The BBC reports that there is a push to create an online code of ethics for bloggers. Why? So that there is an attempt to create a sense of accountability and redress for individuals with complaints. Its not really all the worthwhile to discuss whether or not this is a feasible thing — because I don’t see many (any?) bloggers necessarily signing up; without any signing up, there would be no clout to enforce any such code of ethics.

I think what is worthwhile discussing, however, is this notion that the blogosphere is self-regulating; many “a-list’ bloggers contend that the issue of such a code of ethics is moot not only from a feasibility point of view, but also from the notion that anyone can put up a blog to offer a counter opinion.

However, I think this is false, because its based on a two false presumtions: that the attention is equitably shared amongst blogs and that bloggers are reasonable.

#1) Attention isn’t equitable.
The whole notion of the “A-list” blogs irks many (mostly, I think A-list bloggers), but its an indusputable fact — there is a hierarchy to bloggers in every corner of the blogosphere, often governed by the fact that many of them have been the first, or older than other bloggers, but also because many of them offer valuable content that people cannot find elsewhere. They offer genuine a combination of news, entertainment or opinion that is unique — and more often, newsworthy.

The hierarchy exists because attention is divided inequitably. And that’s where presumption A is false. That is, they are precisely “A-list”, because they are commanding more “attention” of more people and readers. And they do this not only because they already have a large readership, but in many cases, because of their own popularity, have been rewarded with many inbound links, and therefore, rank highly in search engine results.

While its easy for anyone to create a blog to voice their own opinion, the fact that there is a huge divide in where attention goes makes it difficult, if not impossible, to create an environment where opinions have equal footing. If no one listens to what you’re saying, or no one can find where your opinion is because your blog doesn’t rank, or ranks poorly, then the fact that anyone can create a blog to compete in dissenting opinion is specious.

Furthermore, what happens if no one believes your blog?

That is to say, presumption B — reasonability. (more…)

In a fairly old post dugg up, it was found that Kevin Rose admits to using human moderators to edit Digg (Thanks to Muhammad over at themulife.com for the tip on this one). I suppose the surprise is in the admission of something that isn’t publicly written down, albeit that its from almost two years ago. We’ve known Digg’s moderators exist — and moderation isn’t the problem in and of itself.

But there are two issues with Digg’s moderation that I take exception to.

i) they are clearly ineffective — as evidenced by the three leaks over the past few weeks; the fake story about the 650k PS3’s that needed to be recalled (attributed to Reuters, clearly false); the spammer’s post hitting the frontpage, getting free, free, traffic; and most shocking, the results of a phisher’s exploits posted to the frontpage of Digg. The problem here is that Digg is so big and so popular that time spent on the frontpage is like throwing up whatever it is in giant headlights for thousands and thousands of people to see.

Digg’s ninja moderators work in the background, but its clearly not their chief occupation — in many cases, people have to email digg to let them know about an abuse AFTER it hits the front page … and in some cases, like the phisher’s exploits, this is clearly unacceptable. (more…)

So last week or so, I blogged about how ReviewMe’s real benefit wasn’t in creating buzz for advertisers; rather, it could be used for SEO purposes, in that ReviewMe creates a marketplace for purchasing inbound links from your pick of high PR sites.

Want to know what Google thinks? Matt Cutts, Google software engineering guru, was interviewed at the recent PubCon in Las Vegas — and its quite revealing. Check out the inteview over here, and fast forward to around the -7:30m point. At that point he starts talking about how Google recognizes social media optimization, and how some marketers might want to use ReviewMe, PayPerPost, or even Text-Link-Ads, and its other brethren to create backlinks to their sites.

The money is in this phrase: “… I’ll put it to you this way — I’m not a fan when people don’t provide total disclosure … if you want to pay for links to generate traffic — totally OK, just make sure it doesn’t affect search engines”.
So basically what he’s saying is that using these sites to create traffic is a legitimate reason for using these services; but to use them to boost your search engine placement is a bad idea. Instead, he suggests using the “rel = Nofollow” attribute to those links, so that Google won’t be fooled.

Matt Cutts doesn’t explicitly say that sites who use these methods in an effort to improve their Google rankings will be penalized in any fashion; however, his language suggests that he is keenly aware of their usage for this purupose, and that it definitely seems a no-no in his book.

And there you have it.

Now, whether or not they have the technology to tell that an advertiser has paid for that link or not — particularly through PayPerPost — is up in the air. But, iIf Google is a god to you, then you’ve just heard it from the lips of one of their high priests — paying for links for the purpose of improving your SERPs is known to Google … and you should use it at your own risk.

tip: Amit Agarwal [through Facebook!]

Well, I started this blog about 50 days ago, over at my ‘family’ site thehungs.org at a sub-domain of “tony.thehungs.org”. In that time, the following things have either happened to me or my blog

• I switched to our own domain, deepjiveinterests.com
• I realized that I had accidentally aped another wordpress theme by a virtual doppleganger of myself in my own city (scary, actually) so hastily made my own.
• I was glad I did that, because I liked it better — and some others have liked it too.
• I got accepted as an SOB (thanks Liz).
• DelightfulBlogs seemed to think this was a … well, delightful blog.
• I was also accepted into the BlogBurst Network, and am ’syndicated’ at TheStatesman.com (more on that later)
• I posted endlessly about Digg.
• My naive notion that that A-List bloggers reply to their email got quashed.
• I got a mention at the BlogHerald (thanks Matt!).
• Then, I got hired at BlogHerald (thanks Matt!).
• People wanted to start contacting me
• So i put up a contact page.
• I chatted with Jason Dowdell on the phone (a classy guy with a fascinating story).
• I discovered that a top Digger was in my City (go TO!).
• I met some really nice people.
• One of my more creative rants were picked up by Chris Pirillo and News.com
• Bokardo, the Guardian Unlimited, Jason Calacanis, and Techmeme seemed to have appreciated a post on Digg’s controversy.
• In fact, Techmeme really seems to love me now.
• My feedburner subs have peaked at around 120.
• I started getting enough spam I needed to install Akismet.
• Stephan Tual thought of me as an influential blogger.

Well its been about a month and a half … and I’d have to say “Wow”, time flies. I’ve learned a hell of a lot from blogging, I’ve met some fabulous people, and I hope to continue it all until my wife says “No really, time to stop now”, or my hands fall off.

The next 50 days will take us into the middle of November sometime. Which would probably be time for Thanksgiving. And my wife will have delivered by that time as well — so these times of transition and flux will probably carry and continue for a while. Hopefully it will also be a period of continued growth as well. For everybody. ;)

What I am really interested, however, is in a little feedback. Blogging is a participatory medium, after all. Do you think the Blog is great? Should I continue it in my present form? What areas need improving?

Lastly, thanks to everyone I’ve met and apologies to everyone I’ve offended.

I write only because I love. ;)
Cheers,
Tony Hung.

So there’s a lively debate going on over at Digg today involving, once more, the supposed inequity in certain stories getting promoted to the Front Page.

Well, I’ve written about this sort of controversy before, but there’s a new spin on things this time — which, to be honest, I’ve noticed, thanks to some work by Chrisekblog, a few days ago.

Basically it goes like this:

If you look at the stories that are in the FrontPage, a disproportionate number of them are actually submitted by the same small number of people — who happen to occupy the first 10-20 position s as “Top Diggers”. I’ve already written about this as a comment, and I think its worth expanding on.

The big deal here is that FrontPage traffic is A LOT OF TRAFFIC. Chrisek mentioned that the times when he’s hit the front page, he sees a spike of 30 000 uniques that day.

That’s huge.

Traffic is the lifeblood of e-commerce. Granted — its up to the site to determine what to do with that traffic once they’ve gotten it (i.e. conversion), but traffic is not only expensive, its what _drives_ many business models to profitability. You cannot make a profit when no one sees your site. People essentially “purchase” traffic with ads. How much money do you think it’ll cost to get 30 000 visitors in one day? Its the equivalent of a “clickthrough”, since people are landing on your site. But if the cost per click is, say 0.05 (a ludicrously low value), that’s $1500 worth of free traffic. For higher priced “keywords” it might go even higher … 0.50 per click is about $15 000.

Have I got your attention now?

(more…)

Update: Now includes the Digg Revolt. 

Update: If you feel you have something to add about Digg’s history let me know at anthony{dot}hung{at}gmail{dot}com.

After blogging about the “Aliwood” incident, which was received with deafening silence, I looked into whether or not this was the first time anyone had been interested in controversy over at Digg.com.

Sure enough, it wasn’t.
What follows is a short and incomplete, I’m sure, collection of information that constitutes a brief history of Digg controversy.

ForeverGeek-Gate
This past April those guys over at ForeverGeek noticed a pattern of digging going on at Digg.com and called Digg out on it . They noticed that a group of dedicated Diggers (nee the Digg Army) were digging each others posts, foisting their submissions to the front page. What added a bit of special sauce was that apparently Kevin Rose was part of this circle as well.

Although this probably wasn’t the first time it happened, it was the first time it received the level of attention that it did, which was significant. Boing Boing weighed in. As did Slashdot . There was also a story on RealTechNews as well. Thomas Hawk seemed to be in Digg’s corner. The Inquirer had some coverage. As did Wired. So had a few other not inconsequential blogs which verified ForeverGeek’s findings. What happened next, however, was particularly troubling.

(more…)

With all of the hoopla surrounding the TechCrunch 7 love-in August Capital Party, the photos, the hobnobbing, and all the seeing-and-beeing-seen, you can’t help but notice a distinct hierarchy in the blogosphere.

I mean, when you look at all of the photos, it really resembles a giant Hollywood style party – I half expected Entertainment Tonight to show up, with Mary Hart or Vanessa Minillo trying to grab 30 second sound bites about “What the Web2.0 Means To Them”.

“That”, you might say, “sure as hell sounds like sour grapes”.
But its not.

I also recognize that many or all of them have gotten to be where they are through a combination of sheer will, innovation (or mashing up), timing, a helluva lot of hard work none of us see, an ungodly amount of networking, and a whisper of luck.

For those of them that are bloggers, those A-listers they’ve been rewarded with a certain amount of power, influence, and credibility (while command eyeballs and traffic).

For everyone else — well, we’re still working our asses off. ;)

Take me for instance.

I’ll be the first one to admit there is nothing original about this blog. How many other tech and web2.0 related blogs are there? Probably enough to fill a Star Trek convention. But I’m pounding the blogosphere everyday blogging about stuff that I’m interested and have a genuine passion for.

And I guess a lot of us fill that boat.

So, as a brief aside, for all of us who wield absolutely NO power or influence — who struggle with a pagerank of zero, and whose “linkpopularity” is so laughably low we would love to be obscure because we border on the invisible, I raise my flagon to you, you blogging-to-the-bone D-listers, you.

But back to my rant: for me, the most frustrating part of being a D-List blogger (I hope I’m at least that), however, isn’t the lack of traffic, adsense dollars, or mentions in prominent blogs. It isn’t even the possibility of being invited to the TechCrunch-allapalooza … as part of the waitstaff.

Personally, its the lack of credibility.

“Sure”, you might ask, “what have you done to earn it?”

“Well”, I might rejoinder, “admittedly, not much”.

I just blog everyday. Sometimes twice. Sometimes even thrice.
But that’s about it.

I don’t do the mulit-post-comment-thing; nor, the submit-to-blog-networks-thing; nor even the buy-text-ads-so-I-can-get-links-thing.

Yes, I don’t know many important people in the blogosphere, and they don’t really know me.
Granted, that’s partly my fault — but I attribute my anti-social traits here to having a full time job.
Its a weak crutch, I know.

But the lack of credibility, and the “who the hell are you” factor, really hurt this week.

(more…)