Understanding social news communities and how they work is paramount to defining the meaning life. You’re not going to nail it because it’s an evolving answer. But, like the meaning of life (i.e. religion, philosophy, Pink Floyd, etc.) there are always going to be folks trying to frame social news communities, behavior and success.

Dan Zarrella is a digital colleague I’ve come to know by participating on social news sites. He is one such person who is adding to the social media world today with an interesting report and some nifty little tools to better understand social news submissions on Digg.com. Dan’s report, entitled, “Link Attraction Factors” (click title for a PDF download) looks at articles that made the front page of Digg and which produced the most inbound links as a result.

He reports an inspiration to compile the report based on, “The fact that I’ve seen lots of reports like this about how to get to the front page, but nothing about what happens after that, and the real value to the front page is the links after all.”

A fantastic tool for the statisticians, analysts and SEO types out there, it’s a little over my head on statistical analysis. Reading through the document, however, I was able to glean some interesting nuggets. Just be careful as you read it and remember this is an analysis of the “viral” nature or popularity of a certain article once it made the Digg front page. Don’t read a couple of the charts and think, “Digg users don’t like sports and really hate tennis.” Because to be in this report, sports and even tennis had to have made the front page.

Dan does a nice job of breaking down the influence factors by category and even sub-topics. He dives into a nice array of information about certain keywords and how likely it was for an article to get inbound links for them in both the titles and descriptions. Turns out David Letterman is the king of all social media. “Top 10″ in your description or title is a sure-fire way to attract attention. (And yes, I considered changing the title of this once I wrote that line.)

Perhaps the coolest outcome of Dan’s work, however, is his keyword tool  and title checker that test your keywords and full title against the data. For the record, “Quantifying Digg Popularity” has a very bad overall effect on this post’s chances of getting links after making the front page of Digg, somewhere in the -31 percent range. No, I’m not changing the title. I appreciate the research and think the title checker is very useful, but I don’t write posts about the top 10 ways to take iPhone pics of ubuntu while travelling. (A little Digg link attraction humor for you.)

If you’re Digg-obsessed, it will be worth your while to dive into Dan’s report and tools. When you do, please come back and tell us what nuggets your digging produced.

Other Posts You’ll Find Interesting:

1. How Efficient Is Digg?
2. Can You Guess Which Categories Make The Digg Home Page Most?
3. Buried? Analysis Of A Digg Submission
4. The Perpetual Hunt For The Front Page Of Digg Or Blogging For People Who Actually Engage With You?
5. Digg Causes ED Among Social Marketers. Will It Now Go Limp Itself?

Technorati Tags: Digg, social news, social media, Digg front page, link attraction, linkbaiting, analysis

In the second of our sit down interviews with Drew Curtis, founder of Fark.com and author of “It’s Not News, It’s Fark,” we learn about media patterns, that Drew’s mom uses IM and is terrified of shingles, Groundhog Day is dumb and proof that the media only cares about New York City lies in the spring time lawn mower stories. Oh, and he tosses out a few swear words, so don’t watch this around the kids.

It’s fair to note, I asked Drew one question and got a  7:25 show out of it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC-0JoeInHU[/youtube]

In tomorrow’s Part 3, Drew outs traditional media advertising models and asserts that social media is “the way to go” to reach consumers in today’s new media landscape.

See Holy Fark! Part 1 here.

Drew Curtis certainly holds nothing back. In this, the first of a multi-part series on Social Media Explorer TV, the Fark.com founder and grand poobah waxes poetic on Fark, Digg, Alexa and more. A word of warning: The interview includes colorful language, so don’t jack up the volume at work or in front of the kids.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FQJCbW4Gtg[/youtube]

Part 2 of the Holy Fark! series is scheduled for Wednesday. In it Drew talks about his book, “It’s Not News, It’s Fark: How Mass Media Tries To Pass Off Crap As News.” Learn more and order your copy here.

And for disclosure purposes, Drew and I go way back. We met in high school as attendees of the Kentucky Governor’s Scholars Program. Drew was just as snarky and funny then. He also had a mullet. The last edition of the series will probably be the two of us reminiscing … that is if any of it is the least bit entertaining.

Technorati Tags: Drew Curtis, Fark, Fark.com, Jason Falls, Social Media Explorer, SME TV

On Friday morning, I submitted Chris Brogan’s, “Marketing Is NOT Social Media – Social Media Is NOT Marketing” post to my normal round of social news sites. Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Mixx and Sphinn are my normal stops as I try to contribute content of value to those communities. Occasionally, I’ll add del.icio.us to the list if it’s an article I may want to go find easily for reference.

While I didn’t consider Chris’s analysis of social media as a marketing tool a particularly controversial subject, the article produced a passionate response from one of my new friends on Mixx, Jay Fowler.

The entire Mixx discussion is here. I’ll encapsulate, but feel free to check out (and participate) in the conversation here.

His initial response indicated Chris’s reference to social media as a marketing tool struck a nerve. I responded that he might be viewing Chris’s post too narrowly, that marketing is behind a good portion of the submissions on social news sites, that the community must still support those submissions for them to work and that the only marketers who are successful there are those who play by the rules. Jay responded that the top submitters on Digg or Mixx are not marketers, new users wouldn’t stay long if that’s what they saw but estimated that Mixx is about 60 percent “marketing and SEO junk” and 40 percent entertainment or news media.

Jay ended his list of the problems with social media as marketing by saying he is tired of the spam and massive self-submissions and that he respects my opinion but doesn’t share it. I’m assuming he believes my opinion to be parsed from the point he had such contention with in Chris’s original post, that social media is a marketing tool. He may not, however, recognize that while Chris and I believe it to be a marketing tool, neither of us think it is ONLY a marketing tool.

There are three types of users in social news communities. Jay is the first kind, The Genuine User. Genuine Users enjoy browsing content supplied by the community, voting for that they feel compelled to and submitting meaningful content to the community for consideration. These are the users the site founders, particularly Mixx founder Chris McGill, who Jay purports to know and even speaks for in his responses.

The second type of user is the one Jay alludes to, The Greedy User, are the SEO/SEM types who enter with a bottom-line objective, spam the community (though most cleverly so we don’t see it as spam) to drive traffic to their content. Consider these to be the email spammers or telemarketers of the social news community.

The third type is one Jay doesn’t recognize, though I hope this to be just an oversight since I consider myself to be of this set. The third type of user is what I call The Gravy User. We are Genuine Users who are conversation and engagement generators for our organizations or clients. We understand the community, the rules and respect them. We don’t spam, but hope to aide our organizations or clients participate meaningfully with the community by providing appropriate content or resources. Any residual benefit to our organizations or clients, be it commercial sales, larger market share or favorable sentiment? It’s just gravy.

Certainly, I can anticipate the claims this third type of user is no different that The Greedy User. But there are always varying degrees of intent, opinion and mindset. I believe Gravy Users to have an appropriate mix of marketing and genuine intent in being meaningful participants in the community. We walk a fine line of what is appropriate and what is not, but in the end, the community will keep those of us interested in being so, to be honest and honorable.

So, what do you think? Are there more than two types of users as Jay asserts? Are Gravy Users the same as Greedy Users? Are there more types of users neither of us are recognizing? I’ve invited Jay to come and participate. I, and I’m sure he, would love to hear your thoughts.

Other Posts You’ll Find Interesting:

1. Setting The Record Straight: Mixx? Digg? Reddit? (from Jay Fowler’s blog)
2. Full-Length Mixx Review
3. 12 Reasons To Join Mixx And Abandon Digg
4. Advanced Social News Gaming: An Interview With Fantomaster
5. How Digg Works As A Community

IMAGE: “biscuit with gravy” from berbercarpet on Flickr.

Technorati Tags: social news sites, marketing, community, social news, Mixx, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon

Digg will unveil an images section as well as a few new categories tonight according to a Digg blog post by Kevin Rose. The submission of images will include a crawler that presents up to 10 images from the page for you to choose from.

The new topics include “Offbeat” and a new “Lifestyle” categorie including food, drink and travel.

Nice bell and whistle addition to the site, seeing how Mixx and others are digging at the motherload’s audience.

Now if we could just get Kevin and his merry band of Digg clones to realize there are a couple hundred more categories we need more so than “offbeat” like, say, “Social Media” or “Blogs/Blogging” or anything having to do with the Internet that isn’t programming or development related. “Industry News” just won’t do.

Technorati Tags: Digg, social news