Update: Amazing response. Subscribe if you want more and watch for my new blog, TechThrill.
Not even a few months ago, Digg was on the verge of being bought out by Google or Microsoft. While those rumors have largely disappeared, the possibility (and even likelihood) of one of the two giants snatching up Digg is still prominent.

I had a debate with a friend of mine over the usefulness and future of Digg. It got me thinking about which direction Digg is headed. So I am performing a thought experiment to explore the possibilities (I love these).

What should each of these companies do with Digg if it bought the social media and user-chosen content powerhouse? Where would the integration points be and what would be the long-term strategy and direction for Digg under new overlords? And how would an acquisition affect the Internet landscape?

I’m going to start with Google (Microsoft will be next week). After that, there will be one more article about the impact of Digg on the internet.

So without further ado, here’s 7 things Google should do if it buys Digg:

1) Integrate Digg with Google News and the news algorithm

Google is a company of synergies. Utilizing its unparalleled efficiency in search in all of its products gives it a distinct advantage. Integrating your email with Google calendar keeps you on the Google servers (and makes life quite easy, too!). You get the idea.

The same would hold true for Digg if they buy it. There are many ways to incorporate Digg as the preferred social content destination of the Google empire. I’ll start off with Google News.

Google News aggregates the major news into one simple and efficient interface. But its relevancy and popularity rankings for stories of similar topics can always be improved and Digg would help in that endeavor.

Yes, the male-skewed demographic of Digg may not be the best source of demographic information for Google News, but it is a good indicator of the popularity of major news stories, of the most popular article within a certain topic, and can help find more obscure stories that should be on more peoples’ radars. Also, over time, the Digg demographic would become more representative of the general internet population. See #5 below.

Google could do a few tweaks to the Google News algorithm, nothing big, to improve the rankings of news articles within categories and to bring out some of the more obscure but very interesting news of the day. Also, Digg icons next to Google news stories. News stories are what reach the Digg front page the most often, so this integration feels natural.

2) Place Digg icons in search results (but do it methodically)

Let’s get a little more controversial. Digg is the largest player in the social media space, but Digg is still small compared to the vastness of the Internet. Google isn’t though, and it can leverage that size and reach to really combine the social with the computational. Social search engines like Mahalo and Wikia Search are already beginning to fill their niches. Although it’s unlikely, it’s possible that one of these engines innovates enough to knock Google on its ass, or at least give it major headaches. Hell, just look at Microsoft’s Windows Vista and Internet Explorer.

The other thing is that people power can actually improve search results, weed through irrelevant data, and bring up the best information. To that end, if Google bought Digg, it must be committed to integrating social data into its overall data empire, and it starts with Google Search. The first step in this process would be integrating Digg into Google Search results.

Next to the “Cached – Similar pages – Note this” and other link items that appear with all Google search results, there would be a link with either “# Digg(s)” or “Digg this.” Perhaps limit it to certain topics, to sites with a previously popular story on Digg, or don’t have the Digg link appear until there’s a predetermined # of Diggs (by algorithm), but integrate Digg if you buy it, Google. Hell, Google has something similar to the Digg/Bury system in its Google Experimental Search program.

Yes, this suggestion is a bit more radical, but there’s no other way if Google buys Digg. It must expand the site, its demographic, and its influence on the web. The Digg community would be a lot larger if Google took it over.

3) Heavily tweak the Digg algorithm based on Google’s massive stores of data

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(update: FriendFeed comments work again. I think there’s a time delay.)

So if you scroll down (on individual posts), you’re going to find something new: FriendFeed comments appear on my blog! FriendFeed, the rapidly rising lifestreaming service, allows you to comment on any item that comes through FriendFeed. Some blog posts and twitter comments can have 50+ comments, and that number is rapidly rising as more and more people sign up for FriendFeed.

Well today I stumbled upon this post on FriendFeed by Chris Pirillo that he had added FriendFeed comments to his blog via a Wordpress plugin by Glenn Slaven

Glenn, thank you.

Now as you can see, any comments on this post (or any post) via FriendFeed will appear under my normal Disqus comments. Plus, you can post to FriendFeed via my blog. Disqus, a customizable and dynamic blog commenting software, is what I use to run comments on my blog currently and I couldn’t be happier.

But with FriendFeed comments on blogs, I wonder: Could it compete with Disqus? And then I wondered: Could this be the start of something bigger?

First on Disqus: One of Disqus’s main advantages is that you can track the comments of someone you like across multiple blogs. Another is that it can help build community around comments via a “community page” hosted on disqus’s servers.

My argument is that FriendFeed performs both of those functions better. You can track a person’s comments on blog posts via FriendFeed. Hell, you can track a person’s Disqus comments via your FriendFeed too. Now that those comments appear on blog pages, everyone can see them too! A person doesn’t even have to join FriendFeed, already a more popular service than Disqus, to see what a person they like is saying on not only blogs, but on YouTubes, Twitter, Facebook, etc. It’s far more dynamic of a tracking system than Disqus.

The second, on community: You can build community around FriendFeed. You can encourage people to visit your FriendFeed blog posts (it’s real simple to give a link that only shows your FriendFeed blog posts) and to comment via FriendFeed OR the blog. I may very well make FriendFeed my “message boards,” so to speak.

Of course, you have to sign up for FriendFeed to comment via FriendFeed, which of course makes regular commenting much easier to use. But as more and more use FriendFeed, you’re going to see more and more people comment via FriendFeed rather than Disqus, Wordpress, or any other commenting system. That could be bad news for Disqus, but good news for the rest of us.

As more people install this plug-in and integrate FriendFeed comments into their blogs, there may very well be a dynamic shift in how FriendFeed is used and perceived. Hell, this could be the beginning of a movement that makes FriendFeed mainstream. This grants FriendFeed more exposure and leaves people who are not currently part of the FriendFeed universe with a desire to be heard (one that can only be fed by joining FriendFeed.

FriendFeed comments on blogs is a game changer, people.

- Ben
(By the way, I encourage you to comment on this blog via FriendFeed and then to follow me!)

A major up-and-comer in the internet startup and social media space has been FriendFeed, the lifestreaming service that allows you to track what your friends are doing on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg, and the blogosphere. Unfortunately, most of your friends are probably not using FriendFeed, at least yet. But that doesn’t mean that FriendFeed isn’t very, very useful. I’m going to talk about the usefulness of FriendFeed as a social media organizer in a future post, but this time I want to talk about how to use FriendFeed to follow the chatter, the buzz, and even mentions of your company or blog (or of yourself).

FriendFeed is the ideal place to track all of those mentions. The first key to Friendfeed is its importing of activity all across the internet. I can find out what, oh, social media expert Muhammad Saleem is Digging or I can find out what the hell top blogger Robert Scoble is up to (wait, why do I care again? Oh yeah, he sets trends).

The second key thing that FriendFeed does is create conversations around some of these major pieces of information. To the left is the beginning of some search results I did for Obama. There’s at least 13 comments/conversations and growing for that single link alone. Tracking the entire conversation on Obama gives you an even greater picture of what people are thinking, although I admit that it’s a tech-saavy, early-adopting crowd. Regardless, these people set trends and you want them setting trends for you or your blog in a positive direction.

Some things you can do to track the chatter:

• Add trend setters to your FriendFeed. Scoble may be annoying at times (sorry Robert, it’s true!), but he is at the pulse of a lot of trends. Follow the top bloggers and trend setters in your industry to gain a better picture of what is happening.
• Track non-users of FriendFeed: Another brilliant feature of FriendFeed is the ability to track people who aren’t even on FriendFeed via “imaginary feeds”. If your favorite Digger is NOT on FriendFeed, you can just input his username as an imaginary feed and you’ll get his updates in your FriendFeed. Perfect if you don’t want to track too many websites in the social media space.
• Search! FriendFeed has a search option now, and you should utilize it to the best of your ability. Keep track of mentions of your blog or mentions of your competitors.
• Join Relevant Rooms. Rooms are basically conversation hubs within FriendFeed. I’m in the Social Media and All Things Productivity Rooms. With them, I can follow conversations on my favorite and important subjects along with others who know a thing or two about each subject. I think it’s best if you make sure conversations from your rooms appear in you main feed.
• Add every service you use! The more you appear on other FriendFeeds, the more you raise your profile and the more interesting conversations you will start. Import your blogs and social websites at the least.

There’s much more to FriendFeed than that. And it’s a new service, meaning many more features are coming. If you do things right, you can make FriendFeed your entire hub for social media and internet chatter tracking.

- Ben

I’m shocked companies still use Internet Explorer as their standard browser for business. I’m not about to go into a rant about how Firefox is more secure or how it wins in the speed tests, but if those reasons haven’t convinced you to switch your browser or your company’s browser to Firefox, then I have one more reason:

Productivity

Just THINK about how many hours you spend every day, every week, every year of your life at a web browser. Almost literally every minute you are on a computer. That’s a lot of hours, and that’s a lot of time that’s wasted by inefficient hand motions, loading times, and bad habits.

These extensions below help solve those problems and making browsing the internet more useful. Period. If you’re the head of a company and reading this, I’d require that these extensions be installed on every computer and your people trained in their use. Two hours of training is going to turn into hundreds of hours of saved time.

I’ve come up with a list of 18 Firefox extensions that perform a variety of uses. I went for a breadth of extensions that covered many facets of your browsing experience, from email to search. There’s tons of others that do a great job helping you gather information and accomplish tasks faster, but these stand out of the crowd.

I’ve categorized the list for easier browsing!
So without further ado, 18 Key Firefox Extension that Improve Online Productivity:

General Functionality Improvements

• 1) DownthemAll:

Have a page of images or powerpoints you want to put on your computer, but don’t want to click and save them all? Want to just grab the Mp3s from a webpage? DownthemAll can do it in one swift motion. Grab a group of images for your future use with one or two clicks.

Why it improves productivity: Allows you to download many items at once, thus saving time.


• 2) Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer:

Bookmark Synchonizer allows you to access your bookmarks from everywhere. If you have a different computer at work than you do at home, this is an absolute must. Anytime you add a site to your bookmarks at work, it adds it to your home computer. In addition, you can access your bookmarks from ANY computer. Never leave home without your favorite websites.

Why it improves productivity: Bookmarks can be transferred to work, personal, or public computers with absolute ease, allowing you to access all of your important websites from anywhere.


• 3) InterClue:

Preview links before you click them. The moment you hover over a link, you’ll know what website the link directs to, how many words/characters are on the page, be offered a preview and statistics on the site, and have the ability to email or copy the link. It has even more features you can add as well.

Why it improves productivity: Allows you to preview links before clicking. Knowing the source of links allows you to skip needless link clicking to find information. Also great at gathering information.

• 4) Text Link:

You’ll find, especially on message boards, that people will post links but not make them hyperlinks (aka make them clickable). Text link fixes that. Double click on any URL, and it’ll take you there. Very simple, very effective.

Why it improves productivity: No need to copy and paste links ever again.



• 5) FireGestures:

Firefox takes on new meaning with FireGestures. With some mouse commands, you can do everything from open new tabs to opening scrollable tab menus to printing pages. Right click and move the mouse up and down and the page reloads. Hold down left click and then press right click and you’re taken to the next tab. Hold down right click and scroll the mouse wheel down and a list of all your tabs appears in a simple pop-up. With the ability to create your own gestures and commands, your browsing experience becomes not only faster, but smarter.

Why it improves productivity: Removes needless clicking. Once you get the hang of it, browsing goes by in a flash. By far the best way to browse in Firefox.

(more…)

Yesterday, I was an attendee at the 2008 Chicago TECHCocktail Conference. It was an amazing conference with some amazing speakers (one of which, Gary Vaynerchuk, will be making a guest post soon). But I’m not here to talk about that.

I’m here to talk about business cards.

Most business cards are dull and lack any reason to notice. Most are discarded without thought. You’re at a conference to network. Hell, everywhere is a chance to network. How do you make sure someone remembers you or takes even an extra second to look at your business card?

There are three ways:

• 1) Make beautiful and memorable designs
• 2) Make your card interactive
• 2) Make your card personalized

For #1, I suggest visiting Creative Bits, which has an image library of some amazing card designs. I attached one of my favorites to the right: a lawn company that actually gives away seeds in their cards. I’d always remember a card like that, or at least give it a second glance.

For #2 and #3, I’m going to use my current cards as an example. I decided to individualize my cards. I did this by placing a fortune on every card.

The front tells you to do something. That’s the interactive part. I wrote a different fortune on the back of every single card. That’s the personalized part.

Take a look:

I’m sure I’ll be updating these cards soon with better designs, but the interactivity and personalization will remain. I got great reactions from the cards.

One last thing, I never said “here’s my card.” I always said, “Here’s a Fortune Cookie” Always caught them off guard and piqued interest.

Little things add up.

- Ben

According to Wikipedia, a bliki is a combination of the features of a wiki and a blog (duh. Oh, more names for it from Wikipedia: wikiLog, wog, wikiWeblog, wikiblog, bloki). It posts like a blog, but all of the articles are editable.

So why do I care about this? Because I’m looking for something to help me combine wiki functionality into this website. But not in the way I just described to you above.

I’m interested in creating a system where the top portion of a page or post is like a normal blog article, but right under it is a “wiki” section which anybody can edit. So the top portion is what I or guest writers post, and then the section just below that is editable by anyone and uses Wikipedia/Mediawiki syntax. This section would be above the comments.

My rationale? Well, I’m not about to give all of that away, but let’s say that I think having a section where the collaborative knowledge of the readers and users of different blogs to create succinct additions to article could be very useful in a variety of ways.

Anyone know of anything similar to this, preferably in Wordpress plugin form? Or is anyone interested in working with me to build it if it doesn’t exist?