Digg, a very popular online social networking site, has announced that its going to implement a new recommendation engine that will find users stories based on their past voting habits compared with other users.
I think this is a very smart move on Digg’s part as they are making another reason for people to use Digg.
As said in the video, Digg has been previously plagued with overwhelming amount of information while there not enough pixels to list ALL the top stories at Digg.
With this new feature, I am hoping to find Digg a more useful service for finding new stories to blog about.
The Recommendation Engine is a cool way to discover new content on Digg. Now that there are more than 16,000 stories submitted to the Upcoming section every day, it’s difficult to sort through everything to find the best content. The Recommendation Engine uses your past digging activity to identify what we call Diggers Like You (who you can see on the right hand nav) to suggest stories you might like.
Here’s a very interesting social network for cellphones. Basically with Trapster, users can easily notify the locations of speed traps at the push of a button. You can download their software which works on most blackberries and PDAs to be alerted and also alert drivers about speed traps.
Good idea?
Yes, this might have a good long term potential sorta like GasBuddy.com
It all started, of course, with the radar guns used by police officers to detect speeders. Then came radar detectors used by motorists who wanted to skedaddle faster than posted speed limits. Then police began using laser units which are more effective and more accurate than radar guns and so on and so on.
Now, the latest “upgrade” in this ongoing game of high-tech one-upmanship: Trapster. Trapster is a service developed and run by Pete Tenereillo of Carlsbad, Calif., and is essentially a cell-phone social network that allows motorists to hook up with one another for the purpose of issuing real-time alerts about the location of speed traps.
Trapster works like this: Go to the Web site, and sign up for a free membership. Then download the Trapster software to your cell phone or PDA. Tenereillo said that most current-generation cell phones, Blackberries and other PDA’s can accommodate the Trapster software.
Then, you’re ready to hit the road. And once you’re tooling down the highway, if you spot a state trooper or city cop lying in wait with a radar gun or laser unit, you just need to punch in “pound one” on your cell phone — or dial a toll-free number. Other users are then alerted on their cell phones or PDA when they approach the same speed trap.
Here’s an interesting ghost/UFO social networking site in the works by the famous movie director, Steven Spielberg. I don’t know how it will go but should expect some good stuff.
More details on Steven Spielberg’s upcoming ghost and UFO based social network, which we first wrote about in early March and followed up with additional details a week later. The site will reportedly be called “Rising” or “The Rising” (our understanding is that they have acquired both .com domain names), and the logo above and animated logo below are at least preliminary versions of the final.
Here’s a cool site that’s an online directory of widgets. It’s sorta like Digg, a type of social network where you can submit, rate, and find widgets for your website.
Heck, we might even submit out Beer Widgets and see how it does.
Widgiland is a directory of online widgets. It houses thousands of widgets for web, desktop and mobile platforms. Users can select widgets for their blogs and personal web pages, for forums and email, for feeds, and search and for messaging among other things. Widgets are categorized by type and by platform, for instance iGoogle, Pageflakes, and NetVibes.
OfficiallyDating.com launches today. Supposedly they are trying to make it into a Facebook-like site for couples.
My personal opinion?
It think this is a great concept and dating has always made a lot of money on the internet. Now the only hurdle they will face is if their site stands up to the level of Facebook.
I did sign up and test out the service but what I think is missing is API like Facebook where developers can add games, movie raters, and etc…etc…
At this point, it doesn’t look any more different than other social networking sites, these guys have a lot of work to do.
However, their video looks very persuasive to use the service:
Most couples have the natural, human compulsion to let the world know that they’re in love. This phenomenon crosses cultures and spans millennia. Ancient ancestors marked their relationships by painting walls and chiseling stone. Particularly in the early 20th Century, couples carved their initials on trees. In the 1980s and 1990s many accomplished the same goal with graffiti. However, culture always evolves. Modern young women no longer wear their boyfriends’ “pins”, “graduation rings” and “varsity jackets”. So, other than seeing a wedding ring, that perennial icon, it can be surprisingly difficult to discern if someone is available.
Digg will still hold its traffic as it has been steady with a large number of bloggers using the service.
For Yahoo Buzz to get even more popular, they need to open it up to all the bloggers, not just via invites.
I am sure this will happen soon and Yahoo Buzz might take a big share of the social networking market.
Furthermore, Yahoo Buzz has a more diverse audience than Digg. While Digg’s young, male, techy audience has been the stuff of legend since the site’s beginnings, 51% of Yahoo Buzz’s visitors are women. This doesn’t matter much to the users but it does matter a great deal to the advertisers; another legend has it that diggers never click on ads, and this might not hold true for Yahoo Buzz.
NextBestAction.com, what seems like an evil entrepreneural brother of Twitter, launches its microbloggin platform. From what I can tell, the startup lacks a lot of visual graphics. But perhaps that could be their selling point, just like Craigslist looked horrible. (and still looks horrible!)
While to the untrained eye, it looks like a mess of dialogue and conversation bits– sort of like a nerdy im conversation with lots of links and nonsense. However, it’s more than meets the eye. NextBestAction uses the concept of microblogging and the Twitter phenomenon with the purpose of better business. It’s Twitter for the entrepreneurial spirit. If you want business or management advice, or if you want some good old fashioned philosophy, NextBestAction’s a good place to go. So far, it’s very beta and doesn’t look like much, but it’s a interesting use of the platform.
Fuzz, a music portal/social networking site, has launched Blip, basically a Twitter-clone for Music lovers.
The most outstanding feature is that when people “blip” instead of “twitt”, they can link an MP3 song straight from the Fuzz database. This feature is really cool as I am actually listening to an MP3 “blipped” by one of Blip users.
Great stuff, although I am not an avid Twitter, I will be an avid Blipper as now I can hop from song to song.
But if music is indeed a significant part of Pownce’s future, then Blip is one step ahead. Call it “Twitter for Music” since it’s essentially just that: a way to suggest music and share your thoughts about it with a network of contacts.
The beauty of Blip is that, unlike with Pownce, no file uploads are necessary. Just search for the song you have in mind and Blip will grab it from Seeqpod, Skreemr, or parent company Fuzz’s own database of music. Your followers (”listeners”) can hear full versions of the songs you post using a Songza-like player at the bottom of the page.
Today advice from Max, “A blue ocean strategy requires you to find a niche that no one else has yet to conquer online…” - In other words, go find a niche that no one has made a website about, then you will succeed in online business.
The site is a forum for the employees of all startups based in Europe, and fosters a dialogue and publicizes the companies through blog entries by CEOs, discussion boards and debates, and a featured a “startup of the month.
