Although the social media space seems to be ruled by sites like [Digg](http://www.digg.com), [del.icio.us](http://del.icio.us) and [Netscape](http://www.netscape.com), there is still room for more. Recently a site called [Deals.com](http://www.deals.com) launched which is just like Digg, but for finding deals.
I recently did an [interview](http://news.com.com/The+big+Digg+rig/2100-1025_3-6140293.html) with Elinor Mills from C|Net on [Digg spam](http://bokardo.com/archives/yes-virginia-there-is-spam-on-digg/) and noticed that the article contained a lot of inaccurate information. She quoted me as saying
Widgets have been a hot topic lately and it seems more and more companies are getting into it due to their effect on website traffic and brand recognition. Although widgets sound like a great thing for everyone to have, the problem with them is that not everyone has the technical know how to create them. Because of this a company called [MuseStorm](http://www.musestorm.com/) recently launched into private beta looking to solve this pain for publishers.
Fear appeal is something that marketers have been using for centuries. When you want people to buy a product you don’t always have to tell them all the benefits of using it, but instead you can show them what will happen if they don’t use the product. If you scare people enough they will remember your product and buy it.
Spamming on Digg has been getting a lot of attention lately because of [URLs getting banned](http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/how-not-to-get-your-url-banned-from-digg.html) and [bad stories](http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2006/11/spam-farms-social-web.html) making the homepage, but no one is really talking about spam on Netscape. In the last month or two Netscape released a friends page similar to [Digg's](http://digg.com/users/kevinrose/friends/submitted) where you can see what all of your friends submitted which allows you to vote on those stories with ease. This clearly opens up the door for spammers.
In the past few months it seems that more and more bloggers have been placing the [MyBlogLog widget](http://www.mybloglog.com/) on their blog so they can see who is coming to their blog. The concept of MyBlogLog(ging) is becoming popular and some have gone even as far as [writing guides](http://qureyoon.blogspot.com/2006/11/complete-guide-to-mybloglogging.html) on how to use it. So why is MyBlogLogging catching on like a wildfire?
A lot of bloggers feel that the key to increasing their traffic is to get on the Digg front page as often as they can. Most of these bloggers do so by scooping news, writing how to guides or even top 10 lists, but most don’t realize that you have to be careful or else your URL will get banned from Digg.
Links play an important role in search engine rankings which is why webmasters go to great extents to obtain them. Most people think that if you want millions of backward links you have to have a large brand such as [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com), but there are small companies who actually have more back links according to Google, then even Google.com.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone from all of us here at Pronet Advertising. We especially want to say thanks to all our readers because without you we wouldn’t be where we are today. We also want to say thanks to all of our families, friends, and colleagues.
Although URLs play an important role for search engine optimization, they also play an important role in [social bookmarking](http://neothoughts.com/2006/08/15/urls-matter-in-social-bookmarking/). One of the most important factors to maximizing your exposure on [del.icio.us](http://del.icio.us) and other social bookmarking sites is the URL of a website.
