There are other ways to define social media but looking at the current situation the title might as well be the best fit. If you are an active social media user you must have seen the most talked about sites getting a little crazier day by day. First, as usual Digg and second Reddit. StumbleUpon usually seems to stay out of trouble but it also has one of the best algorithms as it is the hardest to game. Anyways, if you haven’t been keeping up with the social media scene lately, I would have to say you have been missing out on a lot of crazy stuff. In this post I will try and link to all the things that have been going on lately in terms of Digg and Reddit and some changes that StumbleUpon has implemented (certainly a good move from them).

Digg : The Craziest Monkey of All

First and foremost the sheer amount of users that has been banned on digg is mind boggling. The number when I last looked was 80 and I am sure it has increased by a few by now. If you would like to take a look at people who have been banned on digg please follow this link : Banned Digg Users. Names that have been crossed out are the ones that have been banned by ever changing Digg administration. The banning saga that is going on on Digg has been covered by notable blogs such as TechCrunch. While cleaning out Digg banned one of the most influential and prominent user, Zaibatsu. This one user’s banning has been nothing but a major hurricane within the digg community and entire web. If you would like to read a little more on this here is a piece from ReadWriteWeb, another popular blog. Zaibatsu has been an active member from the start and the reason of his banning still seems to bother most users within the digg community.

Another banning that got most people talking about Digg’s internal system and their way of handling things is when they banned Diggboss. Diggboss created a script that would allow users to see whether or not their mutual friends have been digging their submissions. Another important and very helpful aspect of this script was that it would allow you to send shouts to people that you want without having to manually do much work. For example, you could choose to shout a submission to friends that have not yet dugg your submission. All this without having to really go through “who dugg?” list.

As you already know Diggboss has been banned from digg. The reason was simple : he created the script. I have talked with him on IM and such and as far as I know he wasn’t using any scripts at the moment. So the sole ground for his banning was the fact that he created a script. Seems a little unfair. Here is a piece where diggboss talks a little more about the whole deal Digg Banning : Interview With Diggboss.

If you would like to check out the app that got diggboss banned please click on this link Check Friends. The app currently seems to be down and there seems to be some clarification and an email written to the digg support from diggboss. Give it a look.

Reddit : The Crazy Monkey

It seems like reddit users have a long rivalry with digg users. There has been a lot going on within the reddit community in regards to digg users coming within their territory and wrecking it. Reddit users seem to claim that digg users are using reddit to spam and are actually wrecking the quality of site as they did with Digg. Is there truth to this? May be. But I could vouch for all the users on digg that no one is trying to go on reddit just for the sake of wrecking it. Social Media is simply seen by most as traffic generating tool and with social media profiles being one of the best way to personally brand yourself on the web, people are trying to diversify their efforts. There was a huge backlash by reddit community about a week and a half ago and some users even took the time to list names of people and sites that they thought were spammers. Here is list that was put together by one reddit user which shows “spammers” and “spammy sites.” The snapshot below shows whatever I could capture,

If you are an active digg user you will realize that most of the names that are labeled as spammers happen to be digg users. Of course since the community was targeting digg community. Here is the link to this entire ordeal if you would like to read a little and see the Reddit crowd going a little off the hook and losing their self control Reddit Goes Crazy ( Please go through the comments to get the full scoop ).

As you can see Digg and Reddit has been taking a lot of heat and there seems to have been a never ending war started between diggers and redditers. Personally, I care less about these whining as it does nothing but creates chaos within the social media scene.

StumbleUpon : The Clever Fox

StumbleUpon is one of those awesome sites that seems to lay low most of the time. StumbleUpon recently implemented some changes which makes the service even more appealing and easier to use. The recent changes might also support the rumors that have been flying around that Ebay is trying to sell StumbleUpon. They haven’t been able to really do anything with SU’s services in terms of integrating it to their auction business. Some of the changes that have been implemented by StumbleUpon are :

1. “Friends Add” Messages : In the past the only way for you to know if anyone has added you was by looking at your fans numbers ( now called subscribers ). But now everytime someone adds you, you get a message which definitely is a handy way to handle things.

   

2. Shows how compatible you are with other user before you add them in terms of what you and the other user likes.

   

3. Warns you if you are adding friends too fast.
   

I am certainly down for the new changes that StumbleUpon has recently made. Among all these sites SU seems to be playing good and I think one of the main reasons it has been so awesome is because practically it is almost impossible to game StumbleUpon unless you know some secret code that no one else has cracked.

I hope this post was able to give you some insight on what is going on with the Top 3 dogs in social media scene. I can guarantee one thing that Digg and Reddit will keep growing despite the arguments set forward by Reddit community and actions taken by Digg’s administration.

But you know what they say : when two monkeys fight, the one that benefits is the fox that has been waiting for the monkeys to get tired and give up. StumbleUpon certainly seems to be the fox in this case.

One more thing on Digg before I end this post. There is a lot of talks going on regarding “blind digging” as well. So if you would like to see who diggs blindly and to what extent here is what they call ” The Blind Diggers Wall of Shame.”