WebRoots

Mixxing with the Candidates

While all the candidates, and most tech-savvy campaigns have jumped onto Digg, there lies newer, cooler frontier. It’s called Mixx.

To start with, the interface is vastly cleaner than Digg. You can also tag stories in multiple categories and subcategories – something drastically needed at Digg.

What is most compelling however, is that it hasn’t been completely corrupted – yet. Which means a user can garner a significant amount of ‘Karma’ points (a measure of value within the platform) in very little time, and gain leverage in their promotional sphere.

At first, I was hesitant to publish this – knowing I would be one more spam-encouraging voice. But those looking to use these platforms will find them regardless of my little voice, so with that, allow me to offer a piece of strategic advice for those about to click over to Mixx and being “promoting”:

Users of these mediums are becoming increasingly sophisticated. They can catch garbage at first glance. Be refreshing, promote intelligently. Instead of  “friending” everyone and submitting all your content, be appropriate and specific.

Having hundreds of ”friends” and submitting all your content does not directly translate into exposure, at least not positive exposure. So whether you’re interning for a presidential hopeful or for a hot new marketing firm, understand that users are becoming increasingly aware (and frustrated) with mundane content. This game is shifting. Adapt.

Show Me What You Digg, Hillary!

Digg recently announced it would follow the likes of Myspace and create a separate area dedicated solely to the presidential hopefuls.

The “Digg the Candidates” page offers links to all the participating candidates profiles. (At first, Hillary didn’t bother registering, and received significant criticism—she now boasts 834 friends, lagging behind rival Barack, who’s got 7,835).

Once on a candidate’s page, the Digger has a smorgasbord of options: they can friend the candidate, join them on Myspace, Facebook and LinkedIn, get free bumper stickers, and view their YouTube and Flickr pages.

And of course, their pages are full of Dugg stories promoting their campaign. Such a move is expected, and boring. It would have been interesting to see what politically-unrelated articles the candidates would choose to Digg. I’m dying to know what Giuliani’s Digging.

Displaying true interests through the process of Digging would be unusually revealing.

Still, candidate participation in social sites is quite new, especially for Digg.com, which joined the political game just this past November. We can only hope that candidates learn to use such mediums more originally, that they step away from stacking their Digg page with predictable articles, and use this opportunity to reveal some of their true interests to the public .