This is a guest post by Esteban Panzera, he writes about SEO and SMM in his personal Blog.

Today at 9 PM EST started the first Digg Town Hall Webcast, which could be seen by using Ustream. Everyone had the opportunity of watching and listening to Kevin Rose (Digg’s Founder) and Jay Adelson (Digg’s CEO) answer questions and tell us about the new Digg features. What they actually did is took the top 20 questions from here sorted by most number of Diggs and answer them.

In case you missed what they said, here you have a summary of everything:

New Gadgets for:

• IGoogle
• Myspace
• Netvibes

Some New Features:

• New comments system: they are still working on it, but they will roll out on April (they are targeting to get it out on April). You can see the new features it will have over here.
• Recommendation Engine: new way to explore stories and find cool stories before they become popular by checking what you have Dugg and what might be of interest to you, so that you don’t have to browse thousands of stories

Statistics:

• 26 Million Unique Visitors per month.
• 10,000 submissions per day.
• More than 200 Million Diggs since launch.
• 180 new frontpage stories per day before algo change. 120 new frontpage stories per day after algo change.

Information given on the answers:

• There are not any moderators in the site, the moderators are really the users.
• 1 Admin that is on 24 hours a day permanently checking the site.
• There is a system that detects, find spam and removes it (that is what people call autobury).
• Lots of time and effort put to find spam.
• The system is designed so that you need diversity to succeed. They made this change so that Digg is not controlled by a small group, they don’t want super users to have ALL the power. This is the reason why some stories need more Diggs to make it to the frontpage, diversity is the key.
• Transparency: stories stay there, doesn’t matter if they are buried or incorrect.
• Users spamming get contacted, not just deleted or banned, they have chances before getting removed.
• Black List: spammers get in a kind of black list so that they don’t spam anymore.
• Dupe detection and search are broken, they are working on solutions to that.
• Support Forum Creation: they think it is a great idea and they are working on that.
• Diversity is not just same people Digging.
• Stories with enough diversity are the ones that go to the frontpage.
• Transparent Buries: they are not doing it because they don’t want people to stop burying because others may feel angry with them. They don’t want a bury competition (you bury me, so i bury you).
• They will start showing number of buries and positive votes on comments.
• Comments can be deleted during the edit period.
• They still don’t comment if they are selling Digg.
• Daniel, the creative director, doesn’t want a button to delete all shouts to prevent people delete them accidentally.
• They are working on a way so that users can have more private communication.
• They suggest that if you find someone (a top user for example) submitting something that was already submitted, to post the link to the original submission as a comment.
• They will probably remove podcasting and use the standard digg process to let people just submit their favorite episodes.
• The system is always getting tweaked so that it improves stale stories getting frontpaged.
• There will be a recommended stories section on upcoming (recommendation engine).
• Diversity is about who, where and questions like that, they check all your history to see that you are not gaming the system.
• Bloggers that submit every post to digg (spam) get some chances before getting banned.
• People is trying to game Digg by: creating lots of accounts and digging a story, paying for Diggs, hiring a pool of people to Digg a story, and lots of other ways.

The next Digg Town Hall Webcast will be May 28th and there will be a meetup in Chicago on July 23rd.

Here are some reactions from some of tonight’s attendees:

Digidave - well: I’m glad they opened up a line of communication. That’s the biggest complaint I’ve ever had about the site - I feel like I’m engaging with a brick wall. I hope they can figure out a way to make the communication more regular and open - not just every 2-3 months during a town hall, but with a real active forum. I always gave it to them on faith that the algorithm changes were for the better. What I want is somebody to respond to emails, answer questions, etc. Still - this is a step in that direction. I think they answered most of the questions very well - with the exception of one or two that they started to answer, but left me wanting a little more.

cgt2099: Screw Digg. Come over and join me at Mixx.

silentjay74: Still seems like riot control to me. Appease the masses and disarm the pitchforks. Feed the peasants.

oboy - JD Rucker: I like the fact that they are trying to communicate. I’m hugely disappointed that they were running out of time after 1 hour. Give me a break. Surely they got a ton of questions (I sent one in myself) and they got to 4 of them before having something more important to do. For a first one, it wasn’t terrible.

Danzarrella: It was good to hear them get into the idea of diversity of diggers, and how number of votes is only one part of the picture. I’m also excited for the collaborative filtering, personalization features they mentioned.

Scott Clark: From an SEO/SEM perspective, it would be good to see who’s doing the buries….because the bury-brigade attacks SEO/SEM postings IMO. They sounded a bit closer to bury transparency.

We’d also like to give a shout out to Mark Dykeman for live Twittering the beginning of the webcast.

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Ok, some of us had a good laugh on my previous humor post on selling social media. But when it comes down to it, this is no laughing matter. People want to know.

Prior to our 2nd meeting of the Social Media Club - Louisville chapter, folks wanted the topic of conversation to be about selling social media. I was one of the speakers of the night - my subject being on selling social media to clients.
(You can check out the rest of the updates on the SMC Louisville Blog, or Smorty71).

If you made it out, thanks for being a part of SMC Louisville! We are growing at a nice clip and look forward to making our little area of the world something to be reckoned with.

If you didn’t make it, here’s a brief outline on the presentation:

What is Social Media? - going through the basics of what this field is, and why it is important.
Who to Sell to - in short, just about any company can benefit from social media.
How to Sell it - you’re going to need to pitch to the folks that make the decisions and are probably not as heavily invested into social media as you are. Therefore they may question its value, keep terms flexible and consider a trial run. Show them that people are already talking about their company/brand as well as their competition, too. Social media is about conversation and putting one’s unique voice out there.
Expectations (from both sides) - any good consultant can tell you about the 50/50 partnership you should strive for up front with your client. Knowing who will do what is the name of the game.
Social Media Learning Curve - nobody is born with the innate knowledge of how to play in social media.
Do it Yourself / Not Doing it Hurts - simply not participating in social media could ultimately hurt you, your brand, or worse yet - your clients. Doing social media without learning the ropes could hurt, and ignoring what people are saying about you could turn into a serious PR nightmare.
Live Demonstration - Had a little fun with the audience with a live demonstration with some delving into people’s StumbleUpon accounts. Found some revealing things about how they were utilizing the accounts which I hope was helpful for all.

After several requests, I’ve decided to post the presentation: How to Sell Social Media.


Also, for those of you that hate downloading presentations, here’s the presentation on Slideshare:

| View | Upload your own

Recommended reading:

How to sell social media to your boss - Ebizz by Chris Salazar
How do Social Networks applications incorporate the ladder of engagement? - Beth’s Blog
How to sell the value of social media to your boss - Rohit Bhargava - Influential Marketing Blog
Web Strategy: How to Measure your Social Media Program - Web Strategy by Jeremiah
10 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing Sucks - Collective Thoughts - Andy Beard
Selling Social Media - Social Media Optimization

Here’s the recent video interview I did with Mike McDonald when WebProNews came to town when we had our inaugural Social Media Club Louisville meeting.

Those WPN guys have a nice looking microphone. I took it from Mike when it came time for me to talk. Watch for it, they had a little fun editing there. Almost like built-in viral video appeal, lol

Mark Dykeman of Broadcasting Braininterviewed me in his latest in the series of Catch the Brainwaves. Mark and I talk a bit about NowSourcing, Collective Thoughts, and and social media / blogging scene. Go check it out!

Social Media and Search Engine Marketing Niche news site Sphinn has just announced its latest feature: the Desphinn. Desphinning in theory will allow a more level playing field, giving regular users the ability to downvote in a matter of speaking. Admin evilgreenmonkey elaborates:

It is important to note that a Desphinn is not equal to a Sphinn, preventing abuse from the same gang-voting actions that we’ve seen with members Sphinning items. Before a story goes hot, only 2 Desphinns are needed in order to take 1 Sphinn off its tally.

Once the story has gone hot, 5 Desphinns are required in order to remove 1 Sphinn. This is because the story is seen as more trustworthy once it has reached enough votes to go Hot (currently 22 Sphinns).

If the number of Sphinns for any story reaches -10, the story is removed.

This actually sounds more well planned out and transparent than some other social sites I’m sure we can think of

Kudos to the Sphinn team. Keeping users engaged, getting involved in threads constantly, and coming up with useful features such as this are key. Sphinn has become a place of good quality to the point where you can play hookey on your RSS reading and just check out the Sphinn front page for your social / search news fix.