Mixx, the social news site that competes directly with Digg, just celebrated its first birthday by announcing that traffic to its site has grown rapidly over the last few months and that it now attracts more than 4 million unique visitors a month.
These numbers are even more impressive if you consider that Mixx only had about 1 million unique in May.
This June, we criticized Mixx for apparently not being able to convert its partnerships with large sites like CNN, the New York Times, NPR, Slate, Reuters, and USAToday into real usage numbers.
Since then, Mixx has added a number of new features, including Mixx Communities, but most importantly, it seems the size of the Mixx community itself has reached a tipping point. In its anniversary blog post, Mixx diplomatically attributes its growth to all the "fabulous, intelligent and wonderful Mixxers," but it is also clear that Mixx's strategy of partnering with large content providers is finally starting to pay dividends for the company.
Our initial impression of Mixx was very positive and the new features the company has added since then have only solidified our opinion of Mixx as a very useful social news site for mainstream users.
At the same time, though, it is also worth pointing out that Digg now gets about 30 million unique visitors a month. Digg's Kevin Rose has admitted, however, that the site needs to become more relevant to mainstream users if it wants to keep growing. As Mixx is already geared towards mainstream users, we think that is should be able to continue its rapid growth for the foreseeable future.
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Digg has been on life support for quite some time. If they don't get their house in order they might as well merge with Yahoo so that they can share the cost of a first class cabin on the Titanic.
It is good to see that Mixx is taking off. New companies always push the envelope.
Posted by: Potato Chef | October 9, 2008 11:02 AM
Mixx has grown up very much in the latest months. I'm very proud of being a Mixxer, they have improved the platform with many things and now they launched a widget and toolbar.
Posted by: Mr Javo | October 9, 2008 11:17 AM
But i love digg which sents me a bunch of visitors to
http://rajeelkp.blogspot.com
Posted by: rajeel | October 9, 2008 11:31 AM
@rajeel
Given the n00bosity of that comment, I highly doubt you get any traffic from digg. Especially since it appears you rip off RWW.
You are not banned from the interwebs.
Posted by: B | October 9, 2008 1:20 PM
@B
You are not banned from the interwebs.
should be
You are NOW banned from the interwebs.
Posted by: @B | October 9, 2008 1:22 PM
Digg? Is that even relevant anymore? I love Mixx and always will. Between NewsCred, Mixx & Newsvine (remember that one) I think the mainstream news audience has a lot more compelling choices than Digg.
Well done to Mixx!
Posted by: TM | October 9, 2008 1:53 PM
Mixx's growth is curious. Apart from the massive number of readers and commenters, there are the submitters in Digg whos main kick in life (and often money) comes from the substantial traffic Digg can send to a site or blog.
Over the last year, as more stories get submitted and more stories appear on the homepage, the average traffic which a Digg FP can send to a site has significantly reduced as FP stories dont stay on the homepage as often as they used to.
In Mixx, by all accounts, the growth is steady. More users, more submitters, communities - better Alexa ranking.
However.
Even now, a Mixx FP sends you 300 people. Sometimes 100, sometimes 500. Nothing like the 10-20k of a reddit FP, or the 20-50k or more of a Digg FP.
While participation is increasing in Mixx, despite the great community, the tipping point I believe would appear when Mixx can actually send some substantial numbers to a site. Remember, a simple StumbleUpon discovery by a single user without any promotion can still send a site 500 to 1000 people as traffic.
So Mixx is great, but if its becoming a place for submitters and not readers a la Digg, the value of the site is greatly reduced.
Posted by: SMBizarro | October 9, 2008 11:29 PM
So, what matters for site owners is: "Is Mixx a must-have 'ShareThis' chicklet or not?"
Posted by: Nathan Bowers | October 12, 2008 7:48 PM
Hmmm...haven't really heard much about it until now. I guess it may be time to check it out.
Posted by: TheWindowsFix | October 14, 2008 7:05 PM