How will Social Bookmarking sites evolve?

Seth Godin recently commented about the end of Digg, because many marketers are abusing the system to get traffic to their site.

Sometimes they do this in ways that most of us would consider ethical (hey, please Digg this post if you think it’s worthwhile) while others are hiring clickfarms in India to do it for them. The leverage is just so great, it’s irresistible (in some categories, just a few hundred Diggs is enough to work your way up to the top).

Its so ugly, isn’t it?

In one of my previous posts – Stop digging your own blogs posts, I mentioned about domains getting banned from Digg. I think social bookmarking sites are doing things to stop social bookmarking spammers, but is it working well enough?

Seth mentioned in his post that it is tough, and I would agree – spammers are tough to kill because of the multitude of ways they are using to bypass the original intended use of the system, and then use their lowly tactics to get traffic… but he also mentioned that social bookmarking is here to stay, and it will evolve.

Looking at the way social bookmarking sites work now, I guess most regular visitors will be turned off by these spammers and never visit these social bookmarking sites again. Sometimes I wonder what goes on in these spammers minds – out here there are so many complaints about spam and stuff, but yet why do people still do it? Is the issue about the proper education? I mean, do these spammers actually know they are littering on the net?

How do you think things will change over the next year? How will social bookmarking sites evolve to eradicate these spammers? Is there actually a way to do so? Maybe Digg needs to force their user to identify themselves using a retina scan before they are allowed to submit an article, or something like that? :mrgreen: Gosh… would there be a market for real eyeballs then? :mrgreen:

Comments

  1. I think self-monitoring is the way to go. Let users decide what is spam and what’s not. The users that extensively use social bookmarking websites are not going to turn away because of spammers and they’d like to be a part of the solution.

  2. Hi, I’m looking for social bookmarking sites in Singapore (local ones or clones of Diggs and such). It’ll be great if you can tell me 2 or 3 – the most important onces.