Top Ten Favourite Social Media Sites
First things first, let me say that although I am an SEO guy I love social media to bits and have been involved with various sm sites for some time now. This post has been sitting on my to do list and at last I have found time to rank my top ten favourite social media sites.
I know there are a lot more out there that I haven’t added, so it would be good to see similar lists growing and perhaps we can gather a universal poll of our favourite social media sites.
Ranking Factors
I split the ranking process into 4 main segments each important to the overall score of each social media site judged. They are as follows:
Traffic : This speaks for itself how much traffic is a site capable of sending no matter if a submission goes hot or whimpers and dies lonely in some corner.
Community : Just how easy / difficult is it for a newcomer to make friends within the social media site. Is there a vibrant community willing to help or is the site tinged with cliques or worse is there a community that isn’t really social at all.
Linking Attributes : Are links nice and clean or nofollowed? Do they help with ranking factors? Does the actual submission rank highly itself?
Usability : What is the interface like, is it straightforward or loaded with tons of features to help you gain the maximum from the site. Is there a browser toolbar? Just how much thought has went into the development process to help the contributor add content to the site?
So, without further ado, I bring you …
Top Ten Favourite Social Media Sites
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Community
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Usability
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Usability
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Allen Taylor said,
Wrote on May 8, 2008 @ 12:13 am
I agree with SU being the best and Digg, perhaps, might be No. 2. But I take issue with some of these others. First, I’d take Faves.com off the list. I’d likewise remove Mister-Wong, but if I did keep it I’d make it dead last. I’ve never gotten any value from Reddit. I would definitely add del.icio.us and BlogCatalog to this list, possibly Furl, though Furl is a pain on usability. Propeller I would take down a notch on usability and add some for link attributes. But all in all, this is a good list and I’m glad someone is thinking along these lines.
Paul said,
Wrote on May 8, 2008 @ 12:37 am
Allen thanks for the comment.
I have added to my post that I would like to see similar posts appearing then perhaps we can find a central hub to run a poll on the most effective of the sm sites and discuss the how’s and whys.
Jordan Kasteler said,
Wrote on May 8, 2008 @ 4:35 pm
Good post. I think Reddit got way too high of a score on usability though.
Gary Lee said,
Wrote on May 8, 2008 @ 6:22 pm
. . . ever wonder if “Favourite” gets more search traffic or “Favorite” and will that determine the future of spelling? . . great post by the way . . . hope to see you on IM later . . need to ask you something
Jay said,
Wrote on May 8, 2008 @ 9:27 pm
I think there are some good social media sites you’re missing, maybe del.icio.us? But then again, there’s a few I didn’t know about so thanks for that.
Also, I agree that the Reddit usability seemed a little too high, but that’s just my opinion. And how come Propeller was so low on the traffic ranking? I’m just curious…
Jay
Paul said,
Wrote on May 8, 2008 @ 9:42 pm
@Jordan - it has a simple feel to it which fits well with a simple guy like myself
@Gary - I guess it all comes down to your geographic location in how you spell things - we use the ‘u’ in favourite here in the UK.
@Jay - These are my findings, I’m pretty sure if you were to run your own it wouldn’t be a mirror image of my results. That’s the beauty of sm sites they bring different appeals to everyone.
I have never had much joy with Propeller traffic but I still submit / vote on it because one day it may well deliver.
Zoobie Joy said,
Wrote on May 8, 2008 @ 11:37 pm
These are great looking sites..^^ I have to admit that it’s first time for me to hear some of these sites but I’m interested to try all of them out..^^
Dave la Rave said,
Wrote on May 9, 2008 @ 6:45 pm
If your not careful this social media sites will take over your life; in a non-monetisation kind of way too.
Paul said,
Wrote on May 9, 2008 @ 7:34 pm
@Zoobie - cheers for stopping by, nowpublic is my seceret sauce exposed - if your going to try any of them out then give that a serious twirl.
@Dave - I know but I’m hooked and afraid of the cold turkey existence that lays outside of a non-sm life.
zowoco said,
Wrote on May 10, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
I judge everything online by its user interface. If a company can’t take a little time to provide a neat pleasant user experience then why are they in business? Because they soon won’t be. Some social media like Digg go to great lenths to provide a decent look, others like furl and del.icio.us are basic in the extreme and provide no pleasant experience for me. Give me coherent well structured graphics, clear instructions, clear links, photos, pointers, tags: look at Amazon.com, it could be less of a muddle but at least if I want books or DVDs I can quickly find a tag to get me to that page. Many social bookmark sites leave me wondering what, if anything, they offer, and what, if anything, I as visitor am expected to do! If its not immediately clear, within 3 seconds I’m off round the world wide web again: there’s plenty more to look at!