TOP 1 REASON Muti users are succumbing to social bookmarking bad habits...

Been reading a lot about Digg circles, and how to get your site to the front page of social bookmarking tools - just by tweaking the headline. Cheating? Maybe.

It's a bad habit. In my opinion. It means that people aren't reading the stuff that goes up on the bookmarking tools. They're voting up or down based on the title. Because if they had actually read a lot of the stuff, they'd find a fairly mediocre article, usually linking back to an original source. Traffic mongering at it's worst.

So, it was with a bit of concern that I check out Muti's homepage the other day. No less than 3 crappy "Top X things" or "X Things to do". For those who aren't up with Digg culture, apparently, those type of headlines are perfect vehicles to get voted onto bookmarking homepages.


Why, oh why can't South African users at least try preserve the integrity of what seems to be a well-used and intelligent social bookmarking tool? And to top it all off - they're international websites. We're not even traffic mongering our own talent!

I'm off to go vote for myself.

Comments

  1. This is what I've been saying for a while. As soon as Muti becomes entrenched it's not going to make a lot of sense to use it. It will really become just another clone. At the moment the posts are relatively SA-centric, people are only putting up stuff that is SA content. But then people start using it more and more, and eventually they also start Muti'ing international sites and then you might as well just start using Digg.
    If you are using Muti simultaneously with Digg, you aren't really using it properly I think

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  2. Ok, I've done my bit, added it to Muti. :)

    PS I will get around to adding content to my blog. I will. I will.

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  3. PPS How come am I allowed to vote for an URL I've just submitted on muti? Doesn't make sense.

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  4. > PPS How come am I allowed to vote for an URL I've just submitted on muti?

    IrcMaidon: I am not sure what you are asking, are you saying that the submitter should NOT be able to vote on their own submissions?

    I agree that the 'vote up' checkbox on the submit page doesn't make a lot of sense as there is little reason to submit something and not vote it up. The entire submit form and process is being reworked now in any case and the vote up checkbox will go. But I still think the submitter should be allowed to vote on their own submissions.

    What do you think?

    Regards and thanks for using muti

    Uno: Yes it is possible that muti will become like Digg but I am really hoping we can keep that from happening. I don't think a few international items here and there is a bad thing at all.

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  5. Dear Neville

    How does kudos work? I assume when I vote for a post I've submitted, I'm not giving myself kudos.

    Look, if we wanted to get fancy - and I've not hung around on reddit or digg or any of the others, so this is not based on experience [I have no clue as to how they work], plus I like detail and I may sometimes tend to complicate things ;) - how about ranking your vote? Sometimes either/or is not sufficient. Have you ever done one of those MBTI-type personality tests? Yes, I may have a preference for doing A rather than B, but it may not be a strong preference.

    For example, I submitted that URL from News24 on high maintenance. It's interesting, yes, but not earth-shattering.

    As to the content of Muti: how about having two streams? Hot SA news/new SA news plus Hot international news/new SA news? And then obviously a combined set for those who don't care?

    :)
    IM

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  6. Hi IrcMaidon

    I replied earlier but I screwed up the captcha it seems. I will try to reconstruct what I said.

    Regarding kudus, (not kudos!) only other peoples votes for your items count.

    I think adding a rank to the vote will overly complicate things. If an item is not earth shattering then others will simply not vote it up. So there is already an inherent ranking in the system.

    Your idea of 'streams' is interesting but don't the tags already provide that? Just click on the za tag and there is your za stream right there. I will soon add 'custom' views, where for example you could specify NOT za as a filter. That would be your international stream.

    Thanks for your comments.

    Regards

    Neville

    PS. Dont you hate Captchas?

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  7. Dear Neville

    See, I told you I like to complicate things :)

    I'm still trying to get to grips with the concepts of tags :) The implications are slowly filtering through my subconcious. Currently trying to think of the best way to tag the two proper blog entries I've made in my fledgling blog. Suppose I should just do a search to find advice on how to tag properly.

    The custom views sound good. But sometimes you need to be really obvious in presenting things to people, as I'm sure you know. :)

    However, we'd have to be very diligent at tagging to keep things categorised properly.

    I accidently switched off my pc this morning, and I rebooted and Firefox opened up back to my previous sessions, and I'd typed out the whole reply to you when suddenly I saw there wasn't a Captcha. So I had to go back to the blog and reopen the comments - and then I just copied and pasted.

    Else I would have been annoyed. It's like the old version of Webmail, when you'd spend forever typing out a response and click send and discover you'd timed out. I learnt to copy and paste into a Word doc, just to be safe. Gmail rocks.

    So I feel your pain. Having to rewrite a response generally tends to end up being shorter and crisper.

    Hope you're having a good weekend :)

    IM

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  8. Interesting discussion lads... In terms of international content - surely THAT would make Muti more like Digg/Reddit. A clone. But if there was someway to filter local content - you'd niche yourself quite nicely in the market.

    In fact, there is a DIRE need for an AFRICAN content aggregator. Think big - Muti could be it.

    However, falling into clone status, and let's not bluff ourselves, it looks exactly like Reddit (I have 1 or 2 ideas on this Neville, must chat) -- might prevent you from becoming the de facto African social bookmarking tool.

    My 3c.

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  9. Is Muti a ZA or African social networking bookmark site? I was under the impression it served the whole of Africa?

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  10. Hi Joro

    Muti has and always will be an African social networking site.

    Regards

    Neville

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  11. Muti is much, much better than Digg.

    Just hope it stays that way.

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