So I got my Digg Alpha invite yesterday, and was SO not impressed. Digg is going to change a lot. Now your feeds are going to come to you via what your friends Digg.  My friend Brian hit the nail on the head by saying; “Basically it’s the Twitter RT function.” Yeah..he’s right. It is.

Not to pick on anyone at all, but let’s say I hit my news feed section, and Louiebaur has voted on a ton of submissions by publishers, I am going to see a ton of Louie’s votes. That’s how it is going to feed you. You see what your friends voted on and their relative interests…wait…hmm…”Your Mixx” anyone?

It’s no secret Digg has been scraping ideas from the underdog known as Mixx, but damn. Now they are scraping ideas from Twitter, Facebook, you name it. Nothing is sacred.

One thing that is semi cool is the ability to import you Google, Facebook, and Twitter contacts. But that’s about it.

Digg has shown that now it is all about the publishers.  You can see that when you sign into the New Digg, they push publisher recommendations on you. Digg used to be competitive and fun. You would compete to pop a story, and hit the coveted side bar. MrBabyman dominates in this arena. Now Digg has gone the way of the publisher. So, no longer will power users wield the power they once had to pop a sub, but a power user will influence the feeds their friends see and so on.

To me voting sites are losing their way, plagued with spamming issues and user gaming. I just say this, a few bad apples can spoil the bunch. You throw the bad apple out and away from the others. Instead of putting in a little ban work, Digg has decided to make things easier for themselves, suck up to publishers, and make the site less fun for it’s users.

This is just my opinion…

The Devil went down to Digg, he was looking for some content to steal.

He was in a bind cause he was way behind so he was willing to make a deal.

He came upon this young man Digging some submissions and making em hot!

When he saw him he shot a DM that said “Boy lemme tell you wat!”

“In case you didn’t know it I’m a Power Digger too, and if you care to make a dare I’ll make a bet with you. Now you’re a pretty good Digger boy but give the Devil his due, I’ll bet a Shovel of Gold against your Mac Book Pro ‘Co$ I think I’m better than you!”

The Boy said “My name’s Andy, and it might be a sin, but I’ll take your bet, you’re gonna regret ‘cause I’m the best that’s ever been!”

Andy fire up your feeds and plug submissions hard, cause hell’s broke loose on Digg and the Devil’s a retard. If you win you get this shiny shovel made of Gold, but if you lose the Devil gets your Mac Book Prooooooooooo!

The Devil fired up his Dell and he said I’ll start this show, and fire flew from his finger tips his home page was Beebo. When he pulled in his RSS it made an evil hiss, then some outsources from India jumped in and it sounded something like this:

“hello buddy it’s Ramish..can I get a Digg? http://Digg.com/D3v1L?”

“I can get Digg for friend? http://Digg.com/D3v1L?”

When the Devil finished Andy said: “Well you’re pretty good ole’ son, but sit back in your chair right there and lemme show you how it’s done!” Hey Played

College Humor, The Oatmeal, and XKCD! Glen Beck’s a fag, Anti Scientology. Tea Party Morons, The Daily Show, Zombie Apocolypse, and Sarah Pailn’s a ho!

Well the Devil bowed his head ‘cause he knew that he’d been beat, and he laid that Golden Shovel on the ground at Andy’s feat. “Devil just come on back if you ever wanna try again, and when you’re asked my user name well it’s MRBABYMAN!” He played:

College Humor, The Oatmeal, and XKCD! Glen Beck’s a fag, Anti Scientology. Tea Party Morons, The Daily Show, Zombie Apocolypse, and Sarah Pailn’s a ho!

My man Neal Rodriguez is such a PR Pimp it is crazy! He actually (no BS) was my personal trainer via Twitter!

That’s right he tweeted my work outs for the morning and helped me bring sexy back! The man can boost your Social Media Profile and make it look like a work of art comparable to the Mona Lisa!

Seriously Neal is the man! As a Social Media player and contributor to Social Media Rage we adore the guy. He is straight up one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet in Social Media, so that’s why we took this jab at him.

Love ya Neal,

Your friends at Social Media Rage!

Check out Neal at NealRodriguez.com/vlog!

Via SocialNomics

I admit it. I submitted a crappy domain to a social media site and got banned. A social media “friend” IM’ed me a link and asked for a favor submitting it, so I did without paying attention to how spammy the site was. My “friend” then proceeded to go on a IM vote requesting campaign that was pretty obvious to anyone that may have been monitoring the submission at the site. I got banned and for good reason. What makes me different than the vast majority of people banned on various social media sites is I can recognize my mistake and admit what I did was wrong.

I’m starting to see more and more blog posts written by angry banned users that range from the naive to the utterly ridiculous. Most play the “Who? Me?” angle and flatly refuse to see any wrong doing on their part. Justifying their blatant pimping for certain sites as sharing “quality” and “contributing great content to the community”. I suspect somewhere in the inner depths of their minds they know they probably did a little too much pimping and not enough real contributing, but would never admit it publicly and risk being labeled a spammer. They take a mostly non-confrontational approach in the hopes of someone seeing their cries for help and somehow getting the ban lifted so they can happily go back to spamming their blog.

The second type of banned user is the uber-pissed off, “I’m gonna make you pay!” type that decides to burn bridges and make threats. These are usually people that have a financial stake in driving traffic and, having lost another source to do so, are extremely angry and want revenge. Their blog posts whining about the ban usually begin like the “Who?Me?” types with self-righteous attempts at telling everyone how great the content they contributed was, but then they veer off into the insane. Everything from bad PR to boycotts has been threatened by these cry babies that absolutely refuse to see anything they may have done as wrong. Feeble attempts at generating bad PR or organizing boycotts of sites YOU ARE ALREADY BANNED FROM are stupid and a waste of time. Typically these posts are commented on and shared by other banned users that are similarly butt hurt over their bans as well, and it turns into one big cluster fuck of lame.

Look in the mirror people. If you’re submitting a blog to Reddit that’s on a subdomain of a spammy site, you deserve to be banned. If you’re sharing four or five things a day on StumbleUpon, regardless if you have any vested interest in them or not, you’re annoying and deserve to be banned. If you blantantly work an IM for a Digg submission that’s obviously from a crappy site, yes, you too, deserve to be banned. Instead of whining about it, why not repent and change your ways? Sadly, I think I know why. It would take time and effort. Time and effort you used to spend on gaming the system and it worked. Now that it doesn’t work anymore, you’re left to face the truth. And sometimes the truth hurts.

Update: 8-6-09 – The “soft ban” has been lifted from my Reddit account after I tweeted @knOthing (one of the co-founders) with this article. I plan on purchasing a Reddit T-shirt and posting a photo of me wearing it here. : )

Post Submitted by ED. Check out all of ED’s thoughts at his blog:  http://yeeaauuh.com

Yes, a Seth Godin action figure. While I have no problem with Seth or what the man does, I say, if actions figures are to be made, make some serious action figures.

1. The 1938 Media playset. Complete with Loren and Michelle Feldman. It even comes with the Shel Isreal puppet, and camera on a tripod.

2. Jason Calcanis complete with bulldogs Taurus and Fondue. The dogs actually salivate on everything!

3. Gary Vanerchuk talking doll. Pull the cord and he says memorable quotes like: “  Crush It!” “You gotta work your ass off if you wanna make money!” and “Merlot never did anything to anybody!”

4. The Mike Arrington. Mike has a removable Tech Crunch T-Shirt and even comes with safe room and secret hideaway.

5. The Reg Saddler aka Zaibatsu. Triple monitors, and beer in hand.

6. The MrBabyman with iPhone and Macbook and a complete list of his private RSS feeds. (Requires extra shipping and handling for a printed copy of RSS feeds)

7. Chris Brogan and Twitter followers playset. Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery and 7 months of production time for followers.

8. Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney) Comes with $20million Google AdSense paycheck.

9. Leo Laporte, complete with TWiT sound set. He actually talks! Press a button on his back and he screams: “Screw you Arrington!”

So these are my ideas. Anyone got an idea for an action figure? Let us know at SocialMediarage [at] gmail [dot] com, or leave a comment.