Sometimes, news on the web is noticeably slow - especially in the weekends. It's ironic in a way, considering that millions of articles get written everyday and many go unnoticed. To address this need, here are six social media sites to help you find more great content.
This is a guest post by Corvida, from the social media blog SheGeeks.
Whether or not you're an avid StumbleUpon user, whenever news is slow and you're dying of web boredom, StumbleUpon is a great site to visit!
One way to optimize what you stumble upon is to add people who are active users of StumbleUpon, and who are stumbling your topics of interest. To do so, you can use StumbleUpon's search tool. Type in any keyword, or even a brand, and you'll get plenty of results to featured sites tagged with your keyword.
StumbleUpon Search
Afterwards grab the StumbleUpon toolbar, which is available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Once you have the toolbar installed, simply select the 'friends' channel in the 'Channel' area on the toolbar and click the 'Stumble' button to browse through your friends stumbles. From there, you're guaranteed to find at least three new articles or web services.
StumbleUpon Toolbar
For some, Twitter may be just a bunch of noise. If that's the case, you're not following the right people. Some of the most avid web surfers are also using Twitter and it's not uncommon for great content to be passed along or 'retweeted'. Keep an eye on your followers for links, especially when news is slow. Someone is bound to tweet something interesting and newsworthy before the day is over.
Early adopters of web services share some of the best content out there. This is content that may be a little harder for the average user to find. Friendfeed is a prominent new social aggregation service that quite a few early adopters are using - not only for aggregation purposes, but also for sharing great content that they find.
By using the highly recommend Greasemonkey script that allows you to filter Friendfeed by service, you can cycle through what's being streamed from blogs and Google Reader Shared items to find some great content.
LinkRiver can be your personal Techmeme, because of the many articles that are being shared on it by the users of the service. Here, you can find some of the hottest articles being shared today or this week by 90% of the LinkRiver community. The "LinkRiver Popular" section is a great place to start your search for more content. There are more than a few gems in this section that can get you through a slow news day.
LinkRiver Popular
Techsted is a relatively new memetracker. However, it's doing a great job of not only finding great content from the biggest networks out there, but also from various "B-list" sites and bloggers. A great thing about Techsted is that it's not limiting itself to strictly tech content. You can also find content about the latest topics such as deals, launches, announcements, how-to's, questions, SEO, web design, and more. All of this can be conveniently found on the Techsted Dashboard, a new section of Techsted that's reminiscent of the Alltop website.
Techsted Dashboard
Last, but certainly not least, social bookmarking sites can be a great source for finding content on a slow news day. Sites like Diigo and Del.icio.us feature everything from recently bookmarked sites to the hottest bookmarks at the moment, all conveniently located on their homepage. No need to add any friends or even sign up, although doing so can help your hunt for more content tremendously.
If you happen to have friends on these sites, pay attention to what they're bookmarking. Just like with StumbleUpon and Twitter, if you're following people sharing similar interests then go through their bookmarks. You'll never know what you'll find until you do. After all, isn't that the point of these services?
These 6 services are great additions to any network and valuable resources for everyone. For better optimization for most of these sites, remember to:
With these four rules to optimize your search results, you're guaranteed to get through those slow news day blues!
This is a guest post by Corvida, from the social media blog SheGeeks.
Comments
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Great article. Under "optimization" it's also important to note that you can simply subscribe to the rss for a specific search term or the "top" or "popular" feeds to avoid having to visit the sites each time.
Posted by: Shannon | April 13, 2008 4:04 PMNice blog, i loved the optimization tips section. But getting noticed and taking advantage of search features is always hard. Atleast for me:D
Posted by: Arjun | April 13, 2008 4:20 PMSundays are a perfect time to pleasure surf for trivia or reminiscing about yester year
On YouTube, Veoh, MetaCafe etc you can spend the entire day reflecting by finding excerpts from your favorite TV shows and commercials that your remember from your youth
Also equally as enjoyable is finding news articles from events you remember reading as a child and looking at them now
Some sites even have archives of old magazine articles and photographs.
It is interesting reflecting on things as an adult that made an impression on you as a child - sometimes years later - you still get that feeling :-)
Posted by: * Miss UNIVERSE | April 13, 2008 4:20 PM@Shannon - Great tip! RSS is becoming such a convenience these days.
@Arjun - How is getting noticed so hard for you? Are you an active participant? I find this to be the best way to get noticed, but be sure that your participation is relevant.
Posted by: Corvida | April 13, 2008 4:39 PMLove the different ways to receive information. I use them all except for linkriver & techsted. However, my issue with them all is that I rarely use any of them although I am signed up for them. I have not made it part of my routine but that is why I may try and use them this week.
Thanks, sis! [[Corvida]]
Posted by: Jennifer | April 13, 2008 6:36 PMi don't know about the LinkRiver and Techsted rest of them are well known
Posted by: Ajay Pathak | April 13, 2008 6:55 PMHey, it's me! :)
Posted by: engtech | April 13, 2008 9:35 PMI found this article via this new site for news:
Posted by: Robert | April 13, 2008 10:15 PMhttp://www.newsflashr.com/feeds/technology_blogs.html
- technology news has both newspaper & blog sections
I used to use Twitter but I got bored and deleted it off. Why? Because it is annoying to keep on logging into twitter to change the message. Maybe they should think of other alternative like making it flash and allowing members to change it from there with of course, logging in from their site. Or, they can make a plugin for Wordpress. It will be easier and more convenient.
Posted by: Arrica Lee | April 13, 2008 11:00 PMThis is an excellent line-up of some of the most effective social tools available. However I tend to disagree about placing del.icio.us on the same level with diigo, for the simple reason that comparing diigo with del.icio.us is like comparing a Prada with a second hand dress. del.icio.us is so yesterday it almost hurts. Sure, it still brings results for some, but diigo users are already aware of the complexity of the service. There are not many web reviews that do it justice.
Maybe you should also include Second|Brain in the list. I personally think that it has great potential. I am somehow surprised that it's not more popular, people hardly talk about it. But if you check out the features I am sure you'll see the potential too and make a pertinent review.
Posted by: Mihaela Lica | April 14, 2008 7:03 AMwhat about http://www.tectrnd.com ?
just added this post to it :)
cheers
Posted by: Vincent Nicolai | April 14, 2008 11:02 AMIf you want to be the most powerful in game, you should have the enough
Posted by: tretre | April 20, 2008 6:29 PMWow gold then you can buy the best weapons, equipment, etc. But Farming
wow Gold is very boring and waste a lot of time.
StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us are my two favorites on this list. I use both of them daily and every time I have issues finding good stories to write about I turn to these.
Posted by: Michael | April 21, 2008 3:17 PM