I've heard the same things about Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit and so on (news.YC?). What I don't get: how do you get a significant number of "friends" on those networks who are willing to watch/read your spam?
My real life friends typically don't use social networks and, not being entrepreneuers themselves, they often did not get the point when I asked them to get a stumbleupon account just to rate my site. On the other hand, I could not yet muster the motivation to worm my account onto some other people's friends list just to make them rate my submissions.
How do you handle that problem? Perhaps a "entrepreneur helps entrepreneur" network for those things would be in order?
how do you get a significant number of "friends" on those networks who are willing to watch/read your spam?
One method I've seen work pretty well is to hire people to actually establish semi-legitimate personas on open social networks like MySpace and Hi5. Pay high school girls $10/hr or so to make thousands of friends and you've established a base for some viral marketing.
The last time I suggested news.yc users collectively upvote each others' submissions on digg/reddit I got downmodded... but I'm still game, if you guys are game.
I would be game, but I don't really have useful sites to submit at the moment. One is in german, and the other contains erotica, which are forbidden on digg.
Anyway, I don't think it would even have to be illegal gaming of the system. We could watch each others submissions and if we like them, vote them up.
Well, the problem with all digg-gaming schemes that I have heard about is that someone usually rats everyone out to Digg and then everyone gets banned.
My real life friends typically don't use social networks and, not being entrepreneuers themselves, they often did not get the point when I asked them to get a stumbleupon account just to rate my site. On the other hand, I could not yet muster the motivation to worm my account onto some other people's friends list just to make them rate my submissions.
How do you handle that problem? Perhaps a "entrepreneur helps entrepreneur" network for those things would be in order?