Avid internet surfers and social networkers have created a variety of ways to share and discover content . . . there are search engines, portals, news sites, wikis, blogs and more. If you want information or a cool song or video, where do YOU look? Is your approach different if you're on your phone?
As my colleague Je recently pointed out, “discovery” is all the buzz in internet circles.
A recent study by Nielsen shows that an increasing number of internet users – 18% -- are first turning to social networking sites to find information online. I think if you take into account viral messages and personal news feeds, this percentage is even higher.
At BuzzCity, we've just created two new tools – one for sharing content and another that makes it easy to “mobilize” your blogs and RSS feeds.
ShareIt is a quick straight-forward way for myGamma's members to share what they like – blogs, groups, profiles, applications, photo albums, mobile webpages – with their friends. Just click the ShareIt link, found at the bottom of every application page, and the share goes directly into your Activity Feed, which is linked to your myGamma profile. As a user, I can view my shares, my friends' shares, both at the same time and the most popular shares across the community.
We used to have a feature called “Tell-a-friend”. Like “ShareIt”, the “Tell-a-friend” link was found at the bottom of myGamma content. The major difference, though, is that “Tell-a-friend” sent out a private email. Word-of-mouth recommendations are great, but the one-to-one nature of this type of sharing also means that if you're a new member with an interesting moblog, it'll take some time to attract readers. Merging “Tell-a-friend” with the existing Activity Feeds makes sharing public and dramatically improves content discovery.
Initial feedback from the myGamma community has been quite positive.
Mobilizer meanwhile enables bloggers to convert syndicated web content (blogs, RSS and Atom feeds) into a mobile website. No programming involved. While this tool is still in the beta stage, we expect it to open up new revenue opportunities for bloggers, who can join the BuzzCity Publisher programme and earn fees from mobile ads. Each mobilized site also comes with a ShareIt link at the bottom, so popular content can spread across the mobile internet more quickly.
Top of the list at the moment is a site called “Wilber Mobile Home,” which shows visitors how to create their own mobile homepage. 1,325 users have recently shared this link. Another popular site on the sharing list is a community word game called “Name of Foods” (name a dish that starts with the last letter of the previous entry.)
We also used the ShareIt function in a recent contest, the Best of myGamma Food Awards. Members voted on their favorite foodie content by sharing it. The group or blog with the most shares won G$ 5000 (Gamma Dollars 5000). Over a two-month period, we counted more than 5000 shares.
So, what are you waiting for?
Didn't your mother teach you to share? : )
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