Online Media Cultist

Gleamd is a new site that aims to mesh the popularity of social news sites (submit stories, vote for the ones you like, most popular get “bubbled up” to the front page) with social networking sites. Mashable reports that people will be able to vote for other people’s profiles, with the most popular getting highlighted every few days.

This is exactly the direction that MySpace News should have taken. Instead, it’s sadly a ghost town of a social news site, its front page still riddled with stories that have zero votes.

It’s a wide open opportunity that’s just waiting to be taken advantage of. Think about it: allow the millions of MySpace members to have the ability to opt in to a voting system. Therefore, there’s no voting for people who don’t want to be subjected to the democratic (or the MySpace version of it, at any rate) process.

When browsing around social networking sites, there are a few basic things you can do: ask people to be your friend, bookmark profiles, and leave comments. A simple Digg-like system of voting would easily and cleanly tie into this online experience, and I think it would be instantly and extremely popular.

The compulsion for self-expression and mini-online-celebrity would also surely prompt massive interest. And the most popular profiles get special placement and recognition on the site.

The “ghost town effect” is when you head to a web community or platform of some sort and sense… that nothing is going on, that no one is there, and therefore there’s no reason why you should be there. Just as in real life, people tend to congregate online where there are already other people.

New poster child for the ghost town effect: MySpace News, the social news site brought to you by your billions and billions of friends at MySpace, the most popular social networking site of ever.

So while getting even the tiniest of tiny percentages of MySpace users over to MySpace News would make the submit-and-vote news site appear to be rather bustling, this hasn’t yet happened. The front page of MySpace News looks very similar to the dozens of equally barren “digg clones” out there that were quickly and cheaply built on top of open source pligg software. TechCrunch calls the site “DOA” while Screenwerk goes with “MIA.”

The challenge for social news sites is that you need lots and lots of people submitting stories and particularly voting all the time. MySpace News solved the first half of the equation by pumping stories into its system from specially selected publishers such as The Superficial and GigaOM.

However, getting people to stick around and vote and comment and participate – to become the backbone and heart of the site in other words – is turning out to be a trickier proposition.

Several ideas:

* Simplify the voting/rating thing.
MySpace News lets you both rate a story on a scale from 1-5 (using little blue people as icons) and vote on stories… kind of at the same time. This is super confusing – I’ve played around with it a bunch of times and still can’t figure it out. In other words, if a bunch of people rate a story as “bad,” will that still move the story to the front page, simply based upon the quantity of votes?

I say dump the rating part and go with straight votes. This is a model that clearly works at the most successful social news sites.

* Strongly consider dumping the “News” part of MySpace News.
Who said that MySpace users are looking for a social news site as part of the MySpace brand? I think they would be much better off having a submit-and-vote system that is based on MySpace content itself. In other words, let people submit MySpace photos, videos, songs, and profiles, and rank accordingly.

* Integration is a must.
If MySpace News isn’t integrated into the MySpace profile experience (where you hit those millions of eyeballs each day) it’s nearly useless. While MySpace users would likely balk at getting what is essentially random news stories sent to them, getting MySpace-based content could become a smash hit and a great addition to the MySpace community.

Stan Schroeder at Frantic Industries concludes: “MySpace News was done half-assedly, it brings nothing new to the table, and it’s definitely not a threat to any social content site.”

Ouch. And agreed.