Nudgeville, new Diggs on the block? (interview)
Nudgeville was created by Melbourne blogger Arnold Aranez, also known as Mr Gadget, after a bit of a run in with Digg and the whole Digg banning that went on recently not to mention how it’s all but impossible to get a front page story these days on Digg because it so heavily leans toward tech stories by ‘the big blogs’.
I grabbed a couple of minutes of Arnold’s time over Twitter this afternoon to ask him a few questions about Nudgeville.
Mat - So Arnold, how’s Nudgeville coming along so far.
Arn - So far so good since launch, we’ve grown to around 50 or so dedicated ‘Nudgers’ in the space of 4 weeks.
In a nutshell, it’s moving along nicely - community and traffic wise. The aim of Nudgeville is simply to be a friendly place to share quality web links and stories. It’s also a place where you can promote your own website. Win-win environment.
Mat - It’s no secret you were one of those who were banned by Digg, is that the main reason you’ve set up Nudgeville?
Arn - Yes and no, I felt that Digg was way too strict and elitist. It was a challenge trying to find someone to help you. If you didn’t know what you were doing, you had the chance of banning your site forever without really knowing why.
At Nudgeville, even the owner is on hand if you need.
We have some top Diggers and Stumblers popping in and there has just been a new Community Moderator appointed (I’ll be introducing him in a blog shortly).
It’s still a small project but we have high hopes for the future.
So there you have it, a social networking / bookmarking site who is doing their best to improve on what the others are offering….from the start. I’m hoping that there is a bright future ahead for Nudgeville, I’ve already got an account over there so head on over, join up and start ‘nudging’.
Why you should work across multiple social networking sites
There’s an absolute plethora of social networking websites out there now. They come in many different shapes and sizes, abilities, disabilities, problems, solutions, and cover pretty well every subject under the sun.
But which ones should I join up to?
That’s a reasonably easy question to answer. All of them! Well maybe not every single social networking site that rears its head on Mashable, but you should get yourself signed up on all the sites that are specific to your interests and / or blogging topics.
For example, I blog about photography, video, product reviews, cooking, social networking and a few other random things so I’m on social networking sites like Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.TV, Flickr, Last.FM, Facebook, Myspace, Virb, Friend Feed, LinkedIn and errmm I’m probably forgetting some but those are the core sites that I post to, stream to, link to, republish to and whatever else to.
Going through the above list there’s quite a number of overlaps, eg. Digg vs. StumbleUpon, YouTube vs. Vimeo vs. BlipTV, and Facebook vs. Myspace vs. Virb.
So why all the overlaps?
Everybody is different and well different people are on different websites for different reasons, eg. I really like the way BlipTV handles the videos I post and that I just have a simple block of code for my channel and whenever I publish a new video to BlipTV it automatically hits the front page of my blog, however I know more people use YouTube and Vimeo so to still bring solid traffic in from those sites I also publish the video there.
Another example would be the Facebook vs. Myspace vs. Virb network, all of them have very different user demographics so to actually get the most value out of the potential traffic you get involved with all of them.
Of course being involved in so many different websites can be very time consuming keeping people updated with your blogging and what not, not to mention quite a big distraction. Which is where websites like Friend Feed popup which basically allows you to network the updates from all your endeavors onto a single page. You can also subscribe / friend other people so you can easily keep up with the goings on in their worlds.
Aside from Friend Feed you’ve also got plenty of different browser plugins for Firefox, and even better is the browser that’s built to handle pretty well all of these websites Flock. Flock allows you to enter all of your different usernames and passwords into some handy forms and from there whenever you and your friends update one of your social accounts you get the update in Flock.
And lastly, for those not wanting to further slow Firefox down with plugins, or who don’t like the look of Flock, most of these social networking websites have many different RSS feed options that you can subscribe to in your reader of choice.
Pretty well everyday a new social networking website pops up, and every second day another one disappears. Choose wisely, stick to the core ones that have been around for a while, but also don’t be afraid to jump onto one of the new ones if it feels like it might last.
Anyway, if you’re on one of the previously mentioned websites and we’re not friends, go and friend me now!
Catch you around the web somewhere.
I’m With The Band - header & background
Last week I re-did the I’m With The Band theme as we just partnered up with the local street press Reverb and needed to setup an area on the front page where people could download the latest edition of Reverb. When I did this theme change I had to mockup a quick header logo until I had the time to sit down and make a new logo / header.
The other thing we want to change up the I’m With The Band website is the colour scheme and the background as well. I’ve spent several hours on the Colour Lovers website checking out various colour palettes to try and get some inspiration, so far I’ve narrowed it down to about 10 different schemes…..arrghh. I think once I have the header logo design completed it might be a little easier to lock the colour scheme down.
Here’s a few websites that I find invaluable when it comes to colour scheming, web designs, logos and headers;
> Colour Lovers - a big database of user submitted colour combinations
> Vecteezy - user submitted vectors, free to download
> Brusheezy - Vecteezy’s sister site for photoshop and illustrator brushes
> Faveup - a gallery of cool website designs, logo designs, and flash designs
> CSS Tux - similar to Faveup, but dedicated to CSS designed websites
> iStockPhoto - a stock photo, vector, flash, and video website where you can buy different elements to construct your design
Anyway, I better actually get to work on this header / logo design instead of just sitting here talking about it. I’ll keep you posted on the I’m With The Band project as it progresses.
Cheers, Matt
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