The new interface is streamlined and more social with an updated relationship system. A focus on consistency (e.g., limiting user control of visual elements) and removal of clutter (e.g., presenting tags in a drop-down menu rather than a cloud) characterize the design changes made. Also, a few tweaks to group sharing were made to help reduce share-spam.

The "Favorites" tab has been renamed "All" and includes every site a user ever liked, including multimedia content. Similarly, the "What's New" page, which displays sites a user's friends and subscriptions reviewed, has been renamed "Recent Activity."

In the new interface, shares are found in the main Discover tab and display the list of sites that were sent to a user by mutual subscribers with direct-share permission. Soon, the site will display sent as well as received shares.

The once-retired Similarity Meter, a diagram showing a users' Favorites similarity with other users, is being resurrected. And by popular demand, group shares will no longer be available in bulk; users will have to select other users within groups to share items with them.

Design changes that limit user choice in favor of overall site consistency are threefold: List view rather than a grid view is the default for all profiles. In contrast to the 22 background colors once available, a mere seven of the most popular color themes are now being offered for profile customization. And the visual editor has been scrapped. "Rest assured," the site reads, "we are still working on making sure all your past blog entries look good in the new interface. Some text customization will still be allowed.

"Our goal is not to limit your creativity, but to place emphasis on content and ensure a consistent user experience." An admirable aim, indeed; we think StumbleUpon is working in a good direction with these changes.

We also admire the new drop-down menu for tags:

Users are able to toggle back and forth between the beta redesign and the old site design over the next month. "To switch back to the old look," the site says, "simply click on the Beta link located on the main navbar (see image below) and on the following screen click the Leave Beta button. To return to the new interface, use the link Click here and try the new StumbleUpon! located at the top of all pages in the old view."

For publishers the service looks very cool, it includes features we haven't seen anywhere else and offers access to the huge Stumble audience.

• Real time analytics showing how many people click through your links, how many came via StumbleUpon in particular and who the most prolific "reTweeters" have been.


• Easy publishing to Twitter and Facebook, including the ability to schedule those links and messages to be pushed out at a particular time.


• "Suggested posting time" metrics, based on historical data concerning when people are most likely to click through your links.


• A handy bookmarklet that makes submission of links quick and easy.

It's interesting to note that Stumble's business model is based on publishers paying 5 cents per visitor to have pages inserted into relevant Stumble streams already. Now publishers are being encouraged not only to put their pages into Stumble for free, but are also aggressively prompted to write their own reviews of pages.

What's Not So Super

Other possible critiques of Su.pr include that the framed pages aren't pretty in mobile displays (the frame is clunky and the obscured destination URL is a bummer) and there hasn't been a Su.pr API announced, something that competitors like Bit.ly, Cli.gs and Tr.im all offer.

Stumble says they are using the right kind of redirect to keep search juice on the page that's being linked to, (Update: SearchEngineLand's Danny Sullivan says this is not true) but we're not sure what Su.pr will do to third party analytics services like Google's. We also question whether the "clicks" are really clicks on Su.pr; just like all URL shorteners have happen, Su.pr links are sometimes "opened" by browser extensions that peak at the full URL without readers actually clicking on them. For example, the service reported 5 clickthroughs on one of our links just 5 seconds after we sent it to Twitter. That's possible but doesn't seem terribly likely. It's a hard problem to solve and one that is much more important for publishers with tech-savvy browser extension using audiences than it is for the vast majority of the world. In tech publishing, it's not uncommon for other URL shortening services to report 1k clicks when internal analytics have only seen 700, for example.

Su.pr encourages publishers throughout its interface to promote their own content, a reality of the web publishing world that brings with it some ethical questions. The company has always flirted with these questions by serving up paid content pages inside Stumble streams without disclosing that they were paid for, something that few other widely-loved technology companies could get away with. Mega corp eBay can't be blamed for any of this as Stumble's founders recently bought the company back (which is awesome).

Perhaps the bulk of Stumble-submissions were already coming from publishers though, not from fairies touching web pages with dew-drop-dripping magic wands as we naively hoped.

We're sure Su.pr will be great for StumbleUpon and for publishers, but we'll have to see how good it is for users. Fortunately some self-correction is baked in to StumbleUpon, viewers simply vote down weak content and other people are thus likely to be served that content as they Stumble through the web. The efficacy of that self-correction may be mitigated by a substantial increase in noisy publisher content pushed into the system out of self-interest though. We'll see!

If you would like to try out Su.pr for yourself, you can use the invite code "suprrww."

Stumble in an Iframe

The DiggBar, of course, sparked a lot of controversy though StumbleUpon's new toolbar does not include a URL shortener. So, unlike the original DiggBar, there is probably little reason to assume that the new StumbleUpon toolbar will steal too much search engine 'juice,' even though it uses an iframe to show the original page. As users aren't likely to share the long StumbleUpon links or use them to link to a site from their own blog, this shouldn't be too much of an issue. But it should be noted that, as far as we can see, StumbleUpon does not return a canonical link which would tell search engines like Google to ignore the StumbleUpon link and index the original page instead.

We talked to StumbleUpon about this earlier today, and the team there didn't seem too worried about this, but instead emphasized that the bar was easy enough to close. It should be noted, though, that whenever a StumbleUpon user shares a story by email, the recipient will see the toolbar by default.

Until just a few weeks ago, StumbleUpon was part of eBay, but now, StumbleUpon is once again an independent company after its founders and investors agreed to buy the company back. It's good to see that the company continues to roll out new products on its roadmap while it is going through yet another transition, though the company is obviously going see a lot of competition from other content discovery services and social networks in the near future.

Now you can Stumble outside of the shadow of the mega-corporate overlords at eBay - two years after Stumble founders Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith cashed out and handed their baby over to the ecommerce giant, they've come back with a team of investors and bought StumbleUpon back from eBay. It's pretty exciting.

Why is this such a big deal? For three reasons.

StumbleUpon is Back in the Game

Earlier this year we wrote about StumbleUpon hitting 7 million registered users, which was at the time 50% higher than most estimates of media darling Twitter's users. Twitter's numbers have shot through the roof this year, leaving StumbleUpon in the dust.

Some people told us that Twitter and Stumble are like Apples and Oranges. Both, though, are tools of discovery, sharing and social connection. They are different in some ways but similar in others. There's a special kind of magic to StumbleUpon, though, and we're very glad to see its founders back in the driver's seat. A web where Twitter and Facebook are the only social discovery games in town is a poorer web.

Some Suspicion is Mitigated

Dave Winer wrote last week that the reason everyone wants to know how Twitter is going to make money is because eventually they'll come up with something - and we as users might not like it.

There was always a similar kind of feeling with regards to StumbleUpon at eBay. Just what was eBay going to do with Stumble and was it going to be creepy? Did you really want to share your serendipitous discoveries, your likes and your dislikes, with the arguably dysfunctional eBay?

Somehow Camp and Smith, as founders, feel more trustworthy. Who knows though - last time they thought it would be a good idea to sell the company to eBay! Many innovators from the beginning of Web 2.0 quickly grew skeptical after their startups were acquired, hopefully they'll be more careful next time.

Innovation Coming Again

Remember what the last wildly innovative thing StumbleUpon did was? Adding the awesome video section of the site, we'd argue, six months before the eBay acquisition. Now that Camp and Smith are in charge again, we hope to see the same spirit of awesomeness that built Stumble in charge again. The team already says they've got "several new products and features to be released in the upcoming months."

We've got high hopes for this deal, just like we do for the rumored founder buy-back of Skype from eBay.

Founders are where the innovative juice is, often, and if a big conglomerate that buys those startups can't figure out how to make effective use of these incredibly disruptive technologies - then they should get out of the way.

StumbleUpon is one of the handful of services launched on the consumer web in the last few years that can truly be said to have significant cognitive benefits for the people who use it. Give yourself an evening to peruse and explore the web using Stumble, if you haven't. It makes the brain feel good and it's a great way to learn - through play and personalization. It's a whole lot of fun. It's not something that needed to be turned into a way to jump from eBay listing to eBay listing. Stumble is smart, it's useful and we're very happy to see it independent again.

Today is a good time to remember what a big deal StumbleUpon is, even if it's hardly ever talked about.

StumbleUpon is a Paradigm Shaker

If you haven't used StumbleUpon before, here's how it works. You install the toolbar, identify some categories of content you like on the web, then hit the Stumble button. The service takes you to a web page that is popular with people who share your interests. You've got the option to give that page a thumbs up, a thumbs down or just leave it by hitting the Stumble button again. Over time the service learns what you like and integrates that into the decisions it makes in sending you someplace new when you hit the button.

It's a fun, playful, chaotic way to navigate around the web. The service leverages recommendation technology and the network effects of analyzing large amounts of aggregate user data. Those are two of the most important factors in the emerging era online.

It might feel like a waste of time - but only if you neglect the importance that semi-structured play has in creativity, perspective, socialization and mental health. StumbleUpon is the closest thing that the Web 2.0 world has to brain therapy.

It's Really Popular

StumbleUpon hit 7 million users this week and it can be useful to compare that to Twitter. No one knows how many users Twitter really has, but Google engineer DeWitt Clinton ran some tests last month and estimates it's about 5 million users. A substantial portion of those are accounts populated by spamming robots or people who haven't taken the time to make any friends, which is the point on Twitter.

Meanwhile StumbleUpon has done zero promotion and is nearly 50% than Twitter. Stumble delivers far more traffic to websites than Twitter does and it's learned how to make money. Advertisers pay a few pennies to have their pages inserted into the Stumble streams of relevant users and those ads are silently voted on just like any other page. Silicon Alley Insider estimates the company was making $10 million each year as of this Fall. Of course those profits are landing in the pockets of eBay, who bought StumbleUpon for an estimated $75 million dollars. (There are some rumors that eBay is not happy about the deal anymore and is trying to sell StumbleUpon again).

None the less, we find StumbleUpon just fascinating. Compared to Twitter, it's bigger, drives more traffic and is world changing in different ways - all without any promotion or buzz. Happy 7 million, StumbleUpon, we're impressed.

Amit Chowdry noticed the news and blogged about it first.

Are you on Twitter? Here are the accounts of ReadWriteWeb writers, if you'd like to be friends.

Identifying top niche blogs is invaluable knowledge for anyone wanting to enter, study or market to people in a particular field. It's one of the fastest and most effective ways to learn the lay of the land and get involved in the community of successful artists, real estate agents or 4-H club leaders using social media. I've been seeing a lot of demand for this information lately so I thought I'd write up some quick pros and cons of the options I'm familiar with. Perhaps you'll add some of your own favorite methods in comments.

Unfortunately, Technorati's not what it used to be anymore. While we here at RWW are very proud to have climbed to the #14 spot in the Top 100 most linked-to blogs overall in the Technorati Index (look out Perez Hilton, you're next in line) the fact of the matter is that for everyday use Technorati doesn't feel very reliable anymore.

How then can you identify the top blogs in a particular niche field? There are paid services you can use to identify influencers online but they are expensive and not appropriate for quick hits in a new topic. I'm all for paid services but in this case, let's talk about options that are fast and free. Given the need to classify a lot of content with minimal human intervention, this could be a great place for Semantic Web technology to come in.

Here's a comparison of the pros and cons of six different services you can use to do so. None are as solid a solution as the blogosphere deserves. This is a huge opportunity for indexes, but one that will be hard to fill since an index has to be wide and deep to be truly useful for this purpose.

Technorati

Pros:

The Technorati Blog Finder. was set up for just this purpose and in earlier days claiming and tagging your blog on Technorati was considered an essential step in getting started with a blog. I'm not so sure that's the case anymore.

Technorati offers a clear standard of authority and you can download the OPML file of the top 10 blogs in any category. Why only 10? I have no idea.

Cons:

After years of spotty service, seemingly random redesigns that made the site even worse than it was before, a crazy idea to get bloggers to point all their rel=tag links to Technorati (!) and the entry of bigger players into blog search - Technorati doesn't feel as active today as it once did. There are probably a lot of top blogs in any niche that haven't added themselves to the directory.

The directory is also organized according to the tags applied to a blog by its own author, typically when the blog just gets started.

The user experience is not good at Technorati but it's good enough to still warrant a look in hunting for top niche blogs.

Del.icio.us

Pros:

We wrote about how to find top niche blogs using Del.icio.us in a post last month. At the simplest level, go to http://del.icio.us/tag/topic+blog.

There's a huge amount of data on Del.icio.us and it's a very dynamic community. There are also RSS feeds, user comments, information about the people (users) who have done the classifying and a lot of other helpful features. I've been using Del.icio.us to find top niche blogs a lot lately and it's served me fairly well, even if I have to eyeball the last few yards to an answer.

Cons:

Del.ico.us hasn't been evolving very quickly, at least the publicly available version of the service. There are a lot of obnoxious qualities to it, like the fact that you can't search for most popular items with multiple tags - there's no such page as http://del.icio.us/popular/topic+blog.

Search results pages are funky and tag/topic+blog just means that a URL has been saved at least once with both of those terms, not that any number of people used both terms at once. It's not intuitive to look up the tags given a URL much less an entire domain. Finally, at least in the tech sector a lot of hip cats are using Ma.gnolia now instead of Del.icio.us. It's a recommendation engine waiting, forever, to happen and I'm still heartbroken that it was acquired by Yahoo! instead of the Library of Congress.

StumbleUpon

Pros:

StumbleUpon has huge user numbers, very targeted interests and classifications, and an algorithm combined with human editorial judgment about the blogs in question.

Cons:

It's more "fun" than it is business, unless you're into SEO. There's no clear way to look at top sites in any category. The search results page is really random-looking; good for stopping by and doing some searches just to see if you've missed anything, but nothing you'd do as part of a structured search.

Google Reader Recommendations

Pros:

Google Reader's new recommendations are very high quality, in tech at least, because they have a large number of web savvy users. I'm hoping that starting a dedicated Google Reader account filled only with some known feeds in a niche, I can have other top sources in that same niche recommended to me.

Cons:
Recommendations don't come right away, you have to wait for awhile. There's also a limit to the number of recommendations you can receive at one time. It is a tech-focused community, disproportionately to the blogosphere in general. Finally, this is a pretty silly little hack at things and you find yourself getting tied up with trying to run multiple Google accounts, etc.

AideRSS

Pros:

I love AideRSS because the criteria for hotness is relatively clear and I find the service really useful in lots of contexts. In theory you can plug almost any RSS feed, including search feeds, into AideRSS and it will score items in that feed for popularity based on number of comments, Diggs, del.icio.us saves and inbound links. You could put feeds from a blog search for niche-specific language into RSS and find some niche hotness. Once you identify top niche blogs you can also run their feeds through AideRSS to quickly discover what their communities of readers find most engaging. It's magic, almost.

Cons:

The service only works most of the time and long URLs choke it up. It's also limited to feeds, which take some creative thinking in order to bend to our particular purpose of finding top blogs.

Ask.com Blogsearch

Pros:

Ask has the best blog search on the web. It uses Bloglines subscription numbers as a big weight in spam control. There's very little spam. You can search for niche-specific language or a key niche link and sort by popularity of source.

Cons:
Ask does get overloaded sometimes and the above method is hardly systematic anyway. I wouldn't rely on it alone. Ask Blogsearch does index a lot of funky feeds that clutter search results even if they aren't spam. Try it out and you'll see what I mean.

Conclusion

See what I mean? Nobody quite does what we need. Used in concert and with a little work, these tools together can build you a pretty good reading list of top blogs in any niche. There's big room for improvement in this toolset though.

What do you use for this kind of research? I'd love to know.

At this time, we have only heard from a handful users about their banning, but the general feeling among this group of outcasts is that StumbleUpon had actively hunted them down.

Although none of the banned users have received any sort of communication from StumbleUpon, some believe that they may have been kicked off for occasionally stumbling sites that had financial value. While that may be a big no-no on Digg, who prohibits such a thing in their Terms of Service (TOS), on StumbleUpon, it's much more of a grey area.

The reason why it's not as cut-and-dry as on Digg is because StumbleUpon features a ton of categories - to see what we mean, Stumble something today and check out that drop-down box of theirs. There, you'll find categories that very much fit in the "financial value" niche including options like Bargains/Coupons, Business, Daytrading, Entrepreneurship, Financial Planning, Investing, Marketing, and others. Clearly, StumbleUpon is OK with many more categories of sites than Digg.

In addition, the only reason StumbleUpon would terminate accounts according to their TOS is if the account was created with the primary intention to promote a product or service are considered "SPAM." In other words, the occasional accidental spammy stumble shouldn't get you kicked out.

That sentence goes on to say that those spam accounts are subject to termination unless expressly authorized in advance in writing by StumbleUpon. What? It's OK to use StumbleUpon for spamming purposes if you get permission first? That seems odd.

Banned Behind The Firewall

Others who have been recently banned from the site include Ian Lurie of Conversation Marketing, who believes that he may have been banned because he stumbled behind a firewall at work. Everyone in his office showed up as the same IP address, making StumbleUpon question whether or not they were operating some sort of black-hat stumbling farm. Unfortunately, Lurie never heard back either thanks to SU's policy of not responding to their users (unless you have the clout of someone like the high-profile Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, that is).

Starting To Clean House?

Obviously, we don't have enough information just yet to know for sure if StumbleUpon is starting to clean house. These recent complaints brought to our attention could either be business as usual at StumbleUpon or could be indicative of a new trend.

Have you been banned or know somehow who has been banned from SU? Let us know in the comments.

Today StumbleUpon has introduced a way for new visitors of the service to Stumble without the toolbar. To make discovering new sites easier, the service has turned their homepage into a stumbling portal. The homepage will now feature popular content from various categories. Unlike its current homepage, this one will be updated daily. This will also give new visitors a chance to use the service without having to install the toolbar. Those with unsupported browsers will appreciate the change too.

Click to enlarge

StumbleUpon Partner Program

StumbleUpon has also announced services to partnering sites. To increase effectiveness and appeal for partner content, StumbleUpon will offer stumbling services directly on partnering sites for visitors to stumble through. Currently this is available for the visitors of the following partner sites:

• The Huffington Post
• HowStuffWroks
• RollingStone
• National Geographic

Exclusive Services...For Now

StumbleUpon is offering these great new services for new visitors and selective partners only. However, there are plans to expand these services to current members and more partners. We think these services will definitely help to give StumbleUpon not only a nice boost, but a brighter future. The homepage redesign is sure to receive great traffic and provide both new and current members with more interaction with the service. The option to stumble through content without clicking the toolbar numerous times is a welcomed alternative. We're sure that quite a few blogs are more than happy about the Partner Program. Only time will tell how long until we can all enjoy these services.

We've still yet to have these rumors confirmed, but what if eBay were to actually sell StumbleUpon? Help us predict whether eBay will sell the service by the end of this year and if so, the price tag that it might fetch.

• Reports claim that eBay is in touch with Deutsche Bank to find a buyer.
• eBay purchased StumbleUpon for $75 million 16 months ago.
• In July 2008, StumbleUpon had 1.3 million worldwide visitors, down from 4.4 million a year prior.

Stumble Upon Our Discussion

In addition to reading your predictions, we'd also like to know your thoughts on what this might mean for StumbleUpon community members. Here are some things to discuss in the comments section:

• Will StumbleUpon's growth continue to decrease if the rumors are true?
• If you're a StumbleUpon user, what are your thoughts on how the StumbleUpon community may be affected by a sell?
• If StumbleUpon doesn't sale, what do you think eBay will do with the service?

StumbleUpon was a bargain at $75 million and probably a worthwhile experiment for eBay, but now that eBay's future does not look as rosy as it once did, we think it only makes sense for eBay to sell it off again. According to TechCrunch, eBay has hired Deutsche Bank to find a buyer, though the asking price is not clear.

We contacted eBay about these rumors and will update this post once we get a response.

Skype?

It would be easy to draw parallels to eBay's acquisition of Skype, which eBay bought for the staggering amount of $2.6 billion. Skype, too, was never fully integrated into eBay's business model. However, as Peter Kafka notes, this extremely high purchase price also makes a sale very difficult now, unless eBay is willing to take a loss. Only a handful of companies are able to pay $3 billion or more, which leaves Google as one of the few potential candidates.

With social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and Bebo, we find it a little confusing as to why you wouldn't just use their search engines to find a random friend or two. Nevertheless, BuddyStumbler aims to fill that space and help you stumble upon new friends. You can search for new people by interests, usernames, or "buddies of". Type in your keywords, sex, age, and zip code and BuddyStumbler will do the rest. Results will link to the user's BuddyStumbler profile and any of their instant messaging handles or social networks such as Flickr. All in all, you're guaranteed to find a new friend or two via BuddyStumbler.

Ticket Stumbler

Ticket Stumbler could turn out to be a time and money saver for some. Essentially, Ticket Stumbler aims to help you compare, find, and purchase tickets for sporting events. From regular tickets to season packages, you can find tickets for the following sporting events:

• NFL
• NCAA Football
• MLB
• NLH
• NBA

StumbleAudio

StumbleAudio is one of the ultimate music discovery services with over 2 million tracks availble to stumble through. Check out their charts for the most liked and disliked albums. See what other users are listening to the most or the most stumbled genres. StumbleAudio makes a great addition to other services such as Last.FM, Pandora, and iLike for music discovery.

Most of the Web at Your Fingertips

While none of these sites could replace StumbleUpon, they fill different niches that StumbleUpon may not be the best service for. We recommend them all for discovering the best and most interesting sections of the web. Let us know what else you're using to "stumble" through great sections of the web.

Here's a look at why the idea of a social news site front page that is newspaper-like and presents information in reverse chronological presentation has to change - and how Reddit is flirting with the answer.

The Social Hodgepodge

Almost all social news sites that exist today have a nearly-identical foundation. People submit, vote, and comment on stories, the ones that are the most active, get promoted to the site's front-page. This process repeats itself and newer stories get promoted to the site's front page and older ones get pushed down. Over time old stories get pushed deeper and deeper in to the archives and newer stories (presumably more timely and relevant) replace them. The most popular sites that follow this as a basic formula are Digg, Propeller, Reddit, Mixx, and even the social bookmarking site Del.icio.us.

This kind of a system is great if you have a small and homogenous community. For example, this worked great on Digg about 2 years ago when the site was one-tenth the size and focused heavily on technology. As these sites grow, the problems with this kind of a system become apparent. First, as communities grow , more gets submitted to the social news sites, and secondly, the content being submitted gets more and more diverse. A single, all-important front page, as you will just see, doesn't scale well, and doesn't function well under a diverse community.

When the front page is the part of the news site that has all the new and fresh content, that is the part of the news site that gets the most traffic, that is where all the content producers want to be, and that is the place everyone links to. But there is only so much content you can feature on this page.

Even if you assume that one article is promoted every 5 minutes and there are a total of 15 slots on a news site's front page. That means that at any given time, the oldest story on the front page will be no older than 1 hours and 25 minutes old. Sounds about accurate, the Digg home page as of this writing shows the oldest story, the 15th one to be 1 hour and 36 minutes old. This also means that at this rate, and assuming that stories are promoted at a constant pace, only 288 stories will be promoted to the front page per day. These stories are divided over 60 different subcategories and three types of media (text, pictures, and videos).

Furthermore, based on the current front page a story gets 1 hour and 25 minutes on the front page before it is deemed practically irrelevant. The amount of people that go to the second page after the front page are about 30% of overall front page traffic, and in comparison an insignificant number of people go from the second to the third page. What this means is that if a story is not viewed by someone within the first 75 minutes, 2 in 3 readers wont see it, and if no one sees the story in the first 3 hours, almost no one will see the story. Of course some people will check it out from the Digg RSS feed, but compared to the power of the site, that is insignificant.

At the same time however, there is an exponentially greater amount of content created everyday and much faster than older content is deemed expired or irrelevant.

So the problem, basically is that there is more viable content created everyday than can be shown and would actually be seen by a large number of people on the site (based on the current front page). And the content that does make it through, isn't on the front page nearly long enough to make a significant impact. On average, 300 stories a day get about 1 hour and 25 minutes to get the bulk of attention, after which they are gone from human eyes forever.

The Newspaper That Works

The answer to the problem is quite simple. In fact the right answer has been around for quite a while and it's called StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon has pages akin to the traditional social news sites' front pages, but for a majority of the users, StumbleUpon is not a destination site. You install a browser toolbar, select your preferences, and you never have to visit the actual site ever again (unless you want to change settings or post to your blog). The toolbar sends you directly to pages that match your preferences and your voting habits. The more you use it, the better the pages you get.

At the same time, however, there is no time-stamp on articles that are submitted to StumbleUpon. You may be shown an article from 5 minutes ago, or an article from 5 years ago - just depends on if it matches your (and your friends') preferences and voting habits. This ensures that every piece of content submitted to the site will get a shot at being judged by the community and that there is no limit to how much exposure something can get. In the process, StumbleUpon has also certainly diminished potential information cascades based on what seems like social proof (e.g. people vote on some stories simply because they already have votes, but you can beg, borrow, and pay for those initial votes), and they have also reduced blind voting because StumbleUpon sends you to a website before you vote on it.

The problem with this system, however, is that because it works so efficiently, and because the user experience is so genuine, intuitive, and non-intrusive, only a fraction of the community using the toolbar ever has to interact with StumbleUpon as a destination site. Therefore, it is very hard to monetize the system based on current (ad based) business models. Even though StumbleUpon has a business model that seems to be working, it's doubtful that (superior as it is) the site can be more profitable than Digg. At $0.05 per visitor, StumbleUpon asks for $50 CPM. Even for the best monetized blogs that traffic isn't worth the cost.

The Newspaper That Will Have To Suffice

From a business perspective, the idea of a monetized destination site, at least in the current Web 2.0 economy, seems to be the right answer, so let's go with that. They can't copy StumbleUpon so that's out. They don't want to move away from a destination-site business model so an off-site mechanism is also out. What if, we crossbred the two ideas?

For example, Reddit already has a StumbleUpon-like toolbar. The only difference is that this toolbar only allows shows up when you visit the Reddit front page and then click an external link from there. And the toolbar only allows you to vote on the story. If you want to do anything else, back to the Reddit front page you go.

Reddit already has a 'recommended' page so we can effectively emulate the StumbleUpon experience by using a combination of the recommendations and the toolbar, we only need to make sure that all users use the toolbar rather than voting directly from the Reddit submission page. Perhaps move voting completely to the toolbar while maintaining story rankings on the front page? The only part we're left with is the 24-hour restriction.

For that we can use an interesting new feature that Reddit recently implemented. If you go to the front page, you'll see a module at the top that rotates between some of the stories from the upcoming section, allowing you to vote on them directly from the front page (the most heavily trafficked section of the site.

What if we rethink the previous two features and reuse the module so it shows 5 random recommendations for you (regardless of upcoming or promoted, just based on your preferences and whether you've already read them or not? That way, the module can cycle between old and new, promoted and still in the queue, and you don't have to worry about missing any good stories on your favorite social newspaper. As for the final problem of scaling with diversity, Reddit solved this problem a few months ago when they introduced normalization to their front page through their unique use of subreddits.

The future of content consumption on the social web is entirely based in personalized recommendations, and this re-conceptualization of Reddit creates a better environment for fighting information cascades and blind voting, and ensures that you will see the content most relevant to you regardless of votes or time-stamps. Recommended stories are only removed once you have either read them or discarded them and content has an infinite lifespan. By integrating the model into a destination site, it also remains an easily monetizable venture.

Reddit has all the pieces to the puzzle, they just haven't figured out how to fit them together.

This is a guest post by Muhammad Saleem, a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites. You can follow Muhammad on Twitter.

We get enough of our stories submitted that we thought friends of RWW might appreciate a chance to read our thoughts about what works best when you submit content from this, or any other site, for other people to read on Digg.

Here at RWW we love the fact that we have a loyal and growing crew of readers who like to share their favorite stories from our site. Digg traffic is a big help in putting food on our tables so we can keep writing the things people like here. We've had more than 150 posts hit the front page of Digg in the last year and we really appreciate your support. This is what we at least have seen work best so far. If your experience has been different please let us know.

All that said, we've noticed some things that don't work so well on Digg. Any URL that gets submitted has only one chance to try and make it to the front page within the next 24 hours. Whether you're submitting stories from here or from your other favorite sites, here are some tips that will help your submissions be more successful.

1. Think of Your Submission Like a Mini-Article

A good title and summary in your submission is a make-or-break matter. An indecipherable title or a summary that doesn't really summarize the article means very few people are gonig to click through or vote for a story.

Sometimes the title of the original blog post may be more suitable for the blog's regular readers than it is for Digg - you might want to consider coming up with a new title for your submission. There's room for some artistic license.

Good

Remember - the goal of Digg is to write a submission that the largest number of Digg users will find honestly interesting enough to click on and vote for in order to share it with more readers. Put yourself in the mind of someone scanning over a tech and news stream - what kinds of titles would you feel are most appropriate and effective?

Or, as Digg says on the page you see when submitting articles (apparently many people didn't read this) - "Convince people that this is great content. Write a concise and accurate headline. Don't assume that people will understand just from the title... explain in your description." Simple enough!

2. Snark is Almost Always Better Than Wow

"Wow" is actually good, but thankful appreciation for a high-quality article from a site you know and love; that's not going to fly in the big ocean of content that is Digg. If you can think of anyone to make fun of (present company excluded of course!) people like that.

Saying that a post is really good, though, is wasted characters. Everyone's assuming that you think it's good because you submitted it; spending precious space saying it's good in the summary just irritates readers and makes it seem that someone who doesn't know what they are doing thinks the link is good.

Also good
3. Leave Personal References Out

Some degree of professionalism goes a long way on Digg. Risk taking does as well, but one thing that doesn't work well in many cases is referencing the site or author you're submitting. It's in the URL field already.

We really appreciate how many of you like RWW - but the majority of Digg users still have no idea who we are. So referencing RWW, or one of our author's names, in your submission just comes across as presumptuous. You can put yourself in the place of a Digg reader who doesn't know this blog. That's the best way to submit stories from here.

If you're submitting stories from the blog of some crazy tech-geek-rockstar hero then that make sense to reference them. There are almost no tech blogs that have general name recognition on Digg, though. Even TechCrunch, the king of name recognition, gets blank stares sometimes on Digg. Ars Technica, though I dare you to name more than one author there, does have that kind of name recognition on Digg.

It's been four months since a story that contained the words ReadWriteWeb in the headline or description hit the front page of Digg, though. It didn't use to be that way, but that's the way it is now.

Sorry, but this one's not so good
4. Consider Submitting to Unusual Categories

This is a tip we first heard on The Drill Down podcast, and it's a good one. The vast majority of our stories that get submitted are submitted in the Industry News category. The vast majority of all stories go there. This makes it much harder to get over the hump and hit the front page in that category.

Last week our post on How We Use Twitter For Journalism was reported in comments to have hit the front page with only 25 Diggs - and 17 hours after submission! That would be going exactly nowhere if it was in Industry News, but the submitter added it to the Lifestyle >> Educational category. There was a much lower bar there. The idea is that Digg wants to front page to serve a diversity of interests, so submitters should recognize the diversity of interests that can be served with their submission.

Ironically, the person who added this story to digg (thank you) did so under Industry News!

5. Contribute in Other Ways to the Site Too

Not all votes are equal on Digg. People who regularly submit articles that do well get their votes counted more heavily. People who vote early on stories that end up being validated by the rest of the community carry more weight as well. Digg stories around the site, leave comments. Every time you participate meaningfully, it's an opportunity to help your own future submissions do all the better.

This is why nepotism isn't rewarded on Digg. If a user Diggs a story that the rest of the group hates, then that user's vote will suffer in the future. There's a strong disincentive. algorithmically, to try to game the system. Almost as strong as their is an incentive otherwise.

6. Consider Voting for Stories on Other Sites, as Well

Here at RWW, we've been lucky enough to be accepted into the closed-garden of Yahoo! Buzz, so you can vote for any of our stories there, too. StumbleUpon is a good place to share things with like minded people as well. Mixx is an up and comer. SlashDot is still a great place to share stories. The list runs very, very long in fact.

Spread your love around and check out different social news sites. You might find that you like some of them better than others, or that your personal taste in stories might go over better in one place or another.

We hope that these thoughts are useful and interesting. We thank you again for your support here, but we find social news sites of interest whether we're on them or not. They are a great way for us all to learn together.

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

Twitter

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.

Friendfeed

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

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

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

Social Bookmarking Sites (Del.ico.us, Diigo)

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?

Optimization Tips

These 6 services are great additions to any network and valuable resources for everyone. For better optimization for most of these sites, remember to:

• take advantage of the search feature
• use keywords or tags when searching
• add friends or people with similar interests (if possible)
• check the site's homepage regularly

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.