle wheel.

Resistor

A pipe with a small width. "So what makes this different from a regular-width pipe?" Nothing. All pipes have some resistance, just like all wires have some resistance.

A capacitor driven by an AC source through a diode.

Diode

One-way valve or check valve. If it has a rubber flap it can be blown out permanently by too much reverse bias, which is similar to the real thing.

Capacitor

Big spherical tanks with a sheet of thick rubber separating the two halves.

Inductor

All flowing water has inertia, which has similar effects to inductance. A large, heavy, frictionless paddle wheel is like a dedicated inductor. As you try to increase a DC current, you encounter resistance as you speed up the paddle wheel, but after it is going, you can send a current at the same speed as the paddle wheel with no effort. If you try to put AC through it, the wheel will present a great resistance, as its inertia prevents you from moving it back and forth. Any real paddle wheel will have some friction associated with it, just as any real inductor has some resistance. The DC to DC converter uses inductance to change voltage in the way that a Hydraulic ram uses inertia to change pressure.

Transistor

A device similar to an EGR valve, where a diaphragm controlled by a low-current signal (either constant current — BJT, or constant pressure — FET) moves a plunger which allows a larger current to flow through another section of pipe, like a globe valve.

CMOS

A combination of two MOSFET transistors. As the input pressure changes, the pistons allow the output to connect to either zero or positive pressure.

Principle equivalents

EM wave speed (velocity of propagation)

Speed of sound in water. When a light switch is flipped, the electric wave travels very quickly through the wires.

Charge flow speed

Particle speed of water. The moving charges themselves move rather slowly.

DC

Constant flow of water in a circuit of pipe

Low frequency AC

Water oscillating back and forth in a pipe

Higher-frequency AC and transmission lines

Sound being transmitted through the water pipes

Inductive spark

Used in induction coils, similar to water hammer, caused by the inertia of water

Equation examples

Some examples of equivalent electrical and hydraulic equations:

type	hydraulic	electric	thermal
quantity	volume V [m3]	charge q [C]	heat Q [J]
potential	pressure p [Pa=J/m3]	potential φ [V=J/C]	temperature T [K=J/kB]
flux	current ΦV [m3/s]	current I [A=C/s]	heat transfer rate [J/s]
flux density	velocity v [m/s]	current density j [C/m2s]	heat flux [J/m2s]
linear model	Poiseuille's law	Ohm's law	Fourier's law

Limits to the analogy

If taken too far, the water analogy can create misconceptions. For it to be useful, we must remain aware of the regions where electricity and water behave very differently.

Fields

Electrons can push or pull other distant electrons via their fields, while water molecules experience forces only from direct contact with other molecules. For this reason, waves in water travel at the speed of sound, but waves in a sea of charge will travel much faster as the forces from one electron are applied to many distant electrons and not to only the neighbors in direct contact. In a hydraulic transmission line, the energy flows as mechanical waves through the water, but in an electric transmission line the energy flows as fields in the space surrounding the wires, and does not flow inside the metal. Also, an accelerating electron will drag its neighbors along while attracting them, both because of magnetic forces.

Leaking pipes

If a hole is made in a hydraulic system, the water can leak out. But the movable charges present within electrical conductors are always attracted to unmoving opposite charges in the material. The "electric fluid" can be forcibly removed from metals, but enormous voltages arise if even a tiny amount is removed. For this reason, the surfaces of conductors act as if they always have a high energy-barrier preventing leaks. Also for this reason, continuing electric currents require closed loops rather than hydraulics' open source/sink resembling spigots and buckets.

Inductors

Wrap a long water-filled hose around a barrel, and the water's large mass behaves as a significant "inductance." However, in real coils the adjacent turns interact via magnetic fields, and the value of inductance increases as the square of the number of turns. It's as if we could create four times the mass of water by only doubling the length of the water hose.

Fluid Velocity

As with water hoses, the carrier drift velocity in conductors is directly proportional to current. However, charges' velocity within a conductor is typically less than centimeters per minute, and the "electrical friction" is extremely high. If charges ever flowed as fast as water can flow in pipes, the amperage would be immense, and the conductors would become incandescently hot and perhaps vaporize. To model the resistance and the charge-velocity of metals, perhaps a pipe packed with damp sand would be a better analogy than an empty, water-filled pipe.

Quantum Mechanics

Conductors and insulators contain charges at more than one quantized level of atomic orbit energy, while the water in one region of a pipe can only have a single value of pressure. For this reason there is no hydraulic explanation for such things as a battery's charge pumping ability, a diode's voltage drop, solar cell functions, Peltier effect, etc.

Digg Passes the 20 mark on Alexa Ratings

Apparently, Digg has officially broken the 20 mark for most visited websites in the United States. Digg now comes in at 19th place in the rankings where can be found here.

This is pretty impressive considering that digg has only been on the wire for a little over 2 years now.

Digg falls just behind Microsoft and IMDB while it beats out some very big names which include: The New York Times, Wal-Mart, Weather.com, Mapquest, Best Buy, etc.

According to Seth Godin's Web 2.0 traffic list, that puts it a good ways ahead of Reddit (1400) and Newsvine (3490). Curious Reddit always seems to pull more visitors every time I post something. Oh, well. Reddit's faster too, so I'll stick with that.

Scientology Volunteer Ministers in Australia

Photo: Media inspect a fire some 30 kilometres south of Mansfield. Firefighters battling Australia's massive wildfires amid soaring temperatures and fierce winds are looking forward to a white Christmas to dampen the bushfire emergency, officials said.

Funds are still needed to support the volunteers. If you can help, go to the Volunteer Ministers website and fill out the contact form they have there.

• Scientology Volunteer Ministers Blog
• Scientology
• International Association of Scientologists
• Volunteer Ministers - Mr. David Miscavige describes the Volunteer Minister Program