Lee Garnett from ncomment did it again. We knew that the first comic was absolutely amazing, but this Part 2 took it to another level.

Click the image for the full comic (but check out part I first if you haven’t already).

How awesome is that!

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Read more about social news on this blog.

Changes, changes, changes.  Somehow, Mixx is able to make changes 10 times faster than any other major social media site on the Internet.  All of the changes (except one) look to improve the functionality and user experience immensely.

On their blog, they explain these changes in detail.  As with any major change to a website, my natural inclination is to a) test it inside and out, looking for flaws, and, b) try to break it.

Tests went fine.  Haven’t been able to break anything yet.

This comes in response to a “Wish List o’ Features” that Mixx asked for in conjunction with their first birthday.  The promise was to have the new features up and running before 2009.  As usual, Mixx.com beat their deadline and produced the changes with plenty of time to spare.  Here they are, straight from the blog post:

1. Moving Notifications from email to Site Mail: Our top vote earner, on-site notifications allow you to get notifications likes “You have a new friend!” right on Mixx. Then we’ll give you a little nag—just once a day—so you can check in. We don’t want you to miss out on any notifications. If you are currently getting notifications in email, you’ll need to go to your settings page and tweak the settings just the way you want them.
2. Improved Friend-ing: The second favorite suggested feature, the upgraded Friend feature makes it easy to see which of your friends are mutual and which only go one way.  Check out your fans (go to www.mixx.com/users/<yourMixxID>/fans) and friend them back!
3. Show All Mixxers: This is a really cool little feature that will let you see every Mixxer who voted on a story, photo or video. We expect to have it up and running very soon.

They went beyond the three winning features and added a few more…

• Community Widget: Run a Community on Mixx? Now you can grab all of the headlines that reach Popular in your Community and send them directly to your website.  Check it out on the Make Your Widget page.
• Simplified Submit Flow: So maybe it didn’t make it to the top of the list, but many of you have asked for it, so now it’s easier than ever to get your content into the Mixx and right where you need it to be.
• Submit Button: Tired of looking for the Submit button? Search no more—you’ll now find in the header area of every page.

They only new/improved feature that appears to still need some work is the submission flow.  They delivered very well on the concept that there needs to be an easier way to submit, a “quick submit” option, so that people on the go can still do their social media submissions seemlessly without having to go through the long process.  For those with the time and attention to detail, they can continue past the initial step of URL, Title, Description, Category and enhance their submission.

The flaw mentioned earlier is that it is now much more difficult to submit to multiple communities and groups.  As far as we could tell, you can only do it one at a time.  Knowing Mixx, I’m sure this will be adjusted quickly.

One thing not mentioned in their blog post was the return of the ability to vote for stories from the Friends’ Activity pages.  This was a controversial feature before because it allowed for “blind voting” and the popular section would occasionally get spam submissions hitting.  I don’t anticipate the same problem now that the functionality is back.  There are more users and a stronger “top user” base that should be able to self-police it.

Overall, the changes should draw huge Kudos from users and the general public.

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Read more about social media sites on Soshable.

Over at Social News Watch, we’re trying to compile a complete list of social media sites.  There are so many out there — tons of brand new ones and a ton of old ones that might have been forgotten.

Whether for marketing or simple enjoyment, it’s good to have a complete list.  While submitting to thousands of sites might prove to be counter-productive, we plan on breaking down the list into several different versions so that everyone has a chance to find the ones they really like and want to use.

Head over to SNW and see what you can add to the conversation, or simply post the sites that you know (or lists of sites already put together) and we will begin the long process of finding, checking, and classifying the sites into something manageable.

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Read more about social media websites on Soshable.

With the recent happenings at Digg and the apparent rise of Mixx, it would seem that the balance of power in social media is shifting.  The question is: why do Mixx front page stories still not drive any traffic?

With huge gains in all of the traffic reports, it would seem that Mixx would be at the very least close to Reddit’s ability to drive thousands of visitors to a website from the front page.  As recently as last week, we tested a story that hit the front page of Mixx to see if it was finally there in the way that it sends traffic.

It’s not.

What’s the deal here?  What happened.  Is it possible that Mixx is sending less traffic to sites than it did before?  There are more visitors and users at Mixx than ever before, but now it seems that front page stories are not taking people to the site.

The reason for this is right there – “front page stories are not taking people to the site.”

The first problem is in the custom nature of the front page.  Users who are logged in are served a page based upon their preferences when they go to the homepage.  The “front page” is actually the popular page, an inner page of the site.  Those who are not logged in will get the popular stories served to them, but logged-in users may not unless they choose to.

The second problem is actually based upon a brilliant marketing move.  The headline link used to take visitors to the source media and there was a “view details” link next to it that took people to the Mixx page for that submissions.  Now, it’s the other way around — the headline link takes you to the Mixx page and now there is a “view story” link that takes visitors to the source.

In reality, this is a move that will bring more visitors to the site because it is more search engine friendly for Mixx itself.  Having the large link to the Mixx page for a submission increases page views and is done so from a keyword-rich link.  This makes it more likely that a search engine will index the Mixx page itself and rank it for searches that are relevant.  Google traffic has a chance of being higher than user traffic on the site.  It’s a good move for the future of Mixx, but a tough move for those who are looking for the server-crashing visitor boost that sites like Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon offer.

If they fix one, the other probably wouldn’t be necessary.  For now, users are stuck knowing that their front page story is sending dozens of visitors to their target site.

It’s a real catch-22 for the executives at Mixx.  Do they continue to optimize their website for future visitors, or do they entice users with ways to increase traffic?  Both ideas have merit.

The right thing to do is to stay with what they’re doing.  Google traffic will trump social media traffic any day because of relevance and trustworthiness.  Still, the need to make changes to the overall layout in order to make the site more sticky.  It has tremendous potential with innovative features, butif they can’t make the features easier to get to and more cleverly positioned to draw attention, people will come and then they will go.  Either way, they have a long way to go before they are a traffic driver to rival Reddit, let alone Digg.

Read more social media opinions on this blog.

This is a guest post by Tamish

The recent action of Digg against a number of its “top users” is being questioned at the moment.  Recent stories point all the blame on Digg for the action however its a lot more twisted than it seems.

Though a number of Digg users had been fast-digging for a long time, the issue had hit digg just recently. Apparently it seems that there had been a cold war between top users. In order to remove some top users from the stack, some reported them up for different reasons.

After that became a long motion of more anti-digg stories.

As Digg is responsible for stopping misuse of the system, it is responsible for the bans. Any user that was banned just went straight head up against Digg.

The fact that most of the banned users didn’t accept their fault was that they thought Digg would take them back because of their popularity.

One reason why users submit multiple stories for frontpage is to increase their chances of reaching frontpage and have more fans. This would just make them more powerful.

Social Marketers know that. They are not interested in contributing good stories but Business. Once they are established on Digg, they get offers from various companies to submit and popularize their product through social sites.

A lot of the banned users moved on to other sites like Mixx claiming them to be better than Digg however I expect that sooner or later the same issue would be brought up in the mixx community just what happened at Digg.

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This guest post reflects the opinions of the author, but with the recent rash of anti-Digg posts, having a different perspective is important.  Read more articles about Digg right here.

Recent changes at both Propeller and Mixx have pushed the inevitable forward.  Mixx, the brainchild of Chris McGill, has been poised for success for about a year now.  Propeller, the once-proud Netscape, was doomed the moment that AOL stepped into the picture.

If recent trends on Alexa (which we all know are not always accurate) give any indication about what is happening, then Mixx is making the move to become the 3rd choice amonst social media sites.  Propeller, on the other hand, is heading down, down, down as users have expressed concerns about a lack of communication from the administrators as well as a disastrous redesign that threatened to push its dwindling core of users off to another site (perhaps even Mixx).

Propeller has hope, but they will need to employ some fresh ideas from people outside of their normal realm.  The current leadership is heading (theoretically) in the right direction, but there needs to be an infusion of ideas for them to be able to keep pace or even exceed expectations in the growing world of social media.

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Read more social media opinions on this blog.

There are many social media addicts in this world.  You see it every day on Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon.  Even Propeller, Mixx, and Newsvine have their share.  What you may or may not know is whether or not you are one of them.

It’s often tough to recognize.  Perhaps the joy of seeing your first story on the front page of the site was enough to set you off.  Maybe it’s a desire to promote your point of view, a political candidate, even your own blog or business.  For some, it’s something that passes the time (until too much time has passed).  Read these signs below and seek immediate help if 3 or more apply to you.

1. When you hear breaking news on the radio, you immediately pull over and whip out your laptop or cell phone to see if it has been submitted.  Sometimes, you whip out your laptop or cell phone without pulling over.
2. This sentence makes sense to you: “I almost FPd a Jobs fanboy submit, but the brigade buried it off upcoming.”
3. One or two nights a week are spent listening to The Drill Down and the Social Blend at The Mixxing Bowl.
4. Your GTalk is loaded with people you’ve never met, never actually spoken to, and whose name may or may not be real, but somehow you feel a close kinship with them.
5. Any time you play cards, a spade makes you think of a guy named Muhammad.
6. You had plants, as far as you can recall, but there are now just baskets of dirt with dead brown leaves in them.  You vaguely remember having a dog as well.  Also, there’s a strange smell in your apartment.
7. Some (or all) of the following groups of apparently random letters and numbers means something to you: QGYH2sbutkicGt2099dexlovex27hlmoojj.
8. Regardless of what kind of computer you have, you claim to have a Mac.  If you are bold enough to admit that you own a PC, you at least run Firefox as your browser.
9. Story, video, and image quality are important to you, but not as important as the headline.
10. The Presidential race may or may not be important to you, but either way, your main reason for wishing the primaries were over is to stop reading headlines about Ron Paul.
11. Within 0.03 seconds, you can look at a cute picture of an animal and know whether or not it was photoshopped.
12. Your feed list is longer than your grocery list

In the real world, we pick our friends based upon certain traits and conditions.  We want people we can like who have shared interests and who have a certain proximity to us.  The Internet has changed the proximity aspect of friendship, but we still need to be able to interact with our friends in some way to truly be friends.

In social media, “friendship” is more of a way to get votes for your submissions than to interact with others.  There are certainly those who make real friends through social media.  Some of the people I interact with on a daily basis were people I met on social media sites.  Still, the bottom line in social media friendship is “vote for my submissions and I’ll vote for yours.”

There is something skewed about this concept, but we’ll ignore it for this article.  Instead, we’ll accept the fact that most social media friends aren’t really friends and focus on how to be a good one, as well as finding other good ones.

Good Social Media Friends Submit Good Content

It seems like a no-brainer, but it needs to be stated.  I submit stories that I think are worth reading and I expect my friends to do the same.  If someone submits the occasional crappy story or self-promotional piece, I don’t mind as long as the majority of their stuff is good.

Good Social Media Friends Vote for MOST of Your Submissions

I remember getting a message from a social media powerhouse one time that said “Vote for all of my s__t and I’ll try to vote for most of yours.”  Arrogant, pompous, but hey, at least he was being honest.  The idea of blind-voting for all of your friends’ submissions is a flawed one for some sites.  Digg and StumbleUpon take the number of stories you Digg or Thumb Up into account when determining the quality of your submissions, so hitting everything submitted is definitely a bad idea.

I have been running an experiment over the last couple of weeks with this, just to make sure that it was true.  A week and a half ago, I was putting 1-4 stories a day on the front page of Digg and getting a decent level of stumbles on my submissions.  Once I started ramping up my Diggs, hitting everything submitted by my hundreds of friends, I started noticing that it was taking longer and longer to hit the front page.  Once I had a great weburbanist submission get 194 diggs in the first 24 hours and NOT make the front page, my over-digging theory was confirmed.

Reddit, Propeller, and Mixx, on the other hand, seem to not mind blind voting.  In fact, it helps your status to vote more on Propeller and Mixx.  Still, many people watch for blind voters and either sink them or avoid them altogether.

As a general rule, vote for the submissions that are good.  If you would have considered submitting it, it’s worth your Digg/Stumble/Upmod/Vote.

Good Social Media Friends Keep Messaging Their Submissions to a Minimum

Sending stories on social media sites is okay if used only when necessary.  If it’s really, really, really good, you should consider spreading the word.  Don’t spam, and don’t accept friends who spam you.  If you’re getting every submission from a user sent to you, send them a message and ask them to slow it down.  If they don’t remove them.  Don’t be a spammer and don’t reward spammers with your friendship.

Good Social Media Friends Communicate with Each Other Every Now and Then

One of the best ways to really be a friend is to communicate.  It may take some time, especially if you have hundreds or thousands of friends, but take the time occasionally to drop your friends a line.  Thank them for voting for your submissions every once in a while.  Compliment them for finding a particularly incredible piece of media. Just say “hi” from time to time.  Some won’t appreciate it and will think you are trying to game them.  Most won’t mind it at all.

Good Social Media Friends Defend Each Other

This is a minor point normally, but in some cases, it’s a big deal.  If one of your good social media friends is getting bashed by a troll, help your friend out.  Bury the troll’s negative comment.  Write one in reply that defends your friend.  You wouldn’t let your best friend in real life get bashed and you shouldn’t let your social media friend get bashed either.

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The best social media submitters have friends.  Lots of them.  Making the right friends and working with them the right way is possibly the most important aspect of being successful on social media.  Someone with no friends can submit a picture of Elvis walking around in the forest with Bigfoot and it will never make the front page of any social media site.  It’s a flaw in the systems, but it’s one we have to deal with for now.  Might as well make the most of it.

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Social Media blogs are everywhere.  Heck, you’re at one right now!

Pound for pound, punch for punch, Mixx has been a true innovator in social media as it approaches it’s first full year of popularity in the segment.  Their recent launch of Mixx Communities is no exception — a true step in the right direction that most other social media sites have either ignored or just haven’t considered.

Below is the bulk of the coverage so far regarding the launch of the new feature, but something minor that was overlooked that had a negative effect on the launch was a miscalculation in the Karma aspect of the communities.  It seems to have been fixed now, but for the first couple of days, someone could accumulate thousands of Karma points by simply creating Mixx Communities and importing stories.

Since it is fixed, there is no way to see exactly what happened, but here is the theory.  Since submitting is one of the best ways to gain Karma on Mixx, the algorithm wasn’t prepared to handle the unintentional mass-submissions that creating a community allowed.  One step in the creation of a community was to place up to 10 tags that were part of the community.  As stories with these tags were imported, the community creator became the “submitter” of the story within the community and received a lot of Karma with hundreds of “submissions” happening at ones.

It is only a theory, and it seems to have been fixed, but we will continue to monitor it.  In the meantime, this should not be construed as anything negative towards Mixx or the launch of their Communities.  It was a minor mistake that has apparently been scaled back quite a bit — as I created communities last night, my Karma rose swiftly.  Tonight we created two, and… not so much in the way of Karma so far.  We’ll verify with another creation tomorrow.

Here are some of the stories that have already been published about the launch:

Mixx Gets Serious about Community Building – TechCrunch

Mixx Wants You to Build a Community – ReadWriteWeb

Mixx Communities – Teknobites

Mixx it Up with a Free Hosted Community – SocialTimes

Mixx Launches Mixx Communities – Orangeinks

Mixx Adds Communities which is like Groups on Steroids – SearchRank

Mixx it Up – New Communities Feature -  GeekEstateBlog

When the news wires started buzzing, burning, and smoking about Dennis Kucinich introducing 35 letters of impeachment against President George W. Bush, we started watching the three top social media sites to see who would get the news the quickest to their front page.

As of the time of this post, it was broken 3 hours, 33 minutes ago.  We started watching the front pages of Digg, Reddit, Propeller, Newsvine, and Mixx just over 3 hours ago.  Here are the results:

Propeller and Newsvine: Currently not on the front page.  This is disappointing, as one of the reasons to have Scouts and Anchors on Propeller is to quickly move breaking stories to the front page.  For Newsvine, which has a front page that is similarly edited and also feeds directly from many news sources, this is not a good omission.

Digg: 2 hours, 38 minutes.  The first three stories that broke the news were bypassed by this Rawstory piece.  The odd part came when the live C-Span coverage received quite a few more diggs (over 300 in 2 and a half hours) but was immediately “buried” from the upcoming section when the other story hit the front page.  Fishy.

Mixx and Reddit: Less than 30 minutes.  By the time we started checking the front pages, both Mixx and Reddit had it already on the front page.  Mixx had it in their innovated Breaking section and Reddit members had already pushed it to the front page naturally.

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Read more about Social News Sites right here.