Web ads that learn from you [Updated]

This might surprise you, but the holy grail for many online advertisers is to make an ad that people actually like. Based on the current state of the banner ad economy, that might not seem like the case.

Thanks to the simple addition of thumbs up and thumbs down buttons on many websites, advertisers are finally getting a sense of how enjoyable (or annoying) their ads are.

The Internet has long provided a measurement of how effective an ad is -- that is how many times it was clicked versus how often it was shown, a metric called click-through rate. But that's based simply on how loud and flashy a banner can be in order to attract a reader's attention.

A click doesn't necessarily convert to a purchase, or "conversion" as they call it, nor are visitors guaranteed to associate the product positively. If an ad mimics a virus alert, it might get clicked out of fear or urgency but won't elicit a pleasant reaction once users realize they were duped.

Many social networking sites, including Facebook, Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon, are beginning to shift toward a subjective ad model. Initial results from allowing users to rate ads have been mostly positive. The success may be inspiring a trend, as advertisers throughout the Web seem to be toning down on annoying ads.

One of the boldest implementations is Digg Ads, which publicly launched in August and has tested exceptionally well, according to Mike Maser, Digg's chief strategy officer.

The new sponsored posts appear in the main content space and look almost identical (save for a thin gray line and small "sponsored by" text) to user-submitted news stories. Whereas an isolated graphic ad on Digg gets about eight clicks out of every 10,000 impressions, Digg Ads are pulling click-through rates of 2% to 3%.

"The results were astounding to us," Maser said. The advertisers are "writing copy and headlines in a way that's almost as if you'd want to share it with someone."

Digg brainstorming new communications tool for users

Photo: A bird's-eye view of the crowds at the Digg Meetup a couple of weeks ago in New York. Credit: Mark Milian

Ever since Digg removed a popular feature that lets its users communicate with one another a few weeks ago, some of the site's members have complained that the company yanked the "social" out of the social news site.

For those who are not steeped in the ins and outs of Digg culture, here's some background. The site used to have a feature called "shouts," which members could use to let their friends know about a story or item that they especially liked. Sounds harmless enough. But it turns out that some skillful Diggers used shouts to game the system and promote their pet posts, many of which landed on the homepage.

The upshot: Digg removed the feature and is now back to the drawing board to come up with another tool that's not as susceptible to spamming. That turns out to be easier said than done. Digg has to tread a delicate line between keeping its core members happy and being a website that is useful to millions of broader readers who rely on Digg to unearth interesting news stories, not just niche posts that were interesting only to a handful of power users.

"What we want is to give our users the ability to communicate," said Digg Chief Executive Jay Adelson during an interview at a Diggnation event in New York a couple of weeks ago. "What we don't want is to create a system that's easy to abuse."

Adelson admits his San Francisco company hasn't yet found a solution. But he did share with us his broader thoughts on what it would look like. First, it would be ...

Google's Suggest feature makes for some surprising fill-in-the-blanks

Google's suggested search terms for "Charlies Darwin is."

Computers can be unintentionally funny. Take the unlikely vein of amusement buried within Google's search suggestion feature.

Launched in December 2004 as a beta product called Google Suggest, the doohickey attempts to finish your thought as you type a search query. Suggest wasn't integrated into Google.com or various Web browser toolbars until last year.

Since then, users have found plenty of Google-generated phraseology quirks to snicker about. The most amusing findings have percolated on social bookmarking websites Digg and Reddit.

The game works like this: type a partial search like "Barack Obama is" or "Bill O'Reilly is" into Google.

The search engine then uses a series of algorithms designed to guess the most likely ending to your query, a Google spokesman wrote in an e-mail. Which means the results are derived from actual user queries, not with Google's software.

Anyway, if those guesses are entertaining enough, snap a picture of the list and submit it to your local social website.

For those too lazy to punch the previous two terms into Google, the search engine irreverently suggests that Barack Obama could be an idiot, a Muslim, a socialist, the Antichrist, "hot" or your new bicycle -- whatever that means.

Google offers a similarly variegated list of characteristics for Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly, which swings from racist, to idiot and back to the more flattering "nice."

Type "Charles Darwin is" and you'll find that in addition to suggesting that the British scientist is, yet again, an idiot -- the words "wrong," and "satan" may be just as likely...

Reddit updates its toolbar feature for the first time in 4 years [UPDATED]

Reddit toolbar, version 2.0, the first revision in years. Credit: Reddit

When Digg joined Facebook and StumbleUpon last month in the pantheon of social sites that followed users to outside Web pages, all of a sudden it seemed every other social destination was deploying a frame toolbar.

Tsk, those Johnny-come-latelys.  You might not have known, but Reddit, the underdog social news site from Conde Nast, has had a similar toolbar for four years.

But don't worry, even some avid users of the site had no idea it was there. That's because, unlike those from its social media brethren, the Reddit toolbar is an opt-in feature, buried away in the preferences menu. Plus, it was lacking the visual polish and channel-surfing features that Digg and StumbleUpon have.

But today Reddit is rolling out the first major update to its toolbar in years. It adds all the expected features -- the ability to ...

Digg: Don't shout, use Twitter and Facebook instead

Behind the scenes at Digg's May Townhall. Credit: Tyler Howarth via Flickr

Prepare to see more Digg.com links in your Twitter stream.

As promised in last week's Digg Townhall video conference, the site today removed its internal link-sharing feature called Shout. Users had long complained that Shout was being abused by Digg's top dogs to gain an unfair advantage in promoting their posts to the site's home page.

The new "Share" feature cuts off intra-Digg communication and replaces it with three automated sharing options: e-mail, Twitter and Facebook.

Shifting user promotion off the site may result in less sharing activity on Digg, but it also could have the effect of spilling Digg's branding out onto the other services, which likely would expose the site and its content to new users. 

The change also stands to benefit big-league Digg users who also have a large number of followers on Twitter (as opposed to those who are popular only on Digg). That could help level the playing field.

But the users who have been dominating Digg's front page had been planning for the change over the last week. Embedded within ...

Led by controversial DiggBar, toolbars are taking over the Web

Digg's new toolbar, which follows users around the Web by placing a frame on top of external websites, has had a bumpy first week after some bloggers publicly condemned the new product. 

Some bloggers have been relentless in their protests against the social news site for encroaching on their screen real estate and for potentially standing between Internet content and Google's search indexing algorithm. Strange to target Digg specifically, when other big sites including Facebook and StumbleUpon have been doing this for months -- but the Web works in mysterious ways.

Regardless, Digg announced Wednesday that it would make key changes to help search engines index the new code, assuring users that its method doesn't affect search engine rankings. Developers worked closely with search engine optimization (SEO) specialists from the beginning to ensure that the new method adheres to standard best practices, the company wrote in a blog post.

But even the best practices for a toolbar may not be ideal for publishers. Google assigns a ranking ...

Tip'd is social news for businesspeople

New Tip'd version video walkthrough. Credit: Tip'd

If Digg is the USA Today of social news -- in that it serves an all-purpose, national audience -- then Tip'd is aiming to be the Wall Street Journal.

The concept is the same as other social news websites, like Digg and Reddit. Users submit links to news stories around the Web, and the community votes on which are worthy enough to be promoted to the home page. Except with Tip'd, it's solely business and financial news.

Stories popular on Tip'd deal with more in-depth analysis about bankruptcy and owning a home, whereas Digg's business section covers more bizarre, general-interest topics, such as this one about the national increase in hot dog vendors.

This week, Tip'd delivered its first major revision since launching in October. Among the new features is a video section and a tagging feature called SocialTickers. The latter provides a list of the most-talked-about companies, and a page that shows any particular corporation's live stock ticker as well as blog posts and Twitter chatter mentioning the company.

Tip'd isn't the first social news website that targets a niche. Auto Spies is geared toward car enthusiasts; Ball Hype is for sports lovers; Design Float covers Web designers. Before branching out more broadly, Digg began with a focus on technology news.

In fact, Tip'd isn't even the first social news site that zeroes in on business and finance news. "There are seven or eight other sites ...

Why the Internet loves bacon*

A sizzling skillet with bacon. Credit: robotsari via Flickr

There is a topic that has been wrapping itself around the Web's collective consciousness for some time. And within the last year or so, this meme has become so potent that it can no longer be ignored.

The sizzling phenomenon? Bacon.

If the innumerable blog posts about the salt-cured meat are to be believed, bacon can be added to just about any food, used in place of cotton and leather, and is enshrined on restroom blow-dryers around the country.

What can bacon do? Apparently, it can serve as a lampshade, an iPhone carrying case, a watch, an alarm clock or the building blocks for a creepy-looking "bacon man" shrine. Are people actually carrying around bacon briefcases? Let's hope not.

A meme -- the flavor of the week that propagates quickly through e-mail and chatter on social networks -- can come in many forms: a feline that speaks with poor grammar (Lolcats), a goofy '80s pop singer (RickRoll) or a chubby kid bopping to a Romanian dance song (Numa Numa).

Bacon is as popular as any. Even as I was writing this piece, I was interrupted by a Twitter update containing a link to a photo of a bacon bra.

Yet, no matter how many new bacon products spring up, it seems as though a new one is always a day away -- waiting to delight StumbleUpon users, provide a chuckle for Diggers and appear in dozens of Twitter feeds.

Not that Twitter needs any more fodder for bacon chatter. A common complaint about the short-blogging service is that it's just an avenue for people to tell the world what they're having for lunch. Unsurprisingly, you'll find ...

WeFollow: Kevin Rose's people-powered Twitter directory an instant hit

Digg and WeFollow founder Kevin Rose. Credit: ojbyrne via Flickr

Digg founder Kevin Rose launched a new website last weekend that hosts a people-powered user directory for Twitter, that other hot social network in town.

WeFollow breaks down popular Twitter users by category, as defined by the people themselves. You choose your online affiliations with three tags (say, tech, music and politics). You'll then appear on those lists, along with other like-minded Twitterers.

Twitter rolled out its own directory of sorts in January with its "suggested users" list. But the feature lacks any user contribution. It's simply a pool of top personalities, as selected by Twitter's staff.

Like the suggested users list, WeFollow prominently features those who are already quite popular. Rose says the ability to self-categorize helps you connect with peers. But he acknowledges that Twitter could render his "experiment" useless when it expands its own directory.

"I don't think the suggested users list is a bad thing. And I wasn't on there for a very long time," Rose said, although he is now. "My guess is that they're probably working on something bigger and better. But they're obviously dealing with scalability and other things."

WeFollow should be safe for a while. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said last month that an improved version of suggested users was "not super-high on the priority list."

Rose says he has a bunch of new features lined up for WeFollow, which he says has been getting an average of 800,000 page views a day. But his work on the project is a bit surprising for a couple of reasons. At a time when Twitter and his own social network, Digg, are in a battle ...

Obama's 'open for questions' experiment uses Digg-like layout

On Tuesday, the White House website posted an open call for questions that citizens would like President Obama to address during an online town hall meeting he'll conduct Thursday. Users can log in directly to the site to post questions and vote on those submitted by others. 

Less than a day after the call was posted, the site has recorded more than 13,000 questions and 415,000 votes from users.

Allowing users to vote particular questions up or down is a method employed by social news sites such as Digg, Yahoo Buzz and Reddit, where the most popular stories rise to the top and achieve the most visibility.

The jobs, financial stability and budget categories each have more than 2,000 questions so far, and tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of votes.  Users can scroll through as many questions as they like and vote on all or none of them. The vote count on each question, both for and against, is also visible. Because the voting statistics and the questions themselves are publicly viewable, the system manages an impressive level of transparency: Voters should know if the president actually chooses the most popular questions, or if he sidesteps any of them.

Each time a user opens a category, the software appears to highlight a random question from the category, ostensibly to give each question a chance to score some votes. A submitter named James of Bloomington, Ind., posted the most popular question so far, scoring more than 2,100 votes in the jobs section. (You can see how many votes a questions has received by mousing over the blue bars next to the check and 'X' marks.) James wants to know:

As a student, who like so many others works full time and attends school full time, only to break even at the end of the month. What is the government doing to make higher education more affordable for lower and middle class families?

As you can see from the image at right, the software doesn't appear to be worried about highlighting questions with typos or ones that ask about, say, the legalization of marijuana. And in a free society, why should it?

Corrected, 9:15 a.m.: This post corrects an earlier error regarding the day the White House issued an open call for questions.

-- David Sarno