Handpick is a social Web app that doesn't interfere with the Web itself. It lives in your bookmarks bar or Chrome extensions. When you find a link you want to share, you click it, and it pops up a simple form for a title, link, description and a checklist of recipient groups you've created. When you click 'share,' it doesn't buzz all your friends' phones right away. It collects links for you all day and sends an email digest to each group in the evening.

Now, that's still better than an inbox full of email, but that's not Handpick's solution. Recipients of your Handpick links only get one message, and it arrives late in the day, when there's more time for thinking. You create groups of contacts using whatever criteria you choose, and each group gets one message around 5 p.m. Pacific Time.

It has support for desktop and iPhone browser bookmarklets, a Chrome extension, and it can link with Instapaper. It's a great way to share selectively with minimal interruption, reaching your contacts in a place they'd check anyway. Want to try it out? Here's an invite link. Room is limited. First come, first served.

What does that mean? "Web linking is the most fundamental web building block," says Yahoo! standards wonk Eran Hammer-Lahav. "Typed links - links with a clear semantic meaning - existed on the web since the very beginning, but for the most part lacked any generally acceptable definition... Agreeing on what a link type means across formats is critical for a semantically rich web, in which links are used to provide a richer user experience, as well as better search and automation features."

IETF RFC 5988 is the document authored by Yahoo's Mark Nottingham for the IETF that explains the standard and this is the registry where you can find the 42 relations that have been accepted so far.

Hammer-Lahav continues:

"What the new RFC does is establish a registry and a simple process for defining new link relation types across formats (HTML5, XRD, Microformats, HTTP headers, ATOM, etc.).

"What is important about the new registry is its lightweight approach, allowing most stable documents to be used as reference specifications for new relation types. The process is used as a sanity check, and not as another bureaucracy slowing down innovation."

Hammer-Lahav says the HTML5 community has been particularly active in submitting Rels for inclusion in the registry. See also the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group's HTML5 rel directory. (Details)

Rich links, expressed across multiple languages, in a standardized semantic format, promise to act as a platform where programatic analysis can be performed on scale - making it far easier than ever before to bring together diverse resources from all around the web to create new experiences for application users.

The rel="me" link, for example, has enabled services like the Google Social Graph API to string together semantically marked-up profile pages owned by a single person across multiple different sites and social networks. That makes it easy to draw a picture of who a person is across different services they use, because their profile pages link out to their blogs or Twitter accounts, for example, using the rel="me" link relation.

That kind of cross-site functionality could be built for everything from bookmarks to content licenses to payments and more if the IETF's new web link relations markup proliferates.

Getting Started

Of course, you can never be absolutely certain that any of your Twitter followers actually saw a link - and there is also some value in repeated postings - but if you want to make sure that everything you post to Twitter is as original as possible, give Link Different a try.

This project is the work of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign grad student Eric Gilbert. Gilbert told us that Link Different, which performs a distributed crawl using Twitter's APIs, should scale well for accounts with large follower numbers.

The next time you visit your Profile page (if you haven't done so already), you'll be introduced to the new "Connected Profiles" option, one of the many potentially concerning privacy-related changes announced at Facebook's f8 developer conference last week. With this option, the text in your Facebook profile section where you list your hometown, education, work and interests, is now being linked to the respective pages on Facebook. So for example, if you live in New York, that's linked directly to a page for New York. If your favorite TV show is "Lost," you'll be linked to that show's page, and so on.

Those who choose not to link, though, are informed via a Facebook pop-up box that their Profile page will be left empty.

According to news posted on Facebook's official company blog last week, the Connected Profiles option offers more than "just boring text," wrote Facebook software engineer Alex Li. "These connections are actually Pages, so your profile will become immediately more connected to the places, things and experiences that matter to you," Li says.

Sounds good, right?

Well, maybe not. Whether or not this change is actually an improvement for the social network's end users is still up for debate. For starters, many Facebook users had included in their profile section witty sayings and other text that couldn't be exactly matched up with a Facebook Page. Now, if you want to express yourself in this more "free-form" way, you'll have to do so in the "Bio" section of your Profile instead.

That may be bit of an inconvenience, but it's not necessarily the most concerning aspect of the new Connected Profiles. It's their by default public nature that's most troubling.

How Connected Profiles Work

When you revisit your Profile page, explained Li on the Facebook blog, you'll see a box pop-up asking you to link your profile to Pages that reflect your listed interests and affiliations. You can either pick some of these pages or click "Link All to My Profile" to accept all of Facebook's suggestions.

Yet in examining the design of the pop-up box itself, it's clear that it's been crafted so that the "Link All" button, shaded in blue, is the option hurried users will click in an effort to get back to what they were doing - attempting to edit their profile.

Years of poor web experiences filled with pop-up ads, long user agreements no one reads and unnecessary screens on software installations that seem to serve no purpose but to have you click the "Next" button have created a certain type of blindness to pop-up text on the web. Instead of thoughtfully considering the options, a majority of users simply click the button that makes the message go away. You can bet that Facebook is counting on precisely this behavior regarding the new Profiles.

Opting-Out a Poor Option

But even for those who actually do consider the implications of everything about themselves being made public, they'll soon encounter another issue. Something that Li didn't explain in the cheery blog post was what would happen if you refused to link to these new Pages: your profile information will be removed and your profile page will be left empty.

According to a FAQ from Facebook's Help Center:

"If you don't want to connect to any Pages, the corresponding sections on your Profile will be empty. Connecting to Pages will now be the main way to express yourself on your profile, and you can always edit your profile to remove specific suggested Pages that you don't want to connect to."

This isn't a forced "opt-in," like the instant personalization option that's currently being examined by several U.S. senators, including Charles Schumer, Michael Bennet, Mark Begich and Al Franken, but it certainly feels like an arm-twisting on Facebook's part. It makes opting-out a poor choice, one that degrades the overall Facebook experience.

Making Your Interests Public

That's not to say that this forced link-building doesn't have its pluses - Facebook can now build a web of connections from people to their interests and then allow those details to be shared with the "instantly personalized" websites like Pandora and Yelp. If you leave the privacy issues aside momentarily, you'll see that does offer some intriguing possibilities for a more social web. In addition, other sites can offer Facebook "like imports," an optional feature that would allow you to immediately get a web service up to speed on who you are and what you're into. This is a great feature for recommendation-type sites like Lunch.com, for instance, which is implementing this option today.

However, the high-pressure tactics being used to get people to link to Facebook Pages are a good example of how Facebook is coyly forcing people to go public with their previously more private, personal data. Although the pop-up box quietly warns "Remember, your Pages are public," few Facebook users will likely take note of that text. (After all, if thousands of people managed to confuse this blog with Facebook, we doubt they can grasp the finer points of data privacy.)

So what should your takeaway be from all this mess? Look before you link.

In fact, it may be best if you just assume that everything on Facebook will be public from now on and act accordingly.

Today, the analytics feature has been enhanced to provide even more data than before, this time with a specific focus on Facebook shares. Also new today is the integration of Tweetmeme and Digg data into shares as well as YouTube stats for video shares. For anyone using Facebook to promote their content, Sharein has just made itself indispensable.

Better Analytics for Facebook Shares

Today, in addition to seeing the views, reach, and re-shares for links shared on Twitter and Facebook, Sharein is now capturing data on Facebook "likes" and comments. In fact, it's even pulling in the comments' text itself so you can use the service as a one-stop shop for tracking the popularity of items on Facebook.

And as before, the aggregate data tracked using the service is further analyzed on your main "Shares" page where you can see the most popular links for the past week, month, or year. You'll also be able to tell who your most popular sharers are so you can better engage with your core fans or customers.

New Features Help Increase Click-Throughs on Facebook

The way your shared links appear on Facebook has also been revamped as of today. Sharein is (at last!) generating a thumbnail to accompany an article, just like how Facebook's own tool displays native link shares. The shares now also feature data on the number of tweets courtesy of Tweetmeme and the number of diggs on the social news website Digg.com. This extra information can help generate more interest in the shared link as visitors will be able to see at a glance how popular the article is on other social networks.

For video shares, extra information has been added here, too. When sharing YouTube videos, the ratings info and total views are now displayed. Again, this is to help increase click-throughs by highlighting the popularity of the content.

Try it Now!

With all the features being offered by this tool, we're surprised that more people aren't talking about or using the service. However, Sharein is still so new that few may have heard of it yet. We're sure that once Facebook and Twitter marketers, businesses, and any others who want to track their shares on social networks get wind of what Sharein can do, its popularity will increase dramatically. If you haven't tried Sharein yet, you can set up an account today from the company home page.

That description above doesn't really do the service justice - it's the user experience that makes ClikBall stand out. There's something magical about the grace of the app, and there's clearly a premium put on sharing links that lots of other people will want to click on and share.

There's lots of nice little touches here - like the most popular items among your circle of friends, apart from the most universally popular links. The application also installs a custom search engine into your browser, which augments the regular google results with items that you've shared on Clikball.

I'm going to try using this to share my links on Twitter for a little while, instead of doing it through Tweetdeck. There are a few things I'd like to see changed, of course. I'd like to be able to set sharing to Twitter as automatic and I'd like to have a choice in URL shorteners used, at least when posting to Twitter, as I have a strong preference for using the semantic and API friendly Bit.ly. I'd also really like some data export options and there doesn't appear to be any right now. This app could use some more visual elements to it, too. Enjoysthin.gs (our review) could be a good inspiration, and ClikBall for it, too.

One might ask, what's the difference between this and Pierre Omidyar's Ginx, which I gave a scathing review last week. I think there's something about the way that ClikBall seems to integrate with my existing workflow, and uses AJAX in some nice ways, that makes it much more pleasing to use. And, to be frank, ClikBall was built by the guy who made Userscripts.org - one of the best sites on the internet. That's exciting. Credit is also due to Anthony Young, the co-founder of Flock and Ex-flock crew Geoffrey Arone & Raj Paul.

Using Sqworl to shorten links does two things: first, it helps you organize a series of links under one short URL, and second, it provides a series of site thumbnails - a lightbox of sorts - so recipients can see what they're getting before they click. (As an example, here are Twitter accounts for ReadWriteWeb writers.)

While Sqworl works as advertised, there are a few minor drawbacks. The Sqworl URL isn't the shortest URL you're going to find and there aren't any click tracking features. (Admittedly, you could solve either of those issues by running the Sqworl URL through a URL shortener that provides tracking.) And if you're adding new sites to a collection - which is likely what you're doing - the thumbnails take a few minutes to generate, so sharing them too soon will defeat the purpose.

Even if you don't want to share the links with anyone else, Sqworl is worth trying. With some ingenuity, you could make your personal link management or social bookmarking more visual. Using the combination of Sqworl's collections and thumbnails, you may soon be scanning for links based on visual clues - much like the icons on your desktop.

If saving URLs with a visual reminder sounds helpful to you, take Sqworl for a spin and start squirreling your URLs away.

Why Use ContextMiner?

Marketers will probably be interested in how this free tool is able to track views and links, but that's not really the purpose behind ContextMiner's creation. Instead, the tool is designed more for research than anything else. For example, one of the main reasons to use ConextMiner is its ability to document the cultural phenomena of viral videos.

Often, when a video goes viral, very few people are aware of where it came from, what the story is behind it, who created it and why. As time goes by, finding the original video creator and source is even harder as the video spreads across the internet. But now, thanks to ContextMiner, the history behind a video's creation is no longer a mystery.

Take for instance, Vote Different, the mashup of Hillary Clinton with the famous Apple 1984 Super Bowl ad and one of the most popular videos on YouTube. We've probably all seen this video at one point or another, but did you ever want to know who created it and why?

With ContextMiner, that information can easily be discovered. Because of its ability to pull the inbound links to a video, we can see that the original creator of the video, a user by the name of "ParkRidge47," is the subject of one of the inbound links to the video. A blog post on TechPresident titled "Who is ParkRidge47?" gives us a great history of this particular video's creation. You could also sort through the links provided to find the very first person to link to the video, which is often the creator themselves.

ContextMiner is still under development. In the future, the developers hope to offer tools and policies for exporting the videos, blog pages, and metadata. That's probably not an empty promise - there's already an an option to "download Flash video from YouTube" on the campaign creation form, it's just disabled right now. When that feature becomes available, we think it would be fine to then call ContextMiner a YouTube archiving tool. Since "Archive" implies making a backup copy, until then we think ContextMiner should really just be considered a research tool. Still, we have to say, it's a pretty good one.

Here on RWW, we've pulled together a huge list of Hurricane Gustav links for your reference. Below you'll find links to weather sites, mobile web sites, links to various news and governmental sites, links to social web sites, and links to those using Twitter to report the storm.

• BehindtheWeather.com - a huge collection of links put together by Charlie Anzman of SEO and Tech Daily
• Accuweather.com
• Wunderground - Weather Underground
• Stormpulse.com
• MSNBC site for Gustav
• National Weather Service page (NOAA)

Mobile

• Mobile Resource Guide which links to an iPhone version, a mobile version, and a Gustav Widget for your blog
• National Hurricane Center Mobile Website

Other Links

• LiveNewsCameras.com - a lot of Live News broadcasts
• Maroonspoon.com/wx/gustav.html - Several media players showing coverage from four Louisiana news stations
• http://www.dotd.la.gov/press/traffic_cameras/no_cameras.asp - Louisiana DOT Webcams
• http://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/Breaking+News/Tropical+Storm+Gustav - UK based NewsNow with over 30,000 global sources. Page auto-refreshes every five minutes.
• Texas's Division of Emergency Mgmt links
• FEMA: Hurricane Gustav
• NOAAWatch Hurricane Gustav
• Red Cross Online Newsroom for Gustav
• Earthcam's New Orleans cam
• MSNBC Hurricane Tracker
• Gustav Pets (animal rescue resources)
• Tracking Hurricane Gustav in Google Earth
• The Hurricane Watch Net (amateur radio)
• HAMweather Hurricane Gustav Track/Projected Path

Social Web

• FriendFeed Hurricane Room - http://friendfeed.com/rooms/hurricane 
• With Sweetcron, Sean Percival quickly deployed the Hurricane Gustav aggregator. It pulls in data via Twitter, Google, Flickr, YouTube and a few others.
• Mahalo has a Gustav page
• Gustav Information Center (GIC) - Ning social network for Gustav coverage
• Wikipedia page for Hurricane Gustav
• A gustavwiki page
• IRC channel - #interdictor to coordinate volunteer efforts
• A blogger using Utterz to share news
• Two gadgets for iGoogle
• USA Today Weather Guys who blog and post their tweets on their site
• Hurricane Gustav Digital Support Brigade (Facebook)
• New Orleans Metblogs
• Voices of Gustav (displaced evacuees) - WordPress blogs
• Hurricane Gustav on NowPublic
• Socialmedian's page
• Boing Boing Gustav Online Resources
• NewsCred topic page
• Ustream.tv - Hurricane Gustav From Luling, Gustav from Slidell, Crosby Tubs Gustav

Twitter

• CNN reporter named Rick Sanchez has been making heavy use of Twitter, even asking on air for Twitter users to send him information from the hurricane zone. His reporting is extremely good and the Twitter convos have even made an appearance on the Twitter homepage
• Tweets from NOLA.com - the New Orleans Times-Picayune
• Tweets from the Red Cross
• Tweets from Lafayette, LA
• Chicago Tribune reporters - http://twitter.com/GustavReporter
• USA Today Weather Guys' tweets
• Twitter stream from the Beaumont (TX) Enterprise-Journal
• Millsaps College in Jackson MS is in the path of the storm
• A government Gustav Twitter feed
• Ernie the Attorney's tweets from New Orleans
• Mark Mayhew, in New Orleans
• Twitter-based info via search results for hurricane + gustav 
• Twitter-based info via search results for just gustav

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hurricane_gustav_on_the_web_reference_guide.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hurricane_gustav_on_the_web_reference_guide.php Mon, 01 Sep 2008 07:06:14 -0800 Sarah Perez You've heard a lot about OpenID, the decentralized framework for authenticating users across the web. OpenID is convenient for end users, allowing them to login to numerous web sites using one set of credentials - their OpenID. But how is OpenID doing today? Where can you get one? And more importantly, where can you use it? We took the pulse of OpenID to see how it's currently faring.

Mainstream Sites:

Many people still don't realize that they don't even have to go get an OpenID - they already have one. Several mainstream web sites function as OpenID providers. If you have an account at one of the following, then congratulations - you already have an OpenID!

•  AOL - openid.aol.com/screenname
•  Blogger - username.blogger.com
•  Bloglines - d.bloglines.com/username
•  Flickr - www.flickr.com/photos/username
•  LiveDoor - profile.livedoor.com/username
•  LiveJournal - username.livejournal.com
•  Orange (France Telecom) - http://openid.orange.fr/
•  SmugMug - username.smugmug.com
•  Technorati - technorati.com/people/technorati/username
•  Vox - member.vox.com
•  Yahoo - http://openid.yahoo.com
•  WordPress.com - username.wordpress.com
•  Ziki.com

Well-Known Providers:

You can also pick up an OpenID from these providers.

• ClaimID - free OpenID providers
• Clickpass - OpenID provider that makes OpenID easier for developers to install and users to understand 
• myID.net - free OpenID provider with support for groups and Korean language
• myOpenID - free OpenID provider
• myVidoop - free OpenID Provider that eliminates passwords with security features, customization, and browser integration.
• VeriSign's Personal Identity Provider - free OpenID provder with support for multi-factor authentication

Other Providers:

• AlwaysKnownAs.com - OpenID provider, plus user-centric contact management system with address book plug-ins wrapped around OpenID
• Beemba- Supports Information Cards as well as traditional forms-based authentication
• certifi.ca - Browser-certificate-based OpenID service; free; no passwords, no phishing
• gpgid.box43.net - OpenID provider using PGP/GPG public key authentication
• id7r.com - Id7r turns every email address into an OpenID identifier. No registration is necessary
• Identitude - An OpenID Provider backed by Facebook Accounts and profile information
• IDMobs.com First OpenID provider for mobile phones. Free, light, secure
• idproxy.net - lets you use your Yahoo! account as an OpenID
• My vAuth ID OpenID IdP supporting speaker verification for strong authentication offered by VxV Solutions
• openid.35.com OpenId.35.com is a FREE,Secure SSL-enabled OpenId Service provider, combined with some social network features that let users connect with each other
• openid.nabber.org - Free proxy that translates your existing e-mail address into an OpenID URL and authentication service
• OpenID.org.cn Free OpenID server and authentication service with multiple credentials such as single password, Google Account etc.
• OpenProfile Extends OpenID to maintain and serve profile information via hcard and vCard
• Own-ID - free service that lets you use your own domain name as your OpenID
• prooveme.com - Certificate based OpenID; Strong authentication without passwords
• ProtectNetwork OpenID, Shibboleth and SAML standards compliant identity server by 9Star Research, Inc 
• SignOn.com - OpenID Provider with support for Information Cards
• SmartCom
• StartSSL- Uses only client-side SSL certificates for authentication and SSL/TLS encryption for transport.
• sxipper - Firefox plugin for OpenID
• Typekey - and here's how to make TypeKey your own OpenID server
• Videntity.org
• tiny.id7r.com - provides short URL as "alias" of long OpenID URL
• TrustBearer OpenID- Uses smart cards, security tokens or biometric readers to authenticate users

Providers Outside the U.S./Foreign Language Support:

• Anonymous OpenID - Free, Anonymous OpenID Provider. No signup required. Also the First (free) Indian OpenID server
• Daum OpenID- Korean OpenID provider by Daum.net
• fcid.net - a chinese OpenID provider.
• IDtail.com - OpenID provider for Korean (by Hedgeplus.net in AhnLab.com; English planned)
• isOpenID- Russian OpenID provider
• netliberty.ru is an identity provider that includes OpenID server
• OpenID.cn Free OpenID server and authentication service in Chinese
• OpenID.cz Free OpenID server (Czech)
• openid.blogs.es - First Spanish OpenID server; free
• opendaumid.net Lets you use your DAUM account as an OpenID.(korean)
• openid.com.gr - The first greek openID Provider
• OpenID.ee - Ultra-secure OpenID provider using smart cards - requires no registration nor passwords and uses Estonian eID card and GSM SIM cards for strong authentication
• OpenID Espa, Spanish free OpenID provider
• OpenID France - First French OpenID server; free
• OpenID in Estonia
• OpenID Italia, OpenID Italia, free OpenID provider
• OpenID.LT - Lithuanian OpenID provider.
• OpenID.me.uk First United Kingdom OpenID provider with strong authentication. (2008/02/05 - not yet currently live)
• OpenID.ne.jp - First Japanese OpenID server; free
• openid.net.in Free Indian OpenID Provider
• openid.openminds.be - First Belgian OpenID provider; Free, uses Strong authentication (SSL); Vraag je gratis OpenID account vandaag aan
• OpenID.ph - OpenID Philippines (English and Tagalog) is the first Filipino OpenID server (free)
• OpenID.PL - first Polish OpenID server; free
• OpenID Portugal, First Free portugal OpenID provider
• openidprovider - A new Open ID Provider Based in the netherlands.
• openid.xmpp.za.net - The South African XMPP Federation OpenID Server (uses XEP-0070 to authenticate any jabber/xmpp account)
• MeinGuter.Name Secure German OpenID provider with focus on reputation building
• mi OpenID - Spanish free OpenID provider with strong authentication and hostname as OpenID (user.miopenid.es)
• Mi ID.es- First OpenID provider with activity stream from several web services.
• MijnOpenID.nl First Dutch OpenID server. Is controlled by the OpenID Europe Foundation. Each OpenID user own a part of the Foundation
• MoiKrug.ru - Free OpenID service with profile in the largest professional social network in Russia
• mojID.com, First Slovenian secure OpenID provider.
• myID.net - First Korean OpenID server; get Free
• myID.pl - Polish OpenID server; free. The shortest URL.
• mysecond.name Free OpenID server and authentication service in Chinese , also support internet account management and open icon functions
• my.xlogon.net Free german OpenID provider, T&C according german laws, multiple Identity, multiple Personas, SSL only.
• regged.de provides a free OpenID server in German, now has IPv6 support
• ThaiID.net- The first free OpenID provider for Thai people
• Wong Cyber Wong Cyber - Indonesian first OpenID server
• www.hkopenid.com, Hong Kong OpenID , Hong Kong free OpenID provider, targeting on providing extra localized service.
• www.ohmyid.com - Free OpenID provider for Korean
• www.openid.hk, OpenID Hong Kong, free OpenID provider
• www.tunnnus.com, Finnish OpenID provider. (Also homepage forwarding from your OpenID-url)

Feeling Geeky? You can make your own OpenID

• phpMyID is an open source PHP script that lets you host your own provider.
• OpenID's page "OpenID for Developers" gives you some more options
• Wiki on how you can
act as your own provider

OpenID Resources

• BotBouncer - CAPTCHA service for OpenID—
• OpenID official site
• OpenID Community Wiki
• OpenID Europe - Non-profit organization to help promote and deploy the OpenID framework in Europe
• OpenID Asia - organization to promote OpenID in Asia
• OpenID Russia - OpenID provider in Russia
• OpenID Source (OIDS) = OpenID Source Initiative is a Community in the OID community to grow OpenID
• OpenID Enabled - resource for OpenID users and developers
• Directory of OpenID enabled Websites (Consumers)
• Spread OpenID - helping to spread OpenID to not so tech-savvy users

Where You Can Use OpenID (Major Web Sites Only)

• 37signals
• CNN Political Market
• Creative Commons Wiki
• Drupal
• Feed Each Other
• FeedHub
• Ficlets
• LiveJournal.com
• Ma.gnolia - they now require an OpenID to create an account (our coverage)
• Mixx
• Movable Type Weblogs
• myOpenID Site Directory
• pbwiki
• Plaxo
• Propeller
• Skitch.com
• Simpy
• Snipperoo
• springnote
• The OpenID Directory
• Technorati
• twitterfeed
• Wetpaint
• wikiHow
• Wikispaces
• Zooomr

Other websites:

You can find a more complete list of sites supporting OpenID logins at the OpenID Site Directory.

Conclusion

It seems that there are currently many more places you can get an OpenID today than there are places to use one. We covered some of our concerns about the adoption rates previously in this post: "The Troubles with OpenID 2.0."

Right now, everyone is still counting on Digg to be the next big player supporting openID, thanks to this January, 2008 blog post, mentioning their plans to support more open standards.

Despite its benefits, OpenID still remains too hard to add to your site and logging in is not always a smooth process. That's where a company like Clickpass has a real edge. Clickpass, which is powered by OpenID, wants to make OpenID easy to use in order to bring the benefits of single-sign-on to everyone. Currently, only a few places support Clickpass - Disqus, Ma.gnolia., Plaxo, TrustedPlaces, and Wordpress (via a plugin) - but they promise there are more to come. I certainly hope so because using Clickpass was just as easy as they promised, so I really hope it takes off.

What better way to pull together the bits of a story has has been "reported over the years" than by using links to the actual reporting, asked Karp. The traditional media method would be to summarize the previous reporting, said Karp, "but on the web, with its infinite space and connectedness, the Times could have added an important supplement to their own perspective" by linking.

Unfortunately, a quick search through Google News archives reveals that much of the important historical content is stuck behind pay walls -- the rationale being that old news doesn't get enough page views to monetize with advertising and is only of value to people researching a story, who are likely willing to pay for access. But as the New York Times' public editor pointed out, sometimes historical context is helpful. But is framing significant historical reporting around current events and using links to the actual reporting to build a readable trail really journalism?

The Drudge Report, seen here in 2006, has been doing 'link journalism' for over a decade.

This sort of reporting is something that bloggers and others on the web have been doing for years. One of the best known examples is The Drudge Report, which has been putting out link-based reporting since the mid-90s. By organizing links to other original reporting, Matt Drudge has really pioneered a type of online news that is something like the web-based equivalent of a paper that carries only wire stories, and does no original reporting.

The Drudge Report and other so-called link blogs, are really a subset of edited news aggregation, which has a great signal to noise ratio. Because the content is being vetted by an editor, readers can assume that they're being directed only to relevant, non-redundant reporting (assuming they trust the editor). Link journalism is also something citizen journalists do a lot of, as when we share links via Google Reader like Robert Scoble, or via del.icio.us like Jemima Kiss. Bloggers and citizen journalists have long recognized the value of the link as a way to add context for readers and reinforce the points we make in our posts.

According to Wikipedia, "Journalism is the discipline of gathering, writing and reporting news, and broadly it includes the process of editing and presenting the news articles." Karp's link journalism falls at least into the "gathering" and "editing" pieces of that. It's certainly not on the same level as original reporting -- which link journalism relies on completely -- but it does have an important place, and I hope newspapers are listening to Karp's call to tear down pay walls and start recycling relevant historical content by utilizing links. And not just to their own reporting, but to any reporting that could add value for the reader.

There is, of course, one major hurdle in the way of convincing newspapers that this is a smart thing to do: the mainstream press doesn't like to send people away from their web sites. To that, Karp responds, "Just remember Google’s law of links on the web -- the better job you do at sending people away, the more they come back."

While some people have said that Digg has begun to lose its relevancy since the recent algorithmic changes, I believe it still represents an incredibly rich resource for studying social media and how stories and links spread throughout the web community. Once a link "goes popular" and is listed on Digg's homepage it is seen by many and perhaps even a majority of web geeks. Very often these readers have their own blogs, and if they like a story they may blog about it or link to it. This is why many webmasters yearn to be Dugg -- not for the first wave of traffic, which is often substantial but hard to retain, but for the viral wave of traffic and links that comes as a result.

Digg's algorithm can be gamed just like any other, so we often see sub par stories hit the homepage, but low-quality stories rarely receive any substantial amount of links once they're made popular. It takes real, quality content to induce savvy social media users and bloggers to link to a story.

So I decided to study this effect: what types of stories get lots of links after going popular? I created a database of 33,000 of the 39,000 stories that made Digg's homepage in 2007 and, using Yahoo!'s API, I tracked how many external links each URL had pointing to it. Then I analyzed a number of factors that could influence the number of links a story gets and wrote a report with my findings.

I'm publishing my Link Attraction Factors (PDF) report exclusively for the first time here on ReadWriteWeb and I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts and comments. The report is available as a free PDF file.

Once I realized that the occurrence of certain words in a story's title or description can have a potentially large positive or negative effects on incoming link accumulation, I created two tools that leverage my database.

The Keyword Tool analyzes a specific word or phrase and returns the average number of links a story mentioning that keyword got in 2007. While the Title Check Tool analyzes an entire title string and shows you which words tend to increase links and which tend to decrease links. These tools can be used by webmasters or social media consultants to help them tweak their copy for optimal social media link attraction, or by other researchers looking to expand on my work.

I plan to expand some of this data for future reports, including by looking at social sites other than Digg and incoming link data sources other than Yahoo! Again, I'd love to hear all of your ideas in the comments.