• Monopoly Infographic: Peelin’ Lucky – September 27, 2011
• Angry Birds Addiction: Infographic – September 12, 2011
• The First 45 Years of Star Trek – September 9, 2011
• Infographic: Smartphone Apps – June 15, 2011
• Infographic: Top Affiliate Networks Compared – June 13, 2011

The Reddit Invasion [Infographic] originally appeared on: Crenk
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(via Reddit)

• Crenk is Getting Greatly Improved! – October 18, 2011
• The Reddit Invasion [Infographic] – October 5, 2011
• Worlds Largest Solar Yacht: Around the World Trip – May 12, 2011
• Kevin Rose Leaves Digg to Pursue Other Startups – March 21, 2011
• Pulse Social News App Becomes Less Unique and More Mainstream – February 19, 2011

Racing Yacht Does an Amazingly Sharp Turn originally appeared on: Crenk
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We haven’t reported about Digg since its ill-fated redesign and since then things seem to have gone from bad to worse. There are lots of reports this morning that Founder Kevin Rose has departed Digg and will only stay on its board of directors.

There has been a mass exodus at Digg since its redesign and this has really pushed Reddit into a great position in social news.

Has Digg become completely obsolete?

• Front Page of Digg Impossible? Try HYPick For Better Results – February 3, 2009
• Revision3 Ends Diggnation – October 4, 2011
• How to Add a Sidebar with Facebook, Twitter, Delicio.us and Digg – October 31, 2010
• Social Media Demographics – July 9, 2010
• Rose Leaving Diggnation for fforward? – June 16, 2010

Kevin Rose Leaves Digg to Pursue Other Startups originally appeared on: Crenk
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It seems as thought these additions really draw away from the fact that Pulse was a great way of finding quality independent news sources.

“We wanted to experiment with social news, photos and videos — hence, we picked these initial sources. All these services have really neat APIs, and it literally took Charles [new team member Charles Chen] two weeks to get this up and running,” says co-founder Akshay Kothari. “Many more to come — stay tuned!”

• Watch YouTube Playlists on iPad – November 27, 2011
• TeamViewer 6 Available for Android – November 28, 2010
• Who Wants an iPad when you can get an iPed? – May 29, 2010
• Introducing Streake: 5” Tablet from DELL – May 25, 2010
• Hitler is Less Than Impressed with the Apple iPad – January 30, 2010

Pulse Social News App Becomes Less Unique and More Mainstream originally appeared on: Crenk
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Even more impressive is that those 1 billion pageviews were generated from just 13.75 million absolute unique visitors, which accounted for a total of 68.11 million visits. A big reason why Reddit can generate so many pageviews from so few people is that the average person checks out 14.7 pages per visit and stays on the site on average for 15 minutes and 40 seconds.

• The Reddit Invasion [Infographic] – October 5, 2011
• Huffington Post Over One Billion Page Views Per Month – October 3, 2011
• Racing Yacht Does an Amazingly Sharp Turn – May 30, 2011
• Gawker Redesign Is Killing Their Traffic – April 21, 2011
• Kevin Rose Leaves Digg to Pursue Other Startups – March 21, 2011

Reddit Hits One Billion Pageviews in a Month originally appeared on: Crenk
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The most common use of providing visitors an easy way to share our website is adding links in our home page to all of the networks; certainly a more effective is using a sidebar in our website with a permanent and visible links. ShareSideBar creates for us the necessary code ready to be added in our website.

We can choose if we want the sidebar on the right or left side of the page, and the social networks we would like to use in the sidebar. This web app is completely free and does not require any registration.

• Save your Photos, Videos and Documents in one Place with PhotoRem – November 7, 2010
• Free Black Icons Set for Social Media and Twitter – September 12, 2010
• Social Media Demographics – July 9, 2010
• Create a Screencast and Share it in Twitter – November 7, 2010
• How to Handle Several Twitter Accounts – September 19, 2010

How to Add a Sidebar with Facebook, Twitter, Delicio.us and Digg originally appeared on: Crenk
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• How to Add a Sidebar with Facebook, Twitter, Delicio.us and Digg – October 31, 2010
• History of Social Media – November 19, 2010
• Free Black Icons Set for Social Media and Twitter – September 12, 2010
• Social Networking Site for Collectors – June 29, 2009
• Front Page of Digg Impossible? Try HYPick For Better Results – February 3, 2009

Social Media Demographics originally appeared on: Crenk
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Reddit is currently leading with three apps to make the mobile experience much more enjoyable. One of theirs is an official app from the Reddit creators themselves. Will Digg be releasing an official app soon?

I’ve taken the liberty to do a review of the three Reddit apps and Digg app that are in the iTune App Store. I am in no way associated with any of these apps, know any of the owners, or am promoting any of them in any fashion. This is merely a review from an avid Reddit and Digg user with a love for social news and social media.

Shovel – Digg App

Author: Scott Fitzhugh

Price: Free

Ratings: 147 Reviews – (at the time of writing)

iTunes Download Link: http://tinyurl.com/d5yqhu

iTunes Description:

Shovel is an app that provides top stories from the social news website Digg.com in a native application. Browse the front page stories, or delve deeper into an array of topics and subtopics of interest.

Personal Review:

Shovel is a great application for viewing Digg.com content easily on the iPhone. Overall, the design and interface is pretty clean and simple. It gives you a variety of topics and listings to select to view so you can access all of the content on Digg.com. You can view:

• Popular Stories
• Top Stories
• Movers & Shakers
• Brand New Stories

All listings are applicable to any category or sub-category in Digg.com. If you select a Digg story you can then scroll down the commentary to see what people are saying, who’s replied, how many votes each comment has received, etc. After that, you can click further to view the story live on the Web. Which is nice about it is that it doesn’t load Safari as a separate app to view the content so there’s no back-and-forth between the apps.

Unfortunately, what you cannot participate in digging, burying, or commenting through this application. The developer disclaims, “Now we’ve gotten the message loud and clear that the one thing that would turn this 3.5 star app (currently 3 stars) into a 5 star one is the interactivity of the original Digg site. You guys (and gals) want to be able to Digg, comment, and bury, and who can blame you? Right now, however, there is no way to do this using the legitimate Digg APIs, and quite frankly, it makes us sad. I’ve been trying to court the help of Digg in making this app all that it can be, and if you want to help that along, you should drop them a line yourselves requesting the same!”

Another drawback is that you cannot personalize this application because there is no way to login. Therefore you can’t weed out content you don’t want to see, view your account profile, see your friend’s submissions, etc.

In doing some research the Shovel app used to be named “Diggerific”. Apparently, they have changed the name of it and redid the UI just a bit as you can tell from the video review of Diggerific below:

Overview

Pros

• Easy to use
• Clean interface
• Ability to access all Digg content

Cons

• Free of charge
• Can’t Digg, comment, or bury content
• No Digg account profile/community features or functionality

iReddit

Author: CondeNet

Price: $1.99

Ratings: 41 Reviews (at the time of writing)

Feedback Contact: http://getsatisfaction.com/reddit/products/reddit_ireddit

iTunes Download Link: http://tinyurl.com/ce6tt2

iTunes Description:

The official Reddit iPhone app. Never be bored again. With this app, you’ll only be a tap (or shake) away from the most interesting stuff on the web.

All of your favorite Reddit functionality is here: view the hottest, newest, top, and most controversial stories of the moment, explore, individual subreddits, vote, comment, share, and save links for later. The entire commenting system has been optimized for the iPhone app so you won’t have any trouble contributing to an epic pun thread.

Save time by never having to reload the Reddit homepage. You can even use handy next/previous navigation to move between websites without going back to the main list. And those sites work in portrait and widescreen modes too.

It’s never been easier to be entertained. Just shake your iPhone to enter “serendipity mode” where you’ll be served a random, interesting site. Pro-tip: Turn on “play sound on shake” for a special treat with every jostle — the iPhone is an elegant phone for a more sophisticated age.

And if you’re feeling the economic downturn (what are you doing with an iPhone?) there’s a tree, ad-supported version to come.

Personal Review:

The Official Reddit application is pretty cool. You can input your username and password so that you can vote and comment on stories. Initially, you come to the Reddit homepage. Along the top you can choose between “Hot”, “New”, “Top”, and “Controversial” stories. When selecting a story, there is an overlay on the footer that allows you to upvote/downvote the story, go to the comments section of the story, save the story, and email the link.

Three subreddits will fit on the bottom bar overlay that you can quickly navigate to. You can edit the subreddits with the ones you want to use the most, but you only have a small selection of subreddit’s to swap out with. Those subreddits are:

• Programming
• Funny
• Science
• Tech
• World News
• Entertainment
• Business
• Comics
• Gaming
• Best Of
• Economics
• Cappuccino

It is the most expensive application but I feel it’s the cleanest and easiest to use. Unfortunately, you can’t browse all subreddits and there’s no search function. Nor is there a function to view your account’s saves, karma points, submissions, comments, etc.

I would recommend this app to anyone looking to quickly and easily view Reddit news, vote, and participate in the more popular subreddits. The free Reddit app doesn’t allow for this.

Overview

Pros

• Easily vote on stories from the actual story page
• Save links to view/read later
• Comment participation
• Customization of footer subreddits

Cons

• Most expensive Reddit app
• Not a wide-range of subreddits to customize on your footer
• Can’t browse all subreddits
• No search functionality
• No personal account status functionality

Open Source Reddit

Author: Joseph Pintozzi

Price: Free

Ratings: 10 Reviews (at the time of writing)

Feedback Contact: reddit@pintozzi.com

iTunes Download Link: http://tinyurl.com/cpjzvj

iTunes Description:

The Reddit application allows users to view the stories from www.reddit.com without having to deal with loading massive webpages. It displays the stories in a nice table view, providing details about each submission, and allows the user to easily view the submitted content. The ability to vote on a submission is currently being added.

Personal Review:

This app is very bare bones with very limited functionality. If you’re looking to vote on stories or participate in the comments this app isn’t for you. If you’re just looking to read “Hot” news from a select few subreddits then this is a good app for the cost of nothing. The included subreddits to choose from are:

• reddit.com
• bacon
• politics
• pics
• WTF
• funny
• technology
• programming

The nice thing about it is that it’s open source and the developer leaves it open for people to add on what they want to it. Hopefully, in the future, this will be a great application for Reddit.

Overview

Pros

• Open Source
• Free

Cons

• No commenting
• No voting
• Can’t browse all subreddits
• No search functionality
• No personal account status functionality

Satellite Reddit

Author: 3Cube Technologies

Price: $0.99

Ratings: 8 Reviews – (at the time of writing)

Feedback Contact: satellite@3cubetechnologies.com or http://twitter.com/3cube

iTunes Download Link: http://tinyurl.com/cx8eec

iTunes Description:

Satellite 2.0 is now available and brings a host of improvement to the mobile Reddit experience.

Change in this version includes:

• Greatly improved performance
• New, Controversial, and Top views are available for all subreddits
• An overlay displaying the full article title and comments count shows while loading an article
• The subreddit list is reorderable
• A beautiful new icon and splash screen have been added
• New lower pricing.

Satellite is a full-featured client for Reddit.com, a social link aggregation site. With Satellite, you can browse links appearing on the front page or drill down into the Subreddits you are subscribed to. When viewing an article you can vote the link up or down, save it to your Reddit account, or share the link with others. With the click of a button, you can shift into commenting mode to browse comments or post your own back to the Reddit page about the link. The interface provides a substantially more streamlined experience over the mobile Reddit site and incorprates the unique capabilities of the iPhone to make your day to day Reddit’ing much more fun.

Additional Satellite features include:

• Shake the app at any time to explore random content from Reddit
• Next/previous buttons are available at the screen edges to move through content without returning to list view
• Full portrait/landscape modes, including upside down. Great for handing the phone across the dinner table to share your discoveries!
• Returns to the content you were browsing at start-up. Pick up right where you left off when that call came in.
• Highly addictive content discovery available anywhere, at any time!

Personal Review:

This app is definitely worth the 99 cents. After entering in your login information you can view ALL of your subscribed subreddits. It also gives you an option to edit your subreddits for your account. After selecting a subreddit you can choose between “Hot”, “New”, “Controversial”, and “Top” categories in the footer bar. Once selecting a story, it takes you to the story and overlays the story title, submitter, and point count. At the bottom footer you can choose to vote, go to comments, save the link, or email the link. Again though, there’s no search feature with this app either.

This app is a lot like the official iReddit app except it’s more personalized. You can also view your saved Reddits on your account to follow up on how your saves and submissions are doing.

Overview

Pros

• Personalized
• Nice User-Interface
• Good functionality for voting and commenting
• All Reddit content accessible through this app

Cons

• Isn’t free
• Can’t see your karma points
• No search functionality

• Web Strategist Jeremiah Owyang’s Mobile App – December 1, 2009
• 26 New And Awesome Web Apps You Probably Don’t Know About – March 3, 2009
• Crenk Interviews… Zentact – January 7, 2009
• AutoCAD for iPad, iPhone and Mac OS – September 27, 2010
• iTouch Acting as Gateway Drug to iPhone – December 8, 2009

iPhone App Reviews for Social Media News originally appeared on: Crenk
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HYPick Logo

stories on the front page time and time again. Users that try their hardest to get their stories on the front page fail more often than not, leaving many to wonder if the site is truly leveraging the wisdom of the crowds or if the system is being gamed.

I won’t get into that discussion, you can find plenty of content on that if you search. What I do want to focus on is an alternative to the Digg’s, Reddits, and other supposed community news sites. Enter HYPick, from the creative mind of social media strategist, Oren Todoros. His vision of truly representing the wide swath of internet users is visualized with this social news site that heavily encourages it’s users to HYPE their favorite stories and articles.

On HYPick there’s no specialized voting system, or fancy magic attached to stories, it’s purely at the  mercy of the community. Articles with the most activity are ranked higher. So as users come and go, read and comment, links and pass on, the article gains momentum as something the community feels should be read by others.

No good vote, bad vote system, just real people participation!

There is no doubt that the passions of the community will have a voice. Many would call this a level playing field, that will remain to be seen. For now the HYPick community is alive and well and already gaining momentum.

The Purpose

Putting power into the hands of the users has been what most community news sites have been after. Accomplishment is iffy at best, but no one can deny the current reign of those sites that have dominated this arena for several years. HYPick’s unique approach will truly test the vision that Oren and his team have put together.

In order to make HYPick the next attractive playground for user submitted news stories, they have integrated two HYPick specialized widgets for their users.

The first:

HYPick Reader

The reader widget which can be placed on the right side of your site. It provides easy access for your readers to see what is being ranked and spoken about on HYPick, but also gives you the ability to quickly jump to the post of interest.

I can even appreciate how the posts can also show imagery when they appear on this list. HYPick did a great job with this widget ensuring that users of their service will always have instant connectivity to the happenings in the community. Detail wise I’m not too sure if there are limitations to the articles listed on this widget, whether they are selected as highly ranked posts rated by the community, or if any post that is put to the community is automatically listed here. Still, HYPick wants to make sure that the community is always involved.

Of note the widget is customizeable to a point, but again, it shows HYPicks dedication to the opinion of its readers!

The second HYPick add-on is this:

HYPick Website Button

In it’s continued effort to ensure that readers and users alike are constantly connected to the community, you can integrate the HYPick icon onto your site, similar to what Digg and Reddit due with their icons. This will notify readers that your post can be placed on the community site for involvement by all. The icon is set up to be unobtrusive yet functional in its duty.

Overall the entire system seems pretty sound. It’s a new playing in the user submitted news community, but it also provides a platform for those that are frustrated about their lack of appearance on the front page of some of the major players. Now I can’t personally vouch for these individuals, I don’t know what their content is, but HYPick seems to be an open forum for a wide variety of possibilities in the news community. I look forward to seeing what this player can do!

• Social Media Demographics – July 9, 2010
• Kevin Rose Leaves Digg to Pursue Other Startups – March 21, 2011
• How to Add a Sidebar with Facebook, Twitter, Delicio.us and Digg – October 31, 2010
• Mixx Acquired by UberMedia: Redditors Rejoice – April 20, 2011
• History of Social Media – November 19, 2010

Front Page of Digg Impossible? Try HYPick For Better Results originally appeared on: Crenk
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