Facilitating Social Media Optimization (SMO) Bookmark or Subscribe With a
Single Button by Mike Banks Valentine
Interview with Dom Vonarburg of AddThis.com, Copyright October 10, 2006 by
Mike Banks Valentine
Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the new buzzword when it comes
to getting links from sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Technorati, and
Flickr. There is a lot of talk on SEO blogs and in forums about this
concept. What it means, essentially, is that web publishers want visitors to
bookmark their content, subscribe to their blogs, news, product and podcast
feeds.
A current search at Google for "Social Media Optimization" (as of this writing)
has
Lee Odden's TopRankBlog post on SMO
showing up number one for that search.
Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations is being credited with coining the
Social Media Optimization phrase and said in Rule #2 of his "Five
Rules of Social Media Optimization
" blog post in August, 2006
"Make tagging and bookmarking easy - Adding content features like quick buttons
to "add to del.icio.us" are one way to make the process of tagging pages
easier..."
Until recently, making "the process of tagging pages easier" has been rather
cumbersome and tedious for publishers. Collecting code and "chiclets" (logos)
from each service first to facilitate using social bookmark service links and
feeds, then posting a mish-mash of those links near web content to encourage
visitors to subscribe to feeds or bookmark that content through any of dozens
of popular services.
But a new service at http://www.AddThis.com
has been launched which appears to solve the complexity for publishers and
reduces the "chiclet" clutter by providing a single button for bookmarks or a
single button for RSS feeds, to allow bookmarks and feeds through any of the
most popular services. ?? What follows is a Q&A with AddThis.com co-founder
Dom Vonarburg
Q) Most interviews end by asking if there is anything else you'd like to
add, what specifically would you like people to know about AddThis up
front? A) AddThis.com is a brand new service that helps web surfers
collect information online with a single click, and send it to their favorite
bookmarking service, feed reader, wish list service, podcast service, etc.
AddThis also helps web publishers promote their content (web pages, feeds,
products, podcasts, etc) online by making it easier for their visitors to
collect it, save it, and distribute it to social services. AddThis was launched
in September at the DEMO conference, the launchpad for emerging technology.
Q) Do you see AddThis as a potentially big player in the Social Media
Optimization (SMO) phenomenon since you make it easier for web publishers
to get their sites bookmarked, and their podcasts and blog feeds
subscribed?
A) We started working on AddThis back in March 2006, even before the term SMO
was first coined. The idea behind AddThis was, and still is, to completely
eliminate all obstacles web publishers have in distributing their content to
visitors and the social media services they might use. Our internal term for it
was initially social SEO, but I like Social Media Optimization better.
We think AddThis will be a very important player in the SMO space, as it is the
first service to provide a generic gateway for collecting and distributing many
different types of content. AddThis acts as a bridge between the web publisher,
the web user, and the social media services.
Q) You've added a new angle to the bookmarks game with the
"Products" button. If it takes off, it seems like it would be great
for ecommerce sites, especially with the reporting attached. I haven't
seen this anywhere else. What made you bring the product angle into an
AddThis Product Button? A) "Products" was the next logical step for
us after bookmarks, feeds and podcasts. People want to collect and compare the
products and services they find online, and ecommerce websites want to
facilitate this process. By adding "Product" buttons to their pages, ecommerce
websites are more likely to be included in their visitors' final purchase
decisions. The button also helps spread these products to other people through
social bookmarking and social shopping websites (Kaboodle.com, Wists.com,
ThisNext.com, etc).
Q) You are offering AddThis as a free service. Is there any plan to move
to a higher level plan to monetize it? I noted your participation in the
DEMO conference where companies seek venture capital and seed funding.
Were you seeking funding and were you successful?
A) Yes, the service is free and will continue to be free. Starting early next
year, we will also provide a premium version of the service. I don't want to
say too much at this point, but the premium service will provide many
interesting features for web publishers, one of which will be more advanced
statistics. Our primary goal with DEMO was to boost the launch of AddThis. We
also received the attention of several investors.
Q) Providing stats was an extra step that probably increased costs
and complexity for AddThis. What made you consider the reporting
to publishers as an important part of a free service?
A) The statistics was a fairly simple feature to add and we thought it added a
lot of value to web publishers, especially for products. For example, with the
statistics, web publishers can find out which products their visitors are most
interested in, which ones receive less attention, etc.
Q) Is there any connection with ClickAbility.com? ("Email This"
"Save This" and "Print This")
A) ClickAbility is different in that it provides its own system for saving
information. AddThis does not impose any destination for the content collected.
Q) Was the AddThis.com domain already yours, or did you purchase from an
existing owner? It shows in domain records as being registered
since 1998, but the WayBack Machine at Archive.org only shows a single
page with nothing on it from 2002. So little history available on
the domain. Has AddThis been in the works since 1998?
A) The domain was not ours; we purchased it from its previous owner in March
2006.
Q) Most bloggers providing RSS feeds to their users did their best to get
each of about a dozen of those "Chiclets" allowing subscriptions through
the most popular services posted in the margins of their blogs. Many
bloggers are now relying on the FeedBurner service and moving to a single
feed logo. How does the AddThis.com feed service compare to FeedBurner? Do
you see FeedBurner as a competitor? A) FeedBurner's primary
business is feed hosting and management. Feeds are only one type of content
supported by AddThis, we support and will support many more types. We think our
generic approach to content collection and distribution is truly unique. So we
don't see FeedBurner as a direct competitor.
Q) Most big publishers and now thousands of smaller web site owners
and bloggers are beginning to post Del.icio.us and Furl and Reddit logos
and links on their pages in the hopes that site visitors will bookmark
their pages in the social bookmarks services. Some are choosing to add a
few links to some of the other bookmarking services, but few go beyond the
top 5 social bookmarks site links. I see that AddThis Bookmark service
offers 16 social bookmarks services. How did you decide ones which you
would include? Certain popularity levels?
A) We picked the most popular bookmarking services based on popularity and
visibility in the search engines. We only stopped at 16 because of time
constraints, but we will add many more of them in the future. By letting
AddThis maintain the list of bookmark and feed buttons, web publisher can
better focus on their content.
Q) Do you have any plans for a tie-in with Digg? As a news
popularity site, they have a different focus than the RSS feeds and
Social Bookmarks services, but many site publishers are including "Digg
This" links from their web pages as part of a "social media marketing"
plan. Does your focus with AddThis stick to bloggers, product
retailers, bookmarks, and podcasts or will you consider expanding into the
news and other areas?
A) Social news is also a logical candidate for AddThis. We will also add other
types of content based on user adoption.
Q) Is there anything else you'd like to Add(to)This? ;-) A) We
think AddThis will play a big role because it makes a lot of sense for both web
users and web publishers. You can think of AddThis.com as the more social
sister of AddMe.com, or its Web2.0 extension. Each service helps you achieve a
different kind of visibility.
As a publisher, I had been updating WebSite101 to a new template and had been
considering including Furl, Reddit, Del.icio.us, and Digg, but came across the
AddThis Demo launch story and dropped Furl and Reddit from the mix in favor of
the AddThis "Bookmark" link, since AddThis supports all of the bookmarking
services with one button.
I'm keeping the Del.icio.us and Digg links for now, but I think once publishers
begin to realize they can simplify bookmarks and if users understand that they
can use any social bookmark service through AddThis, that you'll see strong
adoption of the service.
Good luck on wide adoption of AddThis by both the public and publishers Dom, I
wish you the best of luck with your contribution to Social Media Optimization!
Mike, I want to thank you for this opportunity to answer these questions and
describe our vision for AddThis.com; your questions were right on target!
About the Author
Mike Banks Valentine operates SEOptimism, Offering SEO training of in-house
content managers http://seoptimism.com/SEO_Staff_Training.htm
as well as the Small Business Ecommerce Tutorial at
http://WebSite101.com and blogs about SEO at
http://RealitySEO.com where this article appears with live links to SMO
stories, buttons, blog posts and examples.Mike Banks Valentine operates
SEOptimism, Offering <a href="http://seoptimism.
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