Frame test – DiggBar: how much traffic does the DiggBar frame steal from your site?

The sole purpose of this post is to test the effect of site framing.  Specifically, we are testing the DiggBar and how a website’s traffic is affected by it.  We will report openly to the web community with the results of this mini-experiment.  Please follow the guidelines below.  This is the only way our experiment can work and for the results of this test to be accurate (very important):

1. If you are logged into Digg, please Digg this story and visit it through the DiggBar.  Don’t click through to the original.
2. If you are not logged into Digg, click through to the original story without the DiggBar.  Then go ahead and log in.  Digg the story but don’t click through a second time.

We are basing the baseline (constant) traffic that we should be getting on the amount of times the post gets Dugg.  For example: if the post is Dugg 100 times and fellow Diggers follow the above instructions, we should be able to tell how much traffic the DiggBar added/subtracted from overall site traffic.  So if we get 90 pageviews, it would means that 10 pageviews were stolen from us by the DiggBar.

Just in case you were referred here through a different site (not Digg), here is the link to Digg this post:
http://digg.com/tech_news/How_much_traffic_does_the_DiggBar_frame_steal_from_your_site

Why all the fuss?

As we discussed on the TNR Podcast over and over again (as well as countless others in the industry) we don’t like sites that frame other sites.  So we’re putting our traffic where our mouth is and want to find out what effect frames have on overall site traffic.  Frames are the underlying technology behind website bars such as the DiggBar, the Facebook bar, and the Hootsuite bar.  We’re starting our experiment with Digg (being the most tech-savvy place on the web in our opinion ) ).

Since this is an open experiment the results of which will be available freely to everybody, we will post them on Sunday, May 31st, 2009 on the home page of TechNestReport.com.  We will be using the above instructions as the baseline of the experiment and will be collecting traffic data using Google Analytics.

Posted in Cloud Computing, Digg, Experiment, Exteme Geek, Featured, Numbers, Social Networking, Web design

Feeling the web’s pulse: Twitter-related buttons replacing buttons from other sites and social networks

As Twitter keeps growing in popularity, more websites are getting “Twitter friendly”.  Whether this is adding a follow me button or ways to Tweet out the content, the web is getting more “Twittified”.  But where is the real news, you might ask?  Well when you put it that way, nothing here is “news”.  However, I think it’s sometimes healthy to take a step back from the hugeness of YouTube, new search engine launches, and social network acquisitions and take a look at trends on the web.

The fact that just two years ago, all the rage was to add Delicious and Digg buttons is evidence enough of how fast the web moves.  But you probably knew that already.  What’s interesting, though, is that Twitter buttons have begun to replace social buttons from other sites as the most prominent buttons on the web.  Now that is real change.  When your social network was all the rage two years ago but now it might not even get a button on blogs across the web, it’s telling of not only how quickly the web moves, but also how fickle the web is: people are ready to hop on to the next new thing and leave whatever it is they were using before.

Twitter-related buttons can be prominently seen in many places on the web now, especially on blogs – where it’s easy to implement with plugins and embeddable code.  But let me emphasize one last thing: I’m not saying that Twitter-related buttons are replacing buttons from other sites.  What I am saying is that Twitter-related buttons are replacing buttons from other sites as the most prominent, top-most, brightest social button on the web.  Take TNR, for example: we have a fairly large ReTweet button right at the top of our posts.  Readers can still Digg, Reddit, BuzzUp, add to Facebook, and even email our posts (as well as many other services) using the ShareThis link on the bottom of each post, but Twitter takes center stage.  What service will take center stage two years from now?  Talk to me in the comments!

Posted in Blogging, Social Networking, Trends, Twitter, Web design