Facebook has partnered with liberal news outlet The Huffington Post in an officially sanctioned implementation of its Facebook Connect product.
Called HuffPost Social News, the new site aggregates Huffington Post stories that a given user's Facebook friends have recommended or commented on, and shares the user's Huffington Post activity on their Facebook profiles in turn.
It's a concept fairly similar to TimesPeople, the sharing service that The New York Times launched last year.
"Our goal is to make HuffPost Social News the go-to place for Facebook users to share news--both the stories they love and the stories they hate--with friends," Eric Hippeau, Huffington Post's still-new CEO, said in a release. "It should also appeal to marketers interested in reaching passionate, savvy readers who care about the news and who want to share their interests with friends."
This use of Facebook Connect is unusual because Facebook typically does not undertake many official partnerships with third-party sites when it comes to its developer APIs. And this particular partnership may come under some scrutiny: The Huffington Post, which began as a political news site and has since expanded into many other areas of coverage, is controversial--not only in terms of its partisan leanings (it was co-founded by left-of-center pundit Arianna Huffington) but because the majority of its bloggers are unpaid and because some critics have argued it relies too heavily on third-party content that it doesn't always pay for.
But the social network's executives appear to have given The Huffington Post their stamp of approval, at least when it comes to the site's model for news consumption.
"The Huffington Post has led a revolution in how people discover and consume news," Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, herself a veteran of the political world, said in a release. "With the integration of Facebook Connect, HuffPost Social News is now leading the way to make news even more of a social experience, giving people new ways to share and filter news and current events through their networks of friends on Facebook."
Facebook likely hopes that this partnership will be a sort of example to the news industry--which is obviously looking for some new ideas right now--and that other media outlets will, in turn, build similar products.
Social-news site Digg has ended its advertising partnership with Microsoft more than a year before the deal was set to expire. Instead of relying on Microsoft as its exclusive ad partner, Digg will now primarily use the internal sales force it recently began building; Microsoft will handle remnant inventory.
"Starting July 1, Microsoft will sell network inventory for Digg through the Microsoft Media Network, which it has been doing successfully for the last year and a half," a statement from Microsoft read. "Digg has created its own internal sales executive team, and we respect their decision to sell their owned-and-operated site inventory directly to help further accelerate their growth as a company."
Digg's contract with Microsoft, intended to be a three-year deal, started in mid-2007, when the company chose it over Google. At the time, founder Kevin Rose applauded the decision because it would let Digg's employees focus on feature development while leaving ad sales to a more experienced team.
The revised contract is a blow to Microsoft, which touted the Digg deal as a big victory at its debut. But it also is yet another signal that advertising on the Web is changing significantly.
According to a ClickZ report, Digg's internal sales team will focus on "custom, non-IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) inventory combined with standardized banner ads." This strategic decision--to move away from a reliance on the traditional IAB display units that have defined digital advertising for years--comes at a time when the best way to advertise on a social-media site is a matter of debate and uncertainty.
Social network Facebook also has a display ad contract with Microsoft (in addition to a $240 million investment) but has been putting more emphasis on the experimental "Engagement Ads" product that it packages and markets in-house. The News Corp.-owned MySpace, meanwhile, relies more heavily on traditional display ads.
By most accounts, MySpace is ahead of Facebook in the monetization game. It has a bigger foothold in the United States, where ad dollars are easier to come by than overseas, and it's willing to make advertising significantly more pervasive with full-page "wrap" campaigns--not to mention the fact that it has News Corp.'s media connections.
But with Digg choosing to go the Facebook route (sort of), especially given the bleak advertising climate, this could be a sign that more players in the tech industry have started to regard the next generation of digital ads as a more profitable route.
"It's not unusual for someone in the social media space to have a lot of custom units, because they're forging new territory," said Debra Williamson, a senior analyst at eMarketer. "A lot of people say that by the time the IAB comes out with a standard, the ad format is, (while) not necessarily passe, certainly not the cutting edge."
Williamson noted that not only is Digg changing its ad focus, it's looking to make new hires to expand its team. "That does put a stake in the ground, and it does say that a company like Digg is serious about looking beyond the banner, so as to speak, that they're really looking to develop new ways of advertising and that they're looking to bring on new people to help them do that."
Whether or not Madison Avenue will agree is a different story.
This post was expanded at 1:15 p.m. PT.
Taking a page from StumbleUpon and the now-defunct MySpace News, Digg appears set to roll out a new feature in beta that will bring some of the Digg.com experience along once users leave the social news site to one of its outbound links.
A Flickr photo shows the new toolbar in action. From it you can see that clicked stories gets both a special Digg-flavored short permalink (like TinyURL provides) along with a new menu bar that appears on the top of the content.
This new bar serves double duty. First it lets you keep an eye on how many other Diggs and comments a story has (regardless of whether it's been on Digg's front page), along with an option to see any related stories that have been featured on Digg.com. It also includes the option to share it with others as a Facebook note, an e-mail, a Digg shout, or a Twitter message. No matter how you do it though, the person getting the link will see the special Digg top bar.
Besides the sharing, one of the most obvious additions is the large, orange random button in the top corner. This will take you to a random site, which if you've ever used StumbleUpon, has the exact same functionality. Based on StumbleUpon going software-free just five months ago, and seeing a huge jump in its users, it's no wonder Digg would want the same kind of tool for its own links.
No word yet on when Digg is going to make this live on its story pages.
(via Veronica Belmont)
This post initially misstated Digg's 2007 loss as reported by 'BusinessWeek.' The company reported lost $2.8 million in 2007.
There are some stunning numbers in BusinessWeek about social news site Digg: In 2007, the company reportedly pulled in only $4.8 million in revenue and lost $2.8 million. In the first three quarters of 2008, it lost $4 million on $6.4 million in revenue.
Digg declined to comment on the numbers.
This is a little bit disconcerting, if true. Digg has been one of the hottest start-ups in Silicon Valley's hype machine for the past few years, due ironically in part to an August 2006 BusinessWeek cover story depicting boyish founder Kevin Rose giving a grin and a thumbs-up. (What innocent days those were!) It's also been vocally committed to growth, and has said that it's still hiring in the midst of the current recession.
(Credit:
BusinessWeek)
When Digg raised its last round of funding--a $28.7 million Series C in September--rumors pegged its valuation at around $164 million. That's significantly lower than the $200 to $300 million that was occasionally talked about in those pesky acquisition reports.
Which, by the way, we haven't heard many of recently. It used to be, per the gossip mill, that either Google or News Corp. or Microsoft or somebody else was trying to nab it; Al Gore's Current Media reportedly offered $100 million in 2006 and was snubbed.
Digg has a wild cult following, and Rose's background as a TV anchor and popular "Diggnation" podcast have turned him into one of the Web's biggest celebrities. And its traffic, by all accounts, continues to grow steadily as Digg makes strides to expand its base beyond the geeky young newshounds who made its community famous.
CEO Jay Adelson says he's cracking down and now aims to make the company profitable in one year rather than two. Considering what BusinessWeek has dug up this time (pun completely intended), that could be a tough task.
Jay Adelson, CEO of social news company Digg, has used a BusinessWeek interview to attempt to quash those long-standing acquisition rumors. From what he said, Digg is not for sale.
"Now I am pressured to keep costs reasonable and focus more on the top-line revenue, which we really haven't done ever," Adelson said to BusinessWeek's Spencer Ante, saying that he now hopes to make the company profitable in one year instead of two.
Not for sale? Riiiiiight.
It's an old (ha) Silicon Valley maxim that any company is for sale, assuming the right buyer comes along and offers the right deal. What's likely is that Digg has come to realize that in this economic climate, it's not going to get the price that Adelson and founder Kevin Rose want.
Digg raised a whopping $28.7 million in Series C funding in September, which Adelson and Rose said would go toward fueling a major site expansion. The company didn't disclose a post-round valuation, but VentureBeat heard that it was only $164 million--significantly less than the $250 to $300 million prices that were oft-whispered about in Valley social circles.
Here's my theory: The longer Digg waits for the perfect bid, the longer it's in danger of having its valuation chipped away. The truth is, it's not very difficult for a site to institute a "social news" feature or other form of Digg-like interaction. Current Media, after Digg spurned an acquisition offer, built Current News and now aggregates user-picked stories into an hourly TV show. Yahoo built Yahoo Buzz, which can propel stories to the front page of its portal. Some Google users occasionally report seeing experimental features in which they can vote on search results. There are smaller ones, too: Reddit, which sold early to Conde Nast, is still alive and kicking. A start-up called Kirtsy puts a girlier spin on the Digg model.
Adelson even remarked to BusinessWeek that buying some of these smaller social news sites could help make Digg stronger, especially now since the recession may make some of them dirt-cheap. "There are Digg clones around the world in every country," he said to Ante. "I could go into those markets and clean up those sites. If I needed more capital to do a deal, I could probably do it."
That, honestly, wouldn't be such a bad idea. Digg's biggest problem isn't user activity--it has one of the most loyal and addicted audiences on the Web--but the fact that its core user base is very niche. It experienced a surge in political traffic as election season rolled on, but its core is geek news; hot topics right now are screenshots from the movie Wolverine and airborne laser weapons.
Social news site Reddit, which was acquired by Conde Nast's Wired Digital division two years ago, has announced the start of a new strategy to distribute its technology around the Web. It's partnered with the U.K.'s Independent newspaper to install Reddit technology on its Web site and encourage readers to vote up and down on the news.
While a prominent button for the Independent's internal voting system will appear on each of the publication's online news stories (these will show up in a few weeks), it will also accept links submitted from around the Web.
"It's this kind of open mentality that really excited us about working with them," co-founder Alexis Ohanian said in an e-mail.
Reddit opted to make its code open-source in June, an announcement that would presumably lead to the kinds of deals that the company announced on Thursday. It's far smaller than rival Digg, but seems to have a clear message in place: that Reddit is about distribution, not a standalone site.
Social news site Digg has raised $28.7 million in a Series C venture round led by Highland Capital Partners, and has in turn announced a major site expansion.
"Today is a big day for Digg," CEO Jay Adelson wrote on the company blog. "We're announcing a major expansion effort--the largest we've undergone in our history. With a new round of funding, we're accelerating many of the programs that we've been working on over the past several months, including investments in infrastructure, new feature development, international expansion and hiring all the people we need to get there."
The expansion in question will encompass many of the features that Adelson and founder Kevin Rose repeatedly talk about in their quarterly town hall Webcasts. Additionally, the site plans to explore geographic expansion options, including translating Digg into languages other than English, and "significantly" expanding the size of its San Francisco workforce.
Digg had long been rumored to be up for sale, with buyers from both the media and Silicon Valley sides of the aisle reportedly interested. The company walked away from a $100 million offer from the Al Gore-founded Current Media, which eventually launched an in-house social news service called Current News. News Corp., which acquired MySpace in 2005, has also been mentioned as a potential suitor, and there always seems to be a rumor that Google has wanted to buy Digg.
The company has not disclosed a post-funding valuation. But it's rumored that even the most attractive buyers weren't willing to offer a dollar value that Digg's executives wanted, so it's possible that a bigger valuation--in addition to helping it weather an increasingly difficult economic climate--could make it easier for Digg to insist on a price. Whether Digg has given up on a sale for the time being, or is still trying to make itself more attractive to a buyer, remains to be known.
For more, see Rafe Needleman's interview with Mike Maser, Digg's Chief Revenue & Strategy Officer.
The TimesPeople toolbar shows the latest activity in your social circle.
(Credit: NYTimes.com)The New York Times has started rolling out TimesPeople, a sharing-and-recommending tool that the publication first announced earlier this year. It's essentially an extension of the free user accounts that are already required to read the Times' Web site: You can now build up a friends list, recommend stories to people you know, and see what they've been recommending or commenting on.
In other words, it's a social news feed for Times readers. You can also sync it up with your Facebook account to push your feed--stories you've commented on or recommended--to your profile on the social network.
We first reported on the debut of TimesPeople in June, when it was still being tested as a Firefox plugin. Now it's been fully worked into the NYTimes.com site with no download required.
Digg has always made its message clear: it's not social news, it's democracy.
The company's executive team--founder Kevin Rose, and CEO Jay Adelson--thumbed their noses at the DMCA complaint they received when users "dugg" a crack code for the now-defunct HD DVD technology. They also decided to connect with their users through "town hall" events Webcast live four times a year. So it's perhaps fitting that for the company's third quarterly town hall, Rose and Adelson set up shop in the "Big Tent" new-media hall at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. (Digg is a "Big Tent" sponsor.)
It'll be following up with an event held in partnership with MySpace at the Republican National Convention. The company also kicked off a "Digg Dialogg" event series, in which executives ask users' questions to prominent guests. Adelson, who called it a "perfect alignment of Digg and elections," interviewed House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the inaugural interview, in partnership with CNN's iReport.
"They're your raw questions," Rose said, his characteristic mop-top haircut forsaken in favor of a buzz cut. "They were completely unfiltered."
To be fair, Digg owes a lot to politics--its energetic base of news hounds loves election coverage, and the national elections inevitably pull a lot of traffic to the site.
The questions were largely technical ones that dealt with the minutiae of Digg culture: Adelson said that the "shout" communication system will be tweaked to limit spamming and a private message system is on the way, better technology to flag duplicate stories ("I hate this!" Rose said on the problem with duplicate story submissions) is coming this fall, and Digg is working on a way to let members flag stories as "not safe for work."
Most of Rose and Adelson's answers, which they breezed through more quickly than with previous town halls due to time constraints on the Denver stage, fell into the niche of "good suggestion, and we're working on it."
One question asked if Digg could institute a forum for members. That was a more contentious point for the company executives. "We do want to have forums for our users to communicate and support each other," Adelson said, but added that he's working on matching up the authentication system so that it uses the same credentials as Digg itself rather than an external forum system.
Rose was less enthusiastic. "Everyone has forums and it's always the same crap," he said. "It doesn't necessarily mean that they're helping elevate the good questions and helping the conversation come through."
A few genuinely good ideas came up: one question suggested "geotagging" for stories to group them into local news stories, something that could make the site legitimately compete with sites like Outside.in and city blog networks like Gothamist. "Yes," Rose said. "We've thought about this as well and it would be really cool if we could start to group different events around you." Adelson added that Digg has "a few projects on the way...think 2009, realistically, for some of this stuff."
Despite the somewhat dull nature of many technical questions about recommendation engines and comment improvement, Adelson and Rose insisted that those are the questions they want to hear because it's where Digg users can really make a difference in shaping the site's direction. "It's really important to know what you guys are thinking. It keeps us honest," Adelson said.
The next Digg town hall will be held on November 6--two days after the U.S. presidential election. Its next meetup, however, will be off American shores: Rose will be taping his Diggnation podcast live from London on October 10.
After social news site Reddit went open-source in June, this was a logical next step: letting members take the code and import it to their own sites, creating social-news hubs of their own. That's the company's latest announcement, per a blog post on Tuesday.
"Today is the day Reddit fully becomes a platform for building link sharing sites," a post on the company blog explained. Technically, developers could already do this. But now the site is making it easier for them to do so, and letting them customize the design of the voting system to fit their own sites; more importantly, they can import them off the Reddit domain.
Reddit Bacon.
The site's humor-inclined team referred to the site update as "somewhere between when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly and when six hydrogen nuclei combine to form helium and (eventually) life as we know it." More likely, it'll make the news-voting system proliferate on sites that wouldn't otherwise have it; Reddit's team brought up the example of an entire Reddit voting system devoted to people who love bacon, for example.
Though Reddit, which was acquired by Conde Nast's Wired Digital division in 2006, is much smaller than rival Digg and the fast-growing Yahoo Buzz, this could make some waves. Plenty of sites have tried to build third-party social news systems in-house, and Reddit's open-source alternative could make it easier to integrate this sort of thing.
Plus, the company is hosting a contest to see who can create the best "custom Reddit" from scratch (i.e., fewer than 250 subscribers) in a month. The winner gets a MacBook Air laptop, a $1,500 Apple gift card, and a bucketload of free Reddit gear. Go, bacon guys, go!
