Quote:
Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design
Commercialization of social bookmarking sites is okay to some extent, if it does not interfere with the content of said sites. For example, if a social bookmarking site wanted to run Google Adsense, I'm cool with that.
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I think Whym is asking about commercialization by someone who isn't involved in the sb system. This is the second time in a row I go talking for someone else ... but I think he meant people selling, trading, or farming 'votes' on social bookmark sites. For clarity's sake, though, Stumble themselves sell 'advertising' through their service.
I don't think a site trying to profit from what they've built is spam. But I do think people creating submittal services into other peoples' sites hurts those sites. Stumble and Digg are diluted as a whole when somebody adds their own content and then recruits dozens of people to vote for it, quid-pro-quo style. That, I would consider spam.
Of course the quality of the content matters a bit. If it's low quality and a hard sell, that's a lot more repugnant than if the children's hospital did the same thing. I don't know if Local Cooling added their site to the social services, regardless of that, it "went viral" because people liked it. But I think even charities should play along with community standards.
There are plenty of good ways to market a site that unquestionably don't step on any toes, that you'll get your stuff seen by a social media user pretty quickly. I took Whym's advice with Add This, and I haven't checked my stats in several days, but I would hope and expect other things I do to bring visitors to my site have the added benefit of getting me listed in bookmark sites I've never used before. |
