It seems like Delicious is going to start offering advertising opportunities to its users. Delicious was recently sold to AVOS (YouTube founders new company) and it now seems like they have also acquired a small social measurement tool called Tap11.
According to the press release, Tap11 works with over 500 major brands, media companies, and agencies.
From looking and testing out the product im sure that AVOS will use the platform within Delicious and possibly offer ways for these brands to advertise within Delicious and compare their results with Twitter and Facebook. This could provide a nice end to end solution.
AVOS stated:
“Our vision is to create the world’s best platform for users to save, share, and discover new content. With the acquisition of Tap11, we will be able to provide consumer and enterprise users with powerful tools to publish and analyze their links’ impact in real-time.”
It is now official, the YouTube founders have started a new company called AVOS and they have acquired Delicious from Yahoo. AVOS plan on continuing the service that the users have love and they will be making delicious even more of the vital social media destination.
Yahoo will continue to run the service for the next few months and then the move to AVOS servers will happen. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen (YouTube founders) are building an exciting new company and we look forward to watching the Delicious service continue to develop!
Often, users of Digg comment how they enjoy some of the content, but that readers notice that the same individuals get their
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!
