June 10, 2008 at 12:13 am
Been a bit busy the past few days working on my U2 book, but had some time today to get more involved on mixx, digg, sphinn, etc. Here’s what I shared over the past 24 hours or so.
mixx
digg
Sphinn
Not a single iPhone story submitted. 
But I did vote for a couple. And I do plan to buy the new one next month. But you knew that….
May 28, 2008 at 9:32 am
Being a moderator at Sphinn is pretty time-consuming, but it’s also fun! I’ve killed thousands of submissions and accounts from users spammers trying to game the site for exposure, a free and followed link, or whatever else they’re trying to accomplish. As Danny (I think) once said, “Nothing smells better than fresh killspam in the morning.” Hehehehe, so true.
Sphinn’s guidelines seem pretty straightforward to me. The primary rule is use common sense. Well, judging from the amount of spam that gets submitted every day, common sense isn’t very common.
So, in an effort to help those who need it, here are one moderator’s examples of signs that you’re spamming or gaming Sphinn. (I’ve blurred out the names of the guilty; the point isn’t to call them out individually, it’s to help… really. (And to make you roll your eyes at the crap we see.))
1.) Your submission has 61 words in the title.
(Note: Sphinn has no specific rule about how long a headline can be. But really, 61 words? Takeaway: Use common sense.)
2.) The URL you’re submitting has the phrase “for sale” in it.
3.) The article you wrote is filled with affiliate links.
(Note: As a moderator, I’ll overlook it if you have a good article that has an affiliate link at the end. But the example above? Spam.)
4.) You repeat your keyword four times in the headline.
5.) You repeat your keyword six times in the headline. (And once more in the description, because too much is never enough!)
6.) I click to read your article, and before the page loads, you hit me with a pop-up window selling your products, your services, your newsletter … anything.
(Note: Sphinn has no rule against submitting articles with pop-ups. This is not spam by definition. It’s just annoying, and looks spammy. Takeaway: Use common sense.)
7.) Your submission gets 19 votes in less than 40 minutes, while every other submission before and after yours only has 1-2 votes.
(Note: I know people have friends/co-workers who help vote up each other’s stories. We decide on a case-by-case basis if these are spam/gaming the site. And I know there’s only one submission from a recognizable user in the screenshot above, but still … 19 votes in less than 40 minutes? Please.)
8.) You submitted your home page.
(No image necessary. Point is, 99 times out of 100, people submit a home page for self-promotional spamming purposes. Submit your articles/blog posts, instead; not your home page.)
9.) Your story is off-topic, and you wrote the headline in ALL FREAKIN’ CAPS.
(Note: Off-topic = spam. ALL CAPS = annoying.)
10.) You have a public, open-to-anyone Facebook group called “I Sphinn Your Back - You Sphinn My Back.”
If I missed any, feel free to add them in the comments!
April 29, 2008 at 12:13 am
Lookie who got on the digg home page today:
That doesn’t happen every day, so pardon me while I gloat a little. (Here’s the digg story URL.) In fact, it’s only the third time I’ve put a story on the home page. But this an interesting study in headline writing:
I submitted the same article to mixx, but used the boring headline that came straight from the Dallas Morning News article: “White House candidates offer plans to curb high gas prices”. I changed the title when I submitted to digg, came up with something much more interesting — a better hook — and the thing took off like wildfire. So, next time you read about the importance of writing attention-getting headlines for social media … listen to that advice.
One More Thing…
Speaking of social media, I wrote a guest post today for the Social Media Mom blog. You can read it here:
Guest Post by Social Media Dad, Matt McGee from the Matt McGee Blog
If you read it, let me know what you think. Is 10-years-old too young to start blogging?
April 26, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Last week in Houston, when every speaker (except me and Stoney D.) at the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference said the word “twitter” at least 25 times, I made a simple promise to everyone telling me to sign up: as soon as I rank #1 in Google for [last person on twitter], I’ll sign up.
Easy enough, right? Anyone that thinks I should sign up just needs to link to that older post with the exact anchor text as above, and in a matter of days, I should be number one.
I keep checking every day, but I’m not there yet. I keep bouncing between #3 and #4. Right now, I’m No. 4:
I’m quite content not having a Twitter account. I use FriendFeed and still get to see everything my contacts are sharing, so that’s cool. But really, if you’ve been bugging me to sign up, follow through and point a link with the correct anchor text to that old post that’s currently No. 4 for “last person on Twitter.” It’ll probably only take five links to push that post to the top….
April 11, 2008 at 12:36 am
This may never happen again. Gotta document it.
Check it out! I’ve had a single “Top 10″ badge before, on a couple occasions, but never have I had four flippin’ badges on the same day! How cool is that?!
My Mixx’s Secret Upgrades article has one of the Top 10 badges, and my submission about Last.fm got the other Top 10.
The TL badge is for “Thought Leader”, thanks to my Mixx article getting the most positive votes during the day Thursday. And then the C badge is for “Curmudgeon”, because I voted down the most number of stories — there was so much spam!
Pardon me while I bask in the glow of a fun day on Mixx….
