Looking for YouMob? Go straight there!

YouMob blog is an on-going discussion of YouMob.com by its creators Steve and Rob.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

What would Digg look like if it encouraged gaming the system?

It might look a lot like YouMob. While YouMob isn't strictly a bookmark ranking site, a certain subset of its features can be seen in that light. And YouMob is constructed around the notion that users should try to game the system, and, in fact, they are rewarded for doing so.

Democratic processes for site ranking are doomed to a never-ending battle between those who police the rules for a fair vote, and those who wish to overcome the rules for their own benefit. Digg recently eliminated its top-100 contributors list because those on the list were becoming the high-priests of the Digg universe. These were the people who put more effort than anyone else into attaining a certain level of prestige within the Digg world, and who arguably helped Digg become what it is today. There is obviously a serious flaw in the design of the system when the most successful and valuable users are hidden away.

Instead of a democratic process and a "one man, one vote" mechanism for determining page popularity, YouMob introduces a more Darwinian model. YouMob rewards current, real-time activity, and the ability of its user base to market both the pages of interest to them as well as to market themselves (more on the latter point later). A page is ranked high on the YouMob list when it has more current viewers than other pages. This isn't vote counting by click; this is voting with your feet, so to speak. When a YouMob user visits a web page under YouMob, they are voting their interest by being there. The more concurrent users, the higher the page is on the YouMob list.

Again, YouMob isn't intended to be strictly a page ranking application like Digg, but its model of interaction lets users discover where the interesting action is at the moment they're online. What may have been wildly popular an hour ago may be replaced by something else. Accumulative votes count for much less. Instead, what matters is who is there now. Conversely, what may be unpopular at the moment, may spring up on the YouMob list at some later date when its content once again becomes relevent in terms of real-time visitors.

Because YouMob depends on a continual flow of users visiting pages within the YouMob list (and remember, almost any page on the web is a potential visiting place for YouMob users), YouMob was built to encourage users to market the sites of interest to them. They can do so in a variety of ways. First, being a popular YouMob user gives you an advantage in visibility - having lots of followers (those who have made you a friend) means that many people are viewing your YouMob profile, clicking on the page you're currently mobbing (increasing its rank in the YouMob list), or clicking on the pages you highlight in your public favorites list. The more people who sign up to be your friend, the larger the crowds you can potentially assemble. All followers who give you permission to contact them through anonymous YouMob email become a potential mob army to recruit to whatever site you wish to mob at whatever time you coordinate. Think about the potential for political campaigns, much less bringing traffic to your own blog.

As with ubiquitous site badges, YouMob provides its own variety that it calls beacons. These are another set of tools that ambitious YouMob users can put into place to drive traffic and rankings. User beacons let a popular user scatter "follow-me" links across the web; they blink when the beacon owner is currently mobbing a page under YouMob, and when clicked on will bring the new user to that same mob. Site beacons advertise the location of a mob and bring clicking users to that mob. Site beacons will flash if the mob is currently active with mobbers. Finally, partner beacons allow third party pages to gain free advertising space on the YouMob home page in proportion to the numbers of click-throughs they provide in comparison to other partner beacon clicks. The more traffic you drive to YouMob, the more likely your ad will appear, driving new traffic back to your site.

YouMob is a brand new service, just getting off the ground. Its first users will have a leg up on those who follow. While YouMob is not intended to be a direct competitor to Digg - YouMob sits in a vast space between bookmarking sites and social network endnodes like MySpace and Facebook - it may come as a balm to those frustrated by the limitations of a difficult to police environment like Digg.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

More bloggers finding YouMob

Steve and I are madly working away, and we're getting very close to finishing up a set of exciting new features. We can't wait to unveil them and talk about them. Coming soon.

In the meantime, I'd like to thank a couple of more people who have joined us and highlight their blogs which are now mobs under YouMob. We've always thought blog writers would love what YouMob can do for driving traffic to their site, so we're very encouraged to see bloggers signing up via word of mouth. We look forward to having some powerful tools in place very soon for driving that traffic.

Check out That Grrl's blog, and notice that down on the right panel Laura has added a follow-me beacon. You'll be able to see if Laura is online, browsing YouMob, when you visit her blog. You can click here to go to Laura's blog:

That Grrl:

Also make sure to visit Imagining Toronto, a blog written by Amy Lavender Harris. Amy became a new YouMob user today.

Imagining Toronto: