A recent article on a top Digg user who 'sells' his services comes as no surprise. In fact, he is only one of many who gain a financial reward from selling their influence, not just on Digg, but across the social media spectrum. How much would you pay to get to the front pages of Digg? Would you pay anything? '.charging up to $700 per article for his/her promotion, and if a particular item reaches Digg's home page,

I had recently written a post about Facebook's "new and improved" account deletion tactics on our social marketing journal which you can read here , so just when I thought things where over they have started all over again. Just to give you a brief synopsis on how useless Facebook is starting to become, and I don't mean to go on a negative rant here but it is important for everyone to grasp this large swing in Facebook's direction.

Has social media lost its newness? Perhaps! Many would say about time too. According to and article on WebProNews, 58% of respondents in a recent survey did not recognize the term social networking. Social networking as a fad had to come to an end at some time. Along the way many people have enjoyed using the services and met many new friends, however, as is becoming apparent, many sites are now becoming rigid in how you use those services.

Social networking, social media or just being social seems to be getting smaller everyday. Over time we have seen some significant changes to how we communicate and networking is taking a new direction - or at least using different roads to get to the same place. It probably all started when we could subscribe, not just to posts on a blog, but also to the comments left on a post. Suddenly, you could leave a comment, subscribe,

Social marketing seems to be on everyone's lips these days although at times I wonder if people are confusing social bookmarking with social networking and social marketing. Myspace has made it fairly easy to combine social networking with social marketing. After opening a Myspace account, you will need to complete a profile. Make sure your profile is written to attract those from your target groups. For example, if you are targeting 25-30 y/o males,

Social marketing can be a hit and miss affair at the best of times so for many businesses, trying to market their products and services through the various social sites had often met with failure. This is perhaps because they are trying the wrong approach. Most people will not buy based on a marketing campaign. Social marketing campaigns should be about brand or product awareness rather than selling. If your approach is to inform rather than sell,

Yahoo! Mash. Nothing really sparkling springs to mind. If you haven't hear of it, you haven't missed any thing. A day doesn't go by where I don't hear about a new social site opening it's doors. This time, I read where one is closing its doors - before they opened. Mash was supposed to be Yahoo!'s answer to all the other large social sites. The problem was, Yahoo! forgot to tell the rest of the world about, or at least, to keep promoting it. It seems that Yahoo!

Welcome to Facebook they say when you get to their website, more like welcome to jail. I have been building a Facebook account for a good year now, actively engaging in discussions, networking with individuals local to me, joining groups that pertain to my interests and Facebook has decided to shut my account down.

Do you socialize much? By socialize I mean go to dinners or parties or similar events where a large group of people meet to socialize. Social networking can often be a very similar experience. I can remember where, in past years, a doctor would never reveal his/her occupation. If they did, they would spend the evening doing on the spot diagnosis of sore backs and aching legs and so on. Social networking can be a similar experience. If you were to reveal that you were a doctor,

LinkedIn is a social networking site dedicated to professionals and industry leaders. It is also a little slow in updating its services in comparison to many other social networking sites. There is nothing wrong with that of course. It is often said there are leaders and there are followers: LinkedIn is neither - LinkedIn is, well LinkedIn. It meanders along its own road. LinkedIn has had the groups feature for some time now,

It had to happen at some stage. Amazon has joined the social media set by acquiring Shelfari, a social network focused on books. It is a natural progression for a company the size of Amazon and I am a little surprised it has taken so long. Shelfari is a blend of social bookmarking and forum that allows users to: Build virtual bookshelves - and fill them with books Discover books to add to their bookshelves,

Twitter is trying to battle spam for several different reasons. The obvious reason of course is that no one want to receive constant streams of spam, even in sms type messages. Twitter is a little different as it hosts millions 'conversations' at once, a factor that has lead to numerous outages. Remove the spam and you may reduce activity by 10-25% - maybe more, I doubt less. Spam has been the curse of internet since mailing lists and bulletin boards.

Many business owners whether large or small who have not yet taken advantage of the internet to drive in fresh new business have been able to come to the conclusion that they have made themselves invisible to a great deal of potential business. As more and more shoppers venture online to do their research before making any purchase, large or small, having a presence online will be vital to the success of any growing business.

As the internet expands and as more people turn to the internet for information, the options to find that information expands - and it's not just in the search engines. In fact, a reliance on the search engines for traffic alone is going to be a big mistake. The newest group to start taking to the e-waves are those in retirement, or semi-retirement. Where in the past the older generation were reluctant to access technology,

Viral marketing is one of the flavors of the month at SES San Jose. The subject has been covered on many blogs over the last twelve months or more with many 'how to' type posts. When it comes to viral marketing, however, it is not all rosy; there are several negatives. Viral Marketing Is Hit and Miss: You can put a lot of time an effort into planning a viral marketing campaign only to see it fail and not cause a whimper let alone a storm.

Back in May Microsoft reported on a new social bookmarking application that was going into closed beta. In early September they will open their doors to the general community to try out. John Martin on his TechNet blog reported: Microsoft is opening up the MSDN, TechNet, and Expression sites to the community, so that technical professionals can better connect with each other, share knowledge, and succeed.

Social marketing seems to be the 'in' thing at present. Whether you are reading a post on SEO, marketing or 'how to increase traffic', the one common theme is going to be 'you need to engage in social marketing'. With so many different social sites around, many web owners feel totally overwhelmed by thought of participating. If you are one of them, don't worry, you're not alone. The most basic of questions is always the stumbling block: Where do I start?

I was discussing customer relations with a few individuals recently and one comment caught my attention. Having purchased an item from a web site, they tried to engage the site owner in conversation about the product. Despite having only positive comments to make about the product, the owner really did not engage and left pretty quickly. The reason I found it interesting was, first the public nature of the conversation and the lack of engagement, the second and more important,

I was discussing customer relations with a few individuals recently and one comment caught my attention. Having purchased an item from a web site, they tried to engage the site owner in conversation about the product. Despite having only positive comments to make about the product, the owner really did not engage and left pretty quickly. The reason I found it interesting was, first the public nature of the conversation and the lack of engagement, the second and more important,

Social bookmarking now has a new player, at least for the general public it is a new player. Yahoo! Buzz has been closed to all but a select few; now it is open to all. I have read reports that it is limited to the US, however nothing in their TOS or pages seem to indicate this. What is Buzz . Really it is just another bookmarking site, similar to Digg, Sphinn and many others. You can get a widget to put on your site that has vote buttons and vote counts.