In the last one week, I have covered most of the social book marking (community) websites from India. Almost all of them have used the style of Digg. Why not! If Netscape follows the style of Digg then I see nothing wrong in Indian websites following the formula. Secondly, with the prospect of Digg's earning $10 million of revenue a year from ads, the market is becoming too attractive to let it go.
I am a regular visitor of Digg, Reddit, Netscape Beta, Shoutwire and I feel that these social book marking or community websites have opened a new window of opportunity for bloggers like me. I visit every day and spend a significant amount of time after them. I do not have any plan to open this kind of website but I feel that having a good understanding about websites like Digg is going to become integral characteristics of online success very soon. I can browse for quality stories so that I can write about them in my blog and I can also get decent amount of hits from them. And from my personal observance of websites like Digg, I have come up with the following tips for the owners of the Indian social bookmarking websites like IndianPad, IndiaGram, Forums of India and Humdigg. However, I feel that these tips may be useful to anyone who is thinking of opening a website like Digg or who have a social bookmarking website at this moment but not performing so well.
1. A short url and name: What I like so much about Digg is its short url. Just 4 letters and typing and remembering both are very easy. In contrast the names of Indian social bookmaring websites are too long (10-12 letters). You do not need to bring the Indian flavor in your name and url but keep it as short as possible.
2. Starting with a group not individually: After visiting them, I felt that most of the Indian social bookmarking websites were managed by just one or two persons. It is almost impossible to make a social bookmarking website popular individually unless you are a super genius or too lucky. So, the best thing is to try to get a team of 8-10 who are hardworking and dedicated.
3. Easy registration Process: I like the registration process of Reddit as it takes only few seconds to finish it. I must appreciate the registration process of Indian social bookmarking websites.
4. Having a good first Impression: When any user visits a social bookmarking website then if they find links of some useful and good stories then they will feel attracted and will come back again. This is the strategy Netscape adopted with its Beta. I visited the site in the first day and I found a good number of useful links and after that I visit it daily.
5. Having a good promotion strategy: This is a very important thing to do. I feel that the Indian social bookmarking websites hardly have any strategy to promote their websites. Have a goal about reaching people. If you have money buy links in popular websites. If you do not have the money then do it manually and promote your website in free article directory, blogs and so on.
6. Offering incentives: I would strongly recommend it to any new social bookmaring site. They can give special award for new users (for example for the 100th, 200th, 500th user), for the users who present the links of most poplar stories in a month etc. Be honest and transparent about this process and this way you will attract many new users all the time and your website will be full of visitors all day long.
7. Broader fields for submission: I love Reddit for it. Here, almost anything goes. I also like Netscape Beta. I am not a big fan of Shoutwire for it. I also do not like Indian Bookmarking sites for this reason. They offer very limited fields to submit links and then you have to submit mainly on India related topics. Even they are not interested to encourage users to submit links of news items about other South Asian countries. So, I would strongly suggest any new social bookmarking website not to limit the scope of the topic.
8. Having an interactive Blog: This is a very important feature of any social bookmarking site. You must update your blog at least once a week if you cannot manage to update once a day. I am a big fan of Reddit but I am not a fan of its blog as it is not updated regularly.
9. Fighting with Spam: I feel that in the coming days the success or failure of a bookmarking site will depend mostly on how much they can deal with spammers. However, I feel that it is very important to specify the definitions of spam linking in such a website and the user should be first warned one or two times and then be banned. I like the policy of Fark in this regard. They not only warn but also suspend the user from submitting links for one or two weeks.
10. Being patient: To make a social bookmarking site popular, it will take minimum one year. So, if you are not interested to wait that long, don’t go for it. You will only get frustrated in the end.
I hope that this article can be of some help to the people who are behind the bookmarking sites. If you have any other suggestion, feel free to put in the comment section. I will try to cover this topic in the coming days again.
This is pretty useful, I was thinking to develop one on same lines, but not sure where to start.. what should be the content management or bookmarking management system and all..
Posted by: Abhijeet | June 28, 2006 8:44 PM | Permalink to Comment