There has been a pretty consistent buzz about mobile internet access growing as well as location based services. It’s not a stretch to see a lot of ways these would work well together. When you add in the popularity of the iPhone and other phones that are location aware it makes it even more […]
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Location based mobile browsing is the future
Digg has always made its message clear: it’s not social news, it’s democracy.
The company’s executive team–founder Kevin Rose, and CEO Jay Adelson–thumbed their noses at the DMCA complaint they received when users “dugg” a crack code for the now-defunct HD DVD technology. They also decided to connect with their users through “town hall” events webcast live four times a year. So it’s perhaps fitting that for the company’s third quarterly town hall, Rose and Adelson set up shop in the “Big Tent” new-media hall at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. (Digg is a “Big Tent” sponsor.)
It’ll be following up with an event held in partnership with MySpace at the Republican National Convention. The company also kicked off a “Digg Dialogg” event series, in which executives ask users’ questions to prominent guests. Adelson, who called it a “perfect alignment of Digg and elections,” interviewed House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the inaugural interview, in partnership with CNN’s iReport.
“They’re your raw questions,” Rose said, his characteristic mop-top haircut forsaken in favor of a buzz cut. “They were completely unfiltered.”
To be fair, Digg owes a lot to politics–its energetic base of news hounds loves election coverage, and the national elections inevitably pull a lot of traffic to the site.
The questions were largely technical ones that dealt with the minutiae of Digg culture: Adelson said that the “shout” communication system will be tweaked to limit spamming and a private message system is on the way, better technology to flag duplicate stories (”I hate this!” Rose said on the problem with duplicate story submissions) is coming this fall, and Digg is working on a way to let members flag stories as “not safe for work.”
Most of Rose and Adelson’s answers, which they breezed through more quickly than with previous town halls due to time constraints on the Denver stage, fell into the niche of “good suggestion, and we’re working on it.”
One question asked if Digg could institute a forum for members. That was a more contentious point for the company executives. “We do want to have forums for our users to communicate and support each other,” Adelson said, but added that he’s working on matching up the authentication system so that it uses the same credentials as Digg itself rather than an external forum system.
Rose was less enthusiastic. “Everyone has forums and it’s always the same crap,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re helping elevate the good questions and helping the conversation come through.”
A few genuinely good ideas came up: one question suggested “geotagging” for stories to group them into local news stories, something that could make the site legitimately compete with sites like Outside.in and city blog networks like Gothamist. “Yes,” Rose said. “We’ve thought about this as well and it would be really cool if we could start to group different events around you.” Adelson added that Digg has “a few projects on the way…think 2009, realistically, for some of this stuff.”
Despite the somewhat dull nature of many technical questions about recommendation engines and comment improvement, Adelson and Rose insisted that those are the questions they want to hear beause it’s where Digg users can really make a difference in shaping the site’s direction. “It’s really important to know what you guys are thinking. it keeps us honest,” Adelson said.
The next Digg town hall will be held on November 6–two days after the U.S. presidential election. Its next meetup, however, will be off American shores: Rose will be taping his Diggnation podcast live from London on October 10.
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Digg town hall: Local news options, forums on the way?
Focused as many of us are on our own companies’ or clients’ economic anxieties, it’s easy to forget that downturns (or even the perceptions of downturns) hit non-profit organizations particularly hard. When money is tight, charitable giving is an easy, if unfortunate, area to cut. In response, non-profits are getting more creative in using social media and other online tools to provide people with more ways to contribute than simply reaching for nearly-empty wallets.
1. GoodSearch/GoodShop
One example is GoodSearch.com, a search engine that makes a donation for every search, and it’s partner organization GoodShop.com, an online shopping mall with more than 700 leading retailers that directs a percentage of every sale to the user’s favorite charity.
According to GoodSearch.com co-founder JJ Ramberg, with gas prices rising and the housing market already in a slump, economic fears have led to a drop in charitable contributions nationwide, making it harder for non-profits to keep up with an increased demand for their services. As donations get pinched, many are refocusing their fundraising efforts.
“GoodSearch.com and GoodShop.com…allow supporters to give to their favorite organizations without spending a dime. GoodSearch.com is the Yahoo-powered search engine that donates a penny per search to the charity or school of the users’ choice. GoodShop donates a percentage of every purchase from (participating) retailers.” Over 60,000 nonprofits across the country are actively earning funds from the GoodSearch and GoodShop strategy with over 100 organizations submitting new applications daily. Success stories range from the ASPCA which has earned more than $15,000 to care for animals to the Bubel Aiken Foundation which has earned more than $8,000 to send disabled children to summer camp.
2. iBakeSale.com
GoodSearch is unique (as far as I know). GoodShop is similar to iBakeSale.com, which now has more than 300 participating merchants, and provides rebates averaging 8% that can be directed to the charity of the shopper’s choice. iBakeSale was founded about a year ago by Jonathan Treiber. Where GoodShop is geared toward supporting large national non-profits, iBakeSale is ideal for local fundraising (sports teams, church groups etc.) plus larger schools and charities.
3. Idea.org
Non-profit group Idea.org is involved in a number of interesting projects relating to how people interact with the online world. For example, their Vision Simulator tool helps web designers understand how people with different types of vision impairment see the web. The organization recently published a study entitled Factors That Improve Online Experiences, which explored factors that drive online experience as expressed by the three different subject groups – nonprofit organizations and cities, web designers and firms, and the general public.
4. All About Pets
As reported by Kristen Nicole on Mashable, “The Blue Cross, a UK-based pet charity, is hoping to drive some traffic to its new website, allaboutpets
, with an Oddcast-powered viral marketing scheme that is sure to get some attention. The Oddcast talking avatars, which can be customized at TalkingPets.org, are being put to use in a campaign that’s quite similar to Elf Yourself, where users can choose a pet avatar or upload an image of their own pet.” The Blue Cross is Britain’s pet charity, providing support, information and advice for pet and horse owners. The charity relies on donations and fundraising for its income. AllAboutPets is essentially a social networking site for British pet owners.
5. Zanby
Zanby is a group-oriented social networking site. It enables virtually any type of group—family, business, club etc.—to set up its own social networking space, but is somewhat more geared toward non-profit and charitable groups than are sites like Ning. For example, the site is used by Engineers Without Borders, a non-profit humanitarian organization established to partner with developing communities worldwide in order to improve their quality of life.
Until things improve, as Red Green says, “I’m pulling for you. We’re all in this together.”
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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom
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Five Ways to Give Back Through Social Media
With an Inc. 500 award for being one of Americas fastest growing companies, Bridgeline Software — provider of the iAPPS web content management Suite — is continuing their expansion into new markets by acquiring Indigio Group Inc., a web development company with a market presence in presence into Denver, Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region.
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Bridgeline Adds Local Capacity, Operations with Indigio Merger
