“Sharing links to articles and other content, very often for promotion, is the priority of sites within the Social Linking Sphere.”
Let’s take a closer look at Social Linking (see some example sites), as our first featured sphere of the Five Spheres of Social Media.
As first to market in many respects, Digg has dominated this sphere for some time. Online users looking for breaking news and/or to promote their own websites have made Digg renowned for both. The goal of Digg, and other similar sites, is a system of community identified newsworthy content. News is submitted, voted on and the most interesting stuff (hopefully) rises to the top. People will, naturally, work any system like this and try to ensure their content is deemed newsworthy in order to drive traffic and/or awareness where they choose.
With these somewhat conflicting goals, things have shaken up recently at Digg and other sites as they choose to crack down on their users for gaming the system. With some big users on Digg leaving for other sites combined with the natural growing competition within all of Social Media today, many other options have jumped onto the radar for those looking to explore Social Linking.
StumbleUpon, for one, has taken Digg’s model and made it more accessible with their famous Stumble Bar that embeds in your browser. It gives you easier access to interesting, community filtered content and more choices about what categories you explore. Stumble is arguably the second biggest player in this field. Beyond the first two, the field is a little more murky, with players like Mixx and Reddit gaining market share and even Yahoo getting into the game with Yahoo Buzz!.
As we delve deeper into each of the spheres, we plan to survey the Social Media community in an effort to help us better identify trends and increase everyone’s insights into these subjects. If you consider yourself a Social Linking maven, please help us kick things off by participating in the The Social Linking Survey. It is made up of 8 simple, multiple choice questions questions about which Social Linking sites you use and how you view them.
Have further questions about Social Linking? Please share them with us in the comments. We’ve got you covered.
