webrampage

Why am I saying that StumbleUpon’s (SU) traffic is better than Digg’s? Am I joking? Of course not. Let me explain this to you today.

Okay before you start thinking that I’m high or something. Let me tell you that I’m not trying to convince you to use SU more often than Digg. Digg is great. Use them both. But, these 2 bookmarking sites are really different. I’m taking about the traffic patterns.

Over at Digg, once you hit the (holy) front page you’ll get the biggest traffic wave ever. And when you’re on the first page on upcoming with the most diggs, you get a pretty good amount of visitors too. Overall you get a decent traffic from Digg on average. But, this traffic wave only lasts a few hours. You get off the front page, remember?

What about SU? Well at SU, the traffic wave is a bit smaller than Digg’s, but you get that with a lot less effort and time. My post about Twitter vs Plurk got 17 reviews and I got about 300 visitors from SU. And the visitors from SU came at the same time (causing my VPS to crash). That day I got about 500 visitors from SU, in total.

The best thing is the traffic from SU is long-term. I’m still getting a bunch of people from SU to my Twitter vs Plurk post. SU traffic lasts a few months. Yes that’s right, a few months. The traffic might get smaller as the weeks pass, but still, I would rather have a (semi) big traffic wave at first and then smaller ones later.

So, should you concentrate more on SU? Well it’s up to you. I would say you try to get on Digg’s front page and also get a buch of stumbles and reviews. More traffic that way, huh? First a server crash then a bunch of little traffic over the weeks.

Okay what about you? Are going to stick to SU or Digg? Or use both? Which one would you concentrate more on?

Ever wondered if Twitter was the best or if it was Plurk? Well I did and I’m sure a lot of you did too. So here’s the ultimate showdown for Twitter and Plurk! Any ideas on who’s going to be the winner? Lets find out.

The looks

Looks are important. It works as a magnet. Well Twitter and Plurk both have a nice design. But, I like the Plurk layout over Twitter. I like the whole timeline idea. Its very unique, makes it easier to find your friend’s plurk and of course, the plurks show up in a chronological order (left: newest & right: oldest). While Twitter’s layout is a bit messy. I’m talking about the place where you see all your friend’s tweets.

Profile Customization

Plurk lets you customize your profile using CSS (but you need to wait until you get 25 Karma) and Plurk also comes with themes that you can choose from (noob-friendly!). Twitter doesn’t have that and you just get to choose what colour you want where (ex: background, sidebar, etc). And of course, both of them lets you upload your own picture for the profile.

So, yeah Plurk is both good for starters and experienced users (who knows CSS). You can really customize your Plurk profile while Twitter only lets you choose colours and a background picture (not so good).

How easy is it to make friends?

It’s really, really easy to make friends on Plurk. There’s a page with random users and you can just add them (if you find them interesting). It doesn’t take a lot of time and effort. Getting friends on Twitter is a bit hard. I got 57 friends on Plurk and 8 on Twitter. That explains a lot, huh?

How many friends reply/comment?

I just started using both Plurk and Twitter a few days ago. So, I don’t have a lot of loyal friends. But, I do get a few comments on my plurks while I got only one reply on Twitter.

Privacy options

Yeah this one’s for you privacy freaks. I don’t really care who sees my plurks or tweets (since they’re not personal). Okay there is a privacy option on Twitter that lets you choose to allow the people you follow see your tweets, only. Plurk has a bit more privacy options. You can setup who can view your plurks and who can search for you on Plurk.

Private Messages

Private messages are the messages you want to send to one specific friend. On Twitter you can send private tweets only to your mutual friends. On Plurk its looking a lot better. You can choose to send plurks only to your friends or a few specific friends. Great, huh? Plurk wins this round.

Incoming traffic

Yeah this one’s for the people looking for some traffic from micro-blogging. Well like I said I just started using them few days ago and I pretty much stopped using Twitter. I did get a bit more traffic from Plurk then Twitter. But, when I compared how many friends I have on Twitter and Plurk to the number of visitors coming from them, I saw that Twitter was more efficient.

Random features/things

• You can disable comments on Plurk.
• You write in 3rd person on Plurk most of the time (ex: th13rteen [thinks] if blogging about twitter and plurk will be good?). Awkward!
• You can tweet from your cellphone on Twitter.

So which one is the best?

Twitter: If you already have friends using it, if you have a nice community following you everywhere or if you’re successful on the web like Darren Rowse or Michael Arrington. And if you’re looking for some traffic!

Plurk: If want to micro-blog for fun, want to make a few buddies, be a bit more personal and build a profile.

Right now I’m using Plurk. I kinda stopped using Twitter, but I’ll put a bit more effort into it. So, I’ll be using them both with Ping.fm. I need to post a bit more links on Twitter than Plurk (that’s what everyone seems to be doing on Twitter).

So, go ahead and join Twitter and Plurk. And don’t forget to add me: Twitter & Plurk.

To the readers

So what do you think? Which one do YOU like better? Tell us about it. And hey, don’t forget to subscribe via RSS or email for more like this!

Man my back hurts as hell. I got jumped by ninjas. Nah I’m just joking. I don’t know why it hurts. Well lets go on a blogging rampage now. Okay so there’s been a big privacy issue. Google is handing over all its YouTube user datas over to Viacom. The user data initially contained IP addresses, usernames and the videos viewed. Now both sides (Google & Viacom) have agreed to anonymize the personally identifiable data.

Well the question is should we use continue to use YouTube. We don’t know what’s coming up next. And why the fuck was Google keeping all these information? Fucking fags. Is there anything called privacy? OMFG! 12 terabytes of user data.

The choice is yours. I personally would now like to stay away from YouTube. And YouTube isn’t even that great. The video quality is “okay”. Like its pretty good but on full screen it sucks ass. So I’m gonna list 5 Great YouTube alternatives (in random order) and you could check them out if you care about your privacy.

1. MEGAVIDEO

This site is like trying to compete with YouTube so bad that they allow you to convert YouTube videos to MEGAVIDEO in a snap. Someone’s desperate, huh? But that’s good for you since you can easily transfer your videos over to them. Video quality isn’t that bad too. I would say that its a bit better than YouTube and the fullscreen has fairly good quality too (unlike YouTube).

2. Veoh

Oh I just love the video quality. Man this video sharing site is like Stage6. But even better because the videos load way faster. Good quality + Fast loading = AWESOME! But there is a problem. Veoh blocked off over 160 countries. So that means Veoh is only good if you don’t care about going globally.

3. Vimeo

This is the site with 100% HD video quality. Check it out. And the site just looks amazing. YouTube looks a bit ugly (to be honest) or at least compared to Vimeo. Hmm I don’t have anything else on this site. Okay I’ll just move on to the next one.

4. Dailymotion

Dailymotion used to be pretty popular but I don’t know why it died. It had the best video quality back then (when video sharing sites were just getting popular) and it still has. Oh the video quality has actually improved a bit more. Nice!

5. Metacafe

Great quality once again. Hmm you know what I noticed? Most video sharing sites have fairly good quality to really good quality video streaming. Well except for YouTube though. Its still got its crappy ass “okay” quality. Metacafe is also known for its hilarious videos.

UPDATE: Few other sites

These are other great video sharing sites that I forgot to mention. Thanks to the readers for telling me about them. I’ll just quickly list them down.

• Break.com – Best for funny videos.
• Viddler.com – Home to some video bloggers.
• blip.tv – No limit on the video size and also shares revenue.

And that’s my list. New video sharing sites are popping up every day and there’s a lot of competition going on. Which one you would choose depends on you (of course). I’m not too sure myself either. I think I would probably choose Vimeo for its awesome quality.

If you know about a great video sharing site then please do tell us about it by dropping a comment. Oh and I forgot to mention that Viacom wanted to sue the users who uploaded and watched copyrighted material personally. Crazy shit, huh?