This seems to be a common question on google.  I was looking around the Digg site, and found it interesting, but not many advertisements so I began to wonder myself.  Just how does Digg make money?  I went back to google and typed it in and all that came up were more questions!

I found 3 links immediately with people wondering the same thing.  After more further research I still just could not find ANYTHING regarding how Digg would make money.  I am sure that they are some way other than merely advertisements due to the expansion they have achieved, but I am extremely curious of just how they do.

So I leave the question: Just how does DIGG make money?

This seems to be a common question on google.  I was looking around the Digg site, and found it interesting, but not many advertisements so I began to wonder myself.  Just how does Digg make money?  I went back to google and typed it in and all that came up were more questions!

I found 3 links immediately with people wondering the same thing.  After more further research I still just could not find ANYTHING regarding how Digg would make money.  I am sure that they are some way other than merely advertisements due to the expansion they have achieved, but I am extremely curious of just how they do.

So I leave the question: Just how does DIGG make money?

I use the search engine, Google daily and almost every time I entered the homepage I would wonder what is this “I am feeling lucky” button, so I decided to find out!

The “I’m feeling lucky” button eliminates the search of every website with the possible keyword that you type in and sends you directly to the number one site in their database.  It is a user friendly button that decreases advertisements that sometimes get in the way of your search.

The button costs Google $110 million per year and yet less than 1% of their users take advantage of it.  So is this beneficial?  Google does not receive any capital from advertisement using this button, so it is clearly an expense, but it is beneficial because it keeps some users coming back.  If it were not there some users might switch to Yahoo, Ask.com, or any of the other competing search engines.

Google has been the number one search engine for the past three years, and maybe one of the reasons is they keep things like “I’m feeling lucky” that help the user but are not necessarily the most profitable applications.

Wikipedia has grown to an amazing size over the past years, and it is now the 4th most visited site in the world! Wikipedia is a great source of information and for may quick asnwers to questions you may have about a person or event in history, but when used out of context or as a scholarly source for a research paper, it is not trustworthy enough.  

Wikipedia is a non-profit site that anyone can edit the pages.  It has become more trustworthy in recent years, but there are still many mistakes throughout the website.  For students writing papers the biggest reasons it is not a good souce are…

•  anyone can edit pages
•  its an encyclopedia, and encyclopedias are not good paper resources
•  it is not peer reviewed

The last reason, not being peer reviewed, is the biggest reason wikipedia is not reliable.  Scholar journals and books under-go intensive blind peer reviewing from other scholars and there is serious editing that must be done before it can be published.  If wikipedia wished to be a trustworthy souce it needs to get some sort of scholarly editing process, and it would greatly benefit from being connected to other scholar sites such as JSTOR or EbscoHost.

While wikipedia can be great for looking up answers to questions you may have about some facts, it is not worthy or deserving of citation and quotation in your research paper.

Social media is term that is constantly tossed around amongst marketers and the media as the new way to promote a company’s brand. While some criticize the terminology of “social media,” it is undoubtedly a force in marketing that every firm must accept and be immersed in to succeed. The problem is not merely whether the firm is using social media or social marketing tools, it is whether or not they are using the right ones in the right context.

As is discussed in the insightful book Groundswell, there are various types of internet users present in social media. Some users create blogs and join social networks, while others simply contribute reviews or read commentaries on products. Each company, in turn, has different demographics of customers. These demographics accordingly correspond to the type of social media users they are: whether they read or create blogs, have a Facebook or MySpace page, whether they tweet or not etc.

The battle of a firm appropriately approaching the use of social marketing is to know what type of user  their customers are. Knowing this information in the beginning avoids misuse of internet resources and avoids wasted time and money.

Here are some other social marketing tips companies need to understand as the approach the social media world:

1. It is one thing to have presence, it is another to monitor it. As has been recently made clear by Domino’s handling of a viral video, being present on social media and monitoring it are two different things. It is vital for the company to be constantly aware of what the public, i.e. the groundswell, is saying about their products.

2. Social Marketing Takes Time.A firm cannot expect to immediately get results when they first create a Facebook or MySpace account. Such results and presence takes time. A new Twitter account is not the golden ticket to new users and sales.

3. Avoid Non-Organic. In preparation for a new auto show, automaker Land Rover recently launched one of the largest, most extensive Twitter campaigns by a major national brand. The campaign works by “hiring” prominent Twitters to highlight the Land Rover product. The goal is to present the image and brand of Land Rover through respected Twitters. Such a campaign, as I see it, avoids the true essence of social media: it must be organic. Users to quickly can see through the veil of corporate deceit.