November 30, 2007 – 8:42 pm
Some tips and info on how to go about getting your blog posts featured on the Digg homepage
- Digg’s algorithm accounts for recent participation rank of user and followers.
- Frequent success makes subsequent success more difficult. Take a few days off sometimes.
- Get a quick succession of diggs from “high-value” users.
- The number of diggs needed to reach the homepage correlates to the number of diggs being cast at any given time, and how your story compares to the average.
- Competition in categories Technology, World and Business is fiercer than in Sports or Entertainment. 50 diggs will get a story promoted if it is tops in its category.
- The faster a story gets votes, the lower the vote count has to be at which it is promoted. But diversity is important. Stories dugg by “voting rings” will sit at the top of the queue for hours.
- Too many buries and your story will be removed from the queue.
- Comments can help push a story over the edge. Not fake ones, though.
- Wrong: An absolute number of votes is required.
- Wrong: You’re doomed if your story isn’t submitted by a top user.
- Wrong: Number of friends is important. Digg looks for is diversity in the Diggs a story receives.
- Wrong: There is a 24-hour window for success.
[Via: Valleywag]
Popularity: 15% [?]
November 30, 2007 – 7:12 pm
I’ve had a good week with attending my first 27 geek dinner which led to me writing the Afrigator Beta launch post on Bandwidth Blog. The post was picked up my bloggers and news publishers across the web and resulted in a healthy chunk of traffic for Bandwidth.
Here is some of the sites I found mentioning Afrigator, myself and Bandwidth blog. Thanks to the Afri guys for building such a hot beta application which made it easy for me to write a good review.
Highest praise for Afrigator by top global tech blog
Afrigator: The Best of African Social Media, in Real Time
International blogs: Afrigator covers Africa
Measuring the African Blogosphere | White African
Now with all the buzz around Afrigator and my blog post doing the rounds on other blogs I made it onto Techmeme which showcases blog posts that other bloggers are talking about and linking to – this resulted in more traffic, huge traffic in fact.
Popularity: 16% [?]
November 28, 2007 – 5:21 pm
I attended my first 27 Dinner amongst the Bentleys and gold diggers at Primi Melrose Arch last night and had an absolute blast. I rocked up quite early as I was anticipating bumper-2-bumper traffic coming from Sandton which was not the case. I cruised to the venue and walked into a half empty Primi with geeks scattered everywhere in their niche groups. Trying not to look totally lost I made my way to the bar and ordered my beer of choice, Millers. A few seconds later Ramon Thomas swooped on me (thank goodness – I knew someone) and we had a interesting chat about networking, seminars and hiring bloggers to write on your blogs.
Then suddenly the power went off – at first I thought Primi had a power trip but then realized we had been hit my Escum’s load shedding (log onto my site and complain). This resulted in me meeting the lovely Simone Puterman from Biz Com in the dark. We proceeded to walk outside for some light and bumped into Nic Haralambous – who link baited me a few weeks ago – and discovered he’s actually a rad guy. We had the fattest chat about blogging, social networking and SA broadband. Didn’t see that one coming. Read More »
Popularity: 21% [?]
November 22, 2007 – 10:37 pm
Inside Facebook check top right – theres a “I like” icon and a X to close the feed. I guess if you ‘like’ a particular news item they will show you more of that.. or less if you close it.
More here
Popularity: 8% [?]
November 13, 2007 – 11:51 pm
An article I wrote a few weeks back on Bandwidthblog about South Africa’s startups to watch was published this past week. I was privileged enough to get the article published in the November issue of Intelligence Mag. The article came out really well and will surely mean some exposure for the startups profiled. Click on the thumb below to see the pages side by side. (1.5mb)
[Intelligence magazine can be picked up at any CNA]
My latest entries
My adsense earnings
Netbuzz news aggregator launches
Interview on Thought Leader
Disclaimer: I have shares in Blueworld and Zoopedup which are mentioned in the articleÂ
Popularity: 20% [?]
October 23, 2007 – 4:44 pm
When Facebook released their developers platform the applications introduced early on had the opportunity to spam the pants off you and your friends to try get users to install the application(s).
I read sometime back that Facebook sorted this out by updating their TOS with regards to the viral marketing tools the applications can use within Facebook – then today I got this email from my supposed “Fun Wall” – I dont use any Facebook apps besides the one I created for my rugby blog –
Huh? I dont have a Fun Wall
When I proceeded to click the link “check out your Full Wall” it took me to the applications homepage and asked me to install it – sneaky bastards!
I have mailed this to Facebook, hopefully they respond..
Popularity: 12% [?]
September 18, 2007 – 1:07 am
Blog Rush is a blog syndication network. It works around a widget that the blogger needs to put in his website, and the widget displays headlines coming from the blogs on the network.
The goal of service is straight forward: to give you more traffic and readers.
There have been many similar services in the past, but Blog Rush is introducing some interesting innovations. First of all you earn “syndication credits†every time the widget is loaded on your website (i.e., one credit for each page view). If your blog has 500 daily page views, your headlines will be displayed on other blogs using the widget 500 times daily.
Secondly, you can also earn credits by referring people. Every time the widget is displayed on the blog of your referrals you will also earn one credit. So early adopters will be rewarded – Get it now!!
Popularity: 9% [?]
August 22, 2007 – 5:31 pm
Yup, moved to Rivonia rd, Sandton. We got some serious investment for Blueworld and the powers that be insisted that I move up to ’011′ so they could monitor their investment closely. Funny enough I’m loving it! Maybe its to soon to say but I was born for the fast paced life of jozi. What makes it even better is I’ve been privileged enough to meet with the likes of Ronnie Apteker, Chriss Ross (Head of marketing and sales for Vodacom) and the guys from Teljoy namely Jason Joffe.. So I guess I’m off to a good start
Secondly, something I have been planning for years has finally seen the light. The new version of the first website I ever built, Zoopedup, is online. Point your browser here and let me know what you think.
Here’s the blurp from the site
Zoopedup is a automotive social network that allows you to create an online garage for your car featuring blogging, video and picture sharing, discussion forums, ride battles and event galleries from around the globe.
Finally, I’m going out to get well tipsy tonight as my biggest monthly Adsense earnings cheque (R6970.19) has just arrived!! Thank you big G! This comes just in the nick of time as I spent a small fortune kitting our my new pad. Yay!
Incase your to lazy to head over to Zoopedup here’s a screen of the index and my profile
Some other profiles you should check out – Sexy Clio, Barrys-WP
Popularity: 24% [?]
Here’s a project that has been gathering dust on my shelves for quite some time until Paul Smart, who helped build the platform, informed me off all the pending blog link additions. Blog Buzz is a static blog directory where you can add all your blogs links with discriptions to be rated or reviewed by other Blog Buzz members. Nothing fancy just a classic static directory. So get yourself a quality back link as the page rank will take effect as soon as I start SEO’ing the domain. As mentioned earlier I had a ton of links to approve for the directory so it seems Blog Buzz is promoting itself! www.blogbuzz.co.za
Popularity: 19% [?]
Just got word from Vincent @ Amatomu that they have created a “digg style” button which you can place on your blog so your readers can automatically shmaak your posts and view the amount of received shmaaks.
Copy paste the below text in your ‘single post’ template (WordPress), it will figure out the rest from there. It only displays when people are looking at a post page, not your home page. For an example, have a look at Vince’s blog post
<script
language=â€JavaScriptâ€
src=â€http://www.amatomu.com/widgets/shmaakthis.phpâ€
type=â€text/javascriptâ€>
</script>
Popularity: 11% [?]
Charl Norman is a web entrepreneur behind local social networks 
Photos from my trip to Silicon Valley for the MIH Tech conference.
I appeared on channel MK TV's new hip hop and car show WOELAG. They interviewed me on our automotive social network Zoopedup.
I have been nominated for ICT Young Entrepreneur of Africa 2008. Now to even be nominated is a great honour for me seeing as last years winner of the award is internationally renowned Vinny Lingham.
