Social media is taking the internet by storm nowadays with sites like Digg, Mixx, Reddit, Stumbleupon and others, and one of the big staples of social media is the social aspect. People can discuss the story or whatever the topic might be in the form of comments. Often enough though, especially with sites that use a karma system, people want cheap and easy karma and one way to do that is through comments. So now, instead of simply reading the article and sharing their thoughts, they just post something. Take this for example:

Ok...where should I start...It's nice...good...what was nice about it? What did you like about it? Come to think of it, did you even go to the article? Did you even read it? I'd be willing to bet you didn't, so yeah, take your karma and well, go do something with it. This only helps spam get promoted as well as increase the problem with blind voting, but thats another discussion entirely.

Now take a look at this one:

Ok...you can copy and paste...at least we now know you can at least use a computer. But wait, congrats, you actually opened the article, you've done what many don't. The next question I have to ask is did you actually read the article or just copy paste the first paragraph? Again, I'd be willing to bet you didn't. Come to think of it, you couldn't even come up with your own comment.

In the end of the day, a few short comments aren't going to hurt anyone, but constantly commenting with rubbish is not what I feel commenting is about. Commenting is about adding to the conversation around a submission or post. It's about adding your two cents and discussion with others. Random copy-pasting or "nice post" don't do that. It's about adding value, and in reality there's no value in these kinds of comments. Karma's nice to have, but in the end of the day, I'd much rather discuss my thoughts and opinions.

When I think of social media, I think of sites like Digg, Reddit, Mixx, and the like. These sites all claim to be democratic and that the user determines what gets promoted to the front page of these sites. But how democratic are they really?

Getting one of your submissions to the front page is pretty much everyone's desire. They want to go to the front page and see something they submitted shown there. This much is probably part of human nature, people want to succeed and getting a Digg front page is apparently the measure of success in social media. This desire in itself can sometimes be such a driving force that the "democratic" nature of the site is seen as a burden. Users tend to want to do everything to get one of their stories to the front page, so much that they'll vote up everything in the hope of getting reciprocal votes no matter what the story is. It could be crap for quality, spam, or everyone's favorite, scraped content. In my opinion, this ruins the democracy of the sites...not to mention the quality of the front page. I'm probably just standing on my soapbox right now being ignored by most people, but I feel that stories should become front page for being quality submissions, maybe not one i neccessarily agree with or have an interest in, but one that is original, and provides something to the community be it a laugh, a thought, or a bit of news. Instead people are focusing purely on traffic and forming voting rings just to get their stuff to the front page. It should be mentioned that a lot of this activity has essentially caused me to cease pretty much all activity on all the social media sites.

/endrant

Is Mixx out of Beta? Look at their logo today. Not only are they celebrating 1 year...but the beta text is removed from the logo.

A lot has been going on in the social media world recently. Digg has unleashed its banhammer again banning over 50 accounts, many of them in some of the top user spots. A good many of them have come over to Mixx and are enjoying their time there as they very well should be, Mixx is a great site with a great community and employees who legitimately care about the users and their experience.

But one of the complaints I've heard is that Mixx doesn't drive nearly as much traffic to sites as Digg does, and this by all means is true. Digg has been around for several years now, Mixx is barely a year old, an infant when compared to Digg. So it is only natural that it won't drive as much traffic to sites. This will grow in time though as the community grows and continues to share and submit great content, so continue getting involved and you'll see that change in the future.

But consider this: What matters more, traffic? or community and conversation?

Everyone wants to promote their own sites & blogs and generate traffic. I'm no exception, but at the same time, its not the primary reason I blog and interact on social media sites like Mixx. I interact with Mixx and I blog for the conversation and the community. I want to hear people's views on whatever may be the topic of conversation, be it a blog post of mine, one of someone else's, or just a recent news story. I want to discuss opinions and thoughts, and if traffic comes from that, its just an added bonus. Personally, I'd rather have 25 people view it and comment and give me their thoughts, than to have 1,000 people view it and not hear so much as a whisper.

And I think it is this that makes Mixx, and social media in general grow. The sharing of thoughts, views, and opinions. 

Mixx has a very welcoming community with great people both behind the scenes and on the front lines. Continue submitting content and discussions and the traffic will come, but don't forget, traffic isn't everything, I as well as many others I'm sure agree that the community aspect is more important.

Doing real good on Karma there aren't ya