Rob: hi everybody. This is Rob Halford, the Metal God from Judas Priest and you’re mixing it up with Social Blend.

(Music playing)

GREG: I just want to say before we jump into our User Focus for the night. It would be remiss of me if I didn’t bring this up. But, rest in peace, Keith Ledger. His passing this week was a shock to me personally. It’s really sad to see that, to see such a loss of young life like that. Especially when it seems to be an accidental overdose of medication rather than your usual celebrity of overdose or suicide or something like that. And I’m sure you guys have read my post the other day about how Australians look at their celebrities doing well internationally is part of their national pride - kudos, to everyone, who was on the Bowl and posting the news at Mixx. And special thanks to people who’ve been posting tributes and so on. I also want to make mention of the West Baptist Church group that are aiming to protest Heath’s funeral. I doubt you guys are listening to this as you don’t seem to be very forward thinking individuals. But I do want to say this; your intention is to protest the funeral. I don’t know whether you can afford a plane trip. But it’s going to be held in Perth, Australia. If you can’t afford the flight, good luck drowning on your swim over there. Otherwise, if you do make it over there, I’d say it “Bring the fuck on.” Because I can tell you right now there’s no one, absolutely no one in my hometown that will tolerate that kind of reprehensible bigoted behavior by anyone. All I got to say “Prepare to be owned.” That’s all I got to say.

Brian: The whole thing was for me, I’m not a big Heath Ledger fan. My ex-girlfriend was a huge one. Of course I’d have to watch some of the movies. Now the thing that hit me was, Greg and I have talked several times, is about his role as the Joker. You know we think, its like, “Oh, my God. He is the embodiment of the Joker. He’s perfect.” That’s when it hit me, wow, no more of the Joker. He’s not a good one. When a buddy of mine sent me to IM so that I can submit a story to Mixx, I was like “Oh no. This is, no way.” It was such a, so soon that no other mainstream media had the story. I came here when he submitted it. And I’m like “No way.” It was like really surreal that it actually happened. I’m not to take anything away from it, but I do kind of have a fairly good idea of how Greg feels, having a hometown hero pass most unfortunately. In 1986, during the Challenger explosion, our hometown heroes, I was born in Florence, South Carolina about 20 miles away is a town called Lake City. Well, Ron McNair which is one of the astronauts that who died on the ‘86 Challenger explosion was from Lake City. I kind of how it is when you hear that shock, “Wait a minute. One of our own, they made it big and it kind of like, they end, the life ended unnecessarily, too early.”

Greg: Yeah. Rest in peace, Heath Ledger, and if anyone from back home in Perth happens to listen to this, if you know anyone there in the family, please send our condolences. Okay, moving along, let’s go to a real User Focus for real this time. Our User Focus this week is Calinazaret who is just so really awesome. She won one of the advertising contests or am I thinking of one of the honest ape’s 8 nominations for it.

Brian: No, she, I believe, did win one of the contests. I can’t remember which one it was though. I have to look that up.

Greg: Did you guys want to chime in about that about Julie real quick?

Jay: Julie’s actually, she’s pretty awesome chick. She honestly has a ton of questions about everything. You can post the sky is blue and she’s like “Why?” Have you ever noticed that about her, Brian?

(Laughter)

Brian: Oh, no, no. It’s not that. I’ll tell you the perfect example. This is Julie. There was a post recently. Somebody commented that Mixx that, I can’t remember, it was like the Top 20 Pick up lines.

Jay: Right.

Brian: She posted in there, a comment like “Oh man, somebody here’s a great conversation starters. So somebody apparently, I guess the guy, I wanted to say he was from Digg, “Oh my God, this is obviously spam.” He noted it down and he say’s “Just look at the first comment.” So I had to reply to the guy and I’m like “No, no, no.” You don’t know this man. I could tell you knew, like, Julie can ask any question. These are honestly great conversation starters for Julie, hands down, no doubt about it. I think I posted on there, like; she will take a look at Google ads on your site and try to understand how they do or do not affect you in your average daily life, like say, going to the grocery store. I think that several times she has comments or IM’ed me. Another time, I think, what was it? That she said something that I have no idea she could think I took it the wrong way. She’s like “Bye.” She got off. Two seconds, she got back on “By the way, I just want to make sure that you didn’t take my comment wrong.” I’m like “I think I don’t even have the time to read your comment. So how can I take it wrong?”

Jay: Dude.

Brian: She goes, “Ok, great. Thanks. Bye.”

Jay: Ok. Quit beating around the bush because we all know exactly. Ok, here it is. She posted in the Bowl “the Greatest Fucking Question I Think I’ve ever heard: What kind of spam does a transvestite get?”

(Laughter)

Brian: Yeah, that one. I think that was, I’d forgot all about that one to be quite honest with you.

Jay: How the hell could you forget about that one, dude? That was like one of the greatest. I mean.

Brian: I just want to know the answer.

Jay: Oh, my God. It’s in the Mixxing Bowl Forums, under General Discussion: What kind of spam does a Transvestite get? And dude…

Brian: Did we ever get an answer on that?

Jay: Honest Ape and I had the charm em with our smart-ass remarks about it. But, I mean, dude, I would have never thought about that. You already know you’re getting Viagra and then some of them were getting, a lot of ladies are getting breast enhancement, spam. But then, it’s like, both, both A and B or chest.

Brian: I can honestly say I’ve ever lost any sleep on that question.

Jay: Oh, yeah. I’ve never lost any sleep on it at all. But I thought it was like “Damn.” That’s actually a funny as realistic question?

Chris: The thing I like about it is that she seems very real. It’s like somebody you could hang out. She left a comment over an article over a fight over jeans. She left it too rob Diana. “I’m a woman who never cares about expensive jewelry. Her wedding ring was bought of a bulk wholesale store, 15 bucks. And I don’t normally wear anything else. She definitely seems someone you’d like to hang out with.

Brian: One time we got a hold of her during, me and Greg and Joe were just flirting around. And we got to talk to her. It was like what? It was 2 or 3 o’clock? No, it was about 1 or 2 o’clock, my time because I have to get up at 5 in the morning. We had a blast. It was fun. It was funny because she’s with her husband. And the whole time she keeps saying “Yeah, he looking to me like he wants to spend time.” But I’m talking about you guys.

Jay: Yeah, It’s like, I told Brendan we would go to the grocery store about 3 hours ago. So forget that, man.

Brian: Exactly. She seems really cool. I have to mention this, Greg, you saw it too ‘cause you responded to it. She’s apparently a little distraught awhile back. Apparently she posted something in the Bowl and it wasn’t answered and I try to do the unread stuff but it doesn’t work all the time. So I missed a lot of posts occasionally. Nobody replied to her. So she felt bad. Well then I guess, with the whole Digg revolt, a lot of people from Digg came over. You get some of the asshattery and assclowns coming in. I guess she just says, I can’t remember exactly what it was she said. Do you remember, Greg? Go ahead.

Greg: I think she was referring to the element that you were talking about popping in at Mixx just this week that’s gone during the Digg revolt. It was turning her off, the whole social media thing. And she wanted to focus on her degree. My attitude was “That’s great. That’s cool. Definitely, that’s an admirable goal. Focus on your degree, on your education and what not. Kudos to you for that, but I already missed seeing your submissions here at Mixx. Don’t run away. That’s part of the big deal around Mixx. I feel that the socialization at Mixx especially when used in conjunction with the Mixxing Bowl, socialization at Mixx is part of what makes it such a great site.

Brian: Yeah, and I agree. I’ve told her too if she left. Every episode of Social Blend, we’re going to have a “Julie, come back” segment. And I have her email address. So I’ll post it. And I’ll have everybody say “hey, you’ve got to come back.”

Chris: It’s like the Stanley. Once you get in, you can’t ever leave it.

Jay: Pretty much. Once you’re in the Bowl, you’re in the Bowl.

(Laughter)

Brian: There’s no leaving the Bowl.

Greg: First rule of Mixxing Bowl Club is “you don’t talk about Mixxing Bowl Club.”

(Laughter)

Jay: Exactly.

Greg: Julie, hats off to you. We love your submissions. We especially love your comments. And we’ll have a blast when we catch up with you on Skype. We really want to bring you on for a show at some stage. You’ll be hearing from us, to join us sooner or later, at some stage or another. We’d love to have you on the show. Keep Mixxing ‘because we love your stuff, seriously.

Jay: Absolutely.

Greg: Comment of the week, really quick, is from an article of called “Shooting yourself in the foot.” Time Warner usage cap submitted by our very own Silent Jay. And this is the dumbest idea a broadband provider could think of. Morons! I’m glad I’m not of that network. I would be broke. Joe, what was the general rundown of that story? Tell us what the general summary is.

Jay: Ok, basically Time-Warner is trying to tier its network. Granted, I’m all for network tiering. That’s great. But do not penalize users that are in your network and say “As soon as you hit this is much of a cap, you’re going to get billed every megabyte over your cap. You’re going to get an extra bill.” And I’m like “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on a minute.” So you’re telling me that, let’s say that they monopolize a certain area and it’s the only broadband provider you get. If you go over a certain megabit cap for that month, anything that you go over again, you’re going to get billed for? That is just friggin’ stupid. And they’re trying to say “Well, we’re trying to bounce it out and make sure that we have the bandwidth and everything to support this people.” And I’m like “Well you really need to take a look at yourself. ‘Cause if you’re going to say that you’re not going to have the bandwidth and the pipes to provide to everybody else, what the hell are you doing as a broadband provider? Why the fuck are you even on this plan?  You’re not going to sit here and tell me that you’re going to bill me? For that? You’re out of your damn mind. Forget that.

Greg: Right.

Jay: There’s a massive network that can piggyback onto. So don’t sit here and tell me that you don’t have the infrastructure. The infrastructure is there. You just need to make your own little deal’s to apply to get on to that infrastructure. Don’t penalize your users for going over. That’s just stupid.

Greg: Right. Naturally the reaction that people are having to this news was very much like what you were just talking about. I feel exactly the same way you do. But Rob Dianna was responsible for this absolutely really classic, which is why we’ve chosen it for our comment of the week. He says “Dude, a 5 gigabyte cap. I would like go through that in an hour. Do they not know how much porn people watch?”

(Laughter)

Greg: Yeah, kudos to you Robb Dianna. That was classic. We split our sides laughing.

Brian: It took me 2 hours to realize, “Wait a minute.” Maybe after you realize, after Joe said “wait a minute, thanks for letting us know. Do you download that much porn?” He’s like “Wait a minute. That didn’t come out right. I’m not saying I watch 5 gigs of porn. It’s like what I meant is that some people watch it.”

Jay: And I was like “Yeah, whatever. Too late, perv.”

Brian: Exactly. That was classic, man.

Greg: It’s kind of like those moments where somebody asks you a question about porn or illegal drugs and you answer that question. And you’re like “Whoa, did I answer that too quickly?”

(Laughter)

Brian: It’s like one of the question of “I have nipples. Can you milk me, Greg?”

Greg: Oh, my God. That was classic.

Jay: Chris, you’re still with us, buddy?

Chris: I’m here.

Brian: By the way, let me ask you since we have Chris on here. Was Courtney embarrassed about that?

Chris: I’m going to take the Fifth on that.

Jay: I know you guys didn’t give her too much all around the office, man. That was just a classic; we loved it. It was great. It was good stuff.

Chris: I was going to call HR. But then I realize that that was me.

(Laughter)

Greg: What really impressed me was, people who work at Mixx, anyone could’ve made that kind of comment. And then gone back into the system and removed it once they realize the context that it had inadvertently been placed in. You know the cool thing was that you just left it there. It just became a good laughing point. It’s really cool.

Chris: She’s a really good hedge. She’s great. The whole team is really cool. She handles herself very well.

Greg: We got another question from our very good friend from NowSourcing from Nowsourcing.com, Brian Walls. He’s asking about email alerts. We get in our email about different things. He’s specifically looking at the emails we get when we are befriended by someone. Or someone’s chosen to follow us. His question’s related to if you’ve already followed that person. You’ve already clicked on “follow this particular person.” And then they’re following you in response. Shouldn’t that email alert be different from like when you get an alert from someone who you were not following?

Chris: Well I have a very long answer to that. Yes, it should.

(Laughter)

Brian: Ok, what’s this word? Go ahead.

Chris: Yes, we need to fix it.

Brian: Here’s one. And this is like the 800 pound gorilla in the Mixx world. We may or may not get to the other thing that Greg and I were to discuss.

Chris: Go, get to it.

Jay: Aw, shit.

Brian: This has been something that’s been asked repeatedly in the Bowl. Also it’s in Greg’s recent submission: Groups. I think what you guys have done with “groups” is what groups is supposed to do. But I think what some people are kind of have a misconception. My idea of the groups is, correct me if I’m wrong, is similar to your’s which is, you submit content that is… Let’s say Francis, I’m a web developer. I want to send things to say Jayson Falls, a few other guys. And I say “Check this out.” Now a copy is sent to both the group as well as the public. In reality, because I was really just trying to submitting it to the group, my vote should not be synched up. Now I remember in the beginning, I thought they should. But now, as I think about it: no, they should not. As well as the comments, stay in the group as well. Now some people are saying “Well, the votes as well as the comments should line up.” Now for me, I don’t see that as perfectly all that great because what ends up happening is that, it can potentially become a voting, or a gaming system.

Greg: What if it was the other way there, Brian? I was thinking about this today. What about if you went to a topic posted at Mixx? And you voted on that in the public version of that and you were a member of 2 out of 4 groups that submission’s already been submitted to. Could that vote sort of carry on to those groups automatically?

Brian: I think it is cool. But I already hear Bill having a heart attack.

Chris: Let me tell you about the… ‘Cause we’ve spent, I don’t know, hundreds of thousands of dollars talking about this. Let me tell you about the principles, at least it’s based on to that. Which is: not only by group but by topics, people have different opinions. So let’s leave actually “groups” out from here. Let’s call it “tags.” Ok? Let’s say there’s an article on Schwarzenegger. And it’s placed in its tagged research-categorized LA or actually Sacramento, I guess. And it’s also placed in Celebrity Gossip and Politics. If you’re looking at the source more about Celebrity Gossip and you vote if you see it on that, it doesn’t actually count on politics. Or if it’s more of a political story and you see in positives doesn’t affect the Entertainment Celebrity Gossip thing. It will affect the area you’re voting and it will also affect popular.

Brian: You’re saying your votes really only count in the context of which you’re voting on.

Chris: That’s right. Because somebody whose really into some story, about umpteen million stories get tagged in different totally appropriate categories. But then more importantly in one category than the other. And if you’re following entertainment, ‘cause you’re into entertainment, that story might be important. But if you’re into politics, it may really be not important a politics story. Go ahead.

Brian: I was going to say always the hard question is. Because I know that somebody is going to ask it in the Bowl. They’re going to probably say “Chris didn’t quite explain an answer for me.” I think the perfect, I think you’ve already read it too as well though, Chris, which was, everybody has the consensus that regardless of what group or category it’s put in the public submission be the round up of the votes. Now I’m not saying I agree with this. I’m just saying that that’s what a lot of people are saying. I don’t care where I submit it. If somebody in Group A and Group B and it was submitted in both those groups, 2 votes was cast in one group, 3 votes were cast in the other group and the public already had 2 votes, then the additional 5 should go to the public which is a 7. Now I’m not saying I agree with them. I’m just saying that’s what a lot of people think that is should be like.

Chris: It doesn’t because the groups have a different specific interest. And you assume that that specific interest is relevant to elsewhere. That’s the point of groups is that you’re in a specific group. You’ve basically taken yourself out of the public square. That’s the principle. And then, of course, it is that everybody can share and recommend content among relevant circles without running out everybody else over. That’s the idea.

Greg: I think that that particular element you’re talking about there, Chris, is really going to stand out more when we get more users at Mixx and it grows. Because when you’ve got more user growth, theoretically you’re getting more submissions. I remember from my early times over at Digg. When I started noticing people getting involved, it was damn near impossible to keep up. But with all the new submissions from all of my friends and so on and at some point with Mixx, it’s the same kind of thing will happen where you’re getting so may users coming in submitting so much content that the philosophy of Groups is going to stand out with much more significance. At least that’s my opinion. I think that where you guys are coming from, right?

Chris: And already, a third of our activity takes place in Groups. And many of them are Groups that are Private Groups that nobody can see. That are an office building where people are sharing information just within that company which, A, not interesting to the average person on the street and B, some are proprietary in what they think is interesting. So they just share it in their own Group and it stays in their own Group and it touches nothing else.

Brian: And I’m going to send this really quick so that you don’t view this is in a complete blindness. Honest Ape, outside of what the comments of everybody has been puttering with the submission that Greg did, Honest Ape, a couple of days ago, rather it’s almost a week ago, submitted a topic in the Mixx. It’s called “Regarding Groups: So am I an idiot?” He basically tries to rationalize what’s going on especially with public groups, not so much the private ones. The private ones, I completely understand. And I don’t know if you’ve read this one already, Chris, but he’s trying to reconcile Public Groups. He says “So if I make a Public Group, there becomes 2 copies of each article as you submit, whether a Public or a Group will permalink, unique comments and post writings. He’s like, I guess what he and Robb as well Evil Monkey, those are the 3 main ones, basically, they’re kind of confused with the whole copies of the articles submitted even if it was a Public Group. They’re kind of confused about that a little bit.

Chris: Yeah, I’m sort of shocked, dude, that I totally missed this. So I need to read it and maybe we’ll do a little blog post about this.

Brian: And I think that’s… Yeah, and you know what, really and truly, not so much the domain of this podcast. But I think you hit on exactly what a couple of people I’ve seen comment. Things like Group submission or shares or stuff like that, a couple podcasts on those items would be phenomenal.

Chris: The whole principle behind Groups and Tags and Categories, at least that we’re trying to, what we’re trying to accomplish is that everybody can socialize among relevant circles and relevant audiences, relevant content, and where one group of people doesn’t run another group of people over. That’s what we’re trying to do and that’s, and I’m glad that you… Frankly, I’m shocked and disappointed with myself that I missed this. We’ll just write a blog post, talking about what we’re trying to do and then we’ll all the feedback we can get how to make it better.

Brian: And I think that’ll work.

Greg: Well I mean, Chris, one of the things that we’ve mentioned earlier that we really appreciate about Mixx is the fact that you guys listen to our feedback and you check out what people are saying in the Bowl, which means a lot to us. And that leads me to what we wanted to focus on at least very briefly this week, the big breaking news in the social media world that happened over the last few days was something that I had called a couple of months ago. Do you think, Joe?

Jay: Oh, yeah. You called it a couple of months ago.

Greg: Yeah, was Digg Revolt 2008. Some people aren’t even calling it Revolt but…

Brian: I would be that person.

Greg: That’s neither here nor there. But basically just if you’ve hiding underneath the rock in locked bomb shelter on the planet Mars in an alternative universe, what happened was Digg changed their algorithm earlier in the week. Basically Kevin Rose had posted a blog about the algorithm change. And it sounded like, it terms of why the blog was written, that preferential treatment, in terms of the algorithm, would be given to newer, inexperienced users rather than the top Diggers who were more experienced with content submissions. The top Diggers weren’t too happy about that and basically the whole event was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, shall we say.  Now, look. This has been a long time coming, this whole thing that happened earlier in the week. We’ve had the issues with bannings, the conspiracy theory of auto-bearings, and so on and so forth. And this thing just made things explode. Basically from there, somebody along with Muhammad Saleem and Dave Cohn, aka DigiDave, posted a blog post, an open letter to Digg.com about what they were protesting about, what they weren’t appreciating. And the guys from the Drill Down held an emergency podcast, live podcast by U-stream that was so huge and packed. They had over a 120 people there. It crashed U-stream for a set period of time. Joe and I were in attendance there and Joe even had a bit of a cameo appearance on the Drill Down. You can go to DrillDown.com and have a listen to that. That’s basically what happened. Reactions, thoughts, ideas, concerns.

Jay: Yeah, really quickly: here’s my biggest concern. After the whole episode happened, some jackass blogger, I’m going to call it like I say it. I’ll probably bleat this out. This guy’s just a fucking hack. Ok, he only covered half of what’s going on and basically he made it look the top Diggers were whining and crying ‘because they weren’t getting their way and blah, blah, blah. This was like the cheapest piece of shit-blog I’ve ever seen in my life. Ok? When I say that, it’s worse than mine. So, if that tells you anything. Ok?

Brian: Mine’s pretty bad.

Jay: Mine’s pretty damn bad. Somehow this gets submitted to Digg and it makes freakin’ the front page. It becomes popular. There was like over 2500 Diggs on this. These people are in here saying “Well all these top submitters, all they are its just SEO’s and marketers and blah, blah, blah. I’m glad to see him go.” Yeah, dude, I swear to God. I will send you the link. I mean it was like all of these noobs were sitting their pitch forks and torches and trying to flame the top Diggers over this shit. And so I started looking at all the people making these comments. These are people who have submitted absolutely nothing to the community but maybe 120 comments which were all probably troll comments to begin with. And what these people need to understand is that the top Diggers had done more for them than they actually know. They actually ensured that Kevin and Jay actually said that they were going to an open line of communication, a forum. During the whole revolt, people were saying “Look at what Mixxing Bowl is doing. Look at Mixx and Mixxing Bowl.” That’s more along the lines of business model that Digg needs to look at because Mixx and Mixxing Bowl, everybody’s interactive. These noobs are sitting here saying all this garbage about the top Diggers when they don’t know shit about the top Diggers.

Brian: And what I got to say about that is it comes to this: “So what the top 10% or top 1% of the users create the front page material. Rag, Muhammad, Andy, all those guys, man, they spend an enormous amount of time. And I’ve only appreciated the amount of time that they spend because I spend that much time on Mixx, unfortunately because…

Greg: Let’s cut through the bullshit real quick. These guys submit quality content.

Brian: And I agree. But you know what? Here’s my issue with this though, it was not a revolt. It was a fizzle, dude. It’s a flat coup. That’s what it is because here’s my thing. And Chris, with all due respect, buddy, because I disagree something, disagree to whatever, if I ever submit anything to the Mixxing Bowl or Mixx that’s saying I’m staging a revolt, there’s very little, short of money, that I’ll do to stop it because I’ll do it. And that’s what my thing is, these guys had, I posted this and I posted on the Bowl, this is what pisses me off, these guys had a great, great chance to show social media, as a whole, which I know Chris and Mixx understand. And Chris actually even said, that the users are the reason you’re here. No other way. It’s not like you fell into a pile of money and you kind of said “You know what, FYI, we’ll do our own news.” But what kind of pisses me off is, and I’ll tell you why it makes me mad, because of the submission by Spuds. It says Jay Alderson takes on the so-called revolt.

Greg: Hard article.

Brian: Yeah, exactly. He marginalized the Digg users by basically saying “Let’s be realistic about what happened yesterday.” He said “It wasn’t revolt. To me revolt is when statistically significant group of people calls a disruption. These guys are significant to me personally but this wasn’t a revolt.” Ok, here is my thing. Had these top Diggers left, statistically speaking, trust me, Digg should have changed dramatically. They had a chance to make a change and they didn’t. So basically what end up happening, they let Kevin and Jay came in with their, the fire suits and the water hoses. They sprayed the torches. They ditched on the pitchforks and they basically said, “Guys, trust us.”

Greg: I don’t know about that, mate. This is it. You’re looking at semantics here with the term revolt is being thrown around loosely here.

Brian: And I agree.

Greg: And it’s not being used in the sense of the HD-DVD revolt from last year. The thing is, this revolt, if you want to call it that, was conducted a lot more intelligently than previous ones.

Chris: True.

Greg: And what I’ll say is, I had previously said in my rants about Digg on this particular program, that boycotting, leaving, staging another revolt were the only ways that Digg will going to listen to the user.

Brian: Right.

Greg: And I think in this case, I thought those 3 options were the smart option. Well, Andy, Reg, and Mu, along with DigiDave, went out and did something even smarter. They incorporated their attempts into both a blog, IM communication, and eventually a podcast. And it got the attention of Jay and Kevin.

Brian: …who did damage control, that’s my issue…! They just did damage control.

Greg: But the one thing that came out of it for me, when I was there, ‘cause I was there, witnessing the whole thing along with Joe. The one thing that stood out to me, all these complaints that people were coming up with, Kevin and Jay, basically, their reactions, and I’m painting with broad strokes here, their reactions were, that comes as a surprise to them. That’s a real shock. That what’s happening is, you getting these people that they said they’ve got 3 dedicated people at Digg.com that enforce terms of use. And ban people and flag stories of spam or what-not. Basically these people aren’t doing their job. They’re not contacting the user’s getting banned. And any important feedback they’re receiving is part of their duties; it’s not being passed on to the people that matter which is Jay and Kevin.

Brian: But I don’t know I’m taking this from Joe’s blog where there’s a comment that says “First off, we read your comments.” And then second, was the whole line off “This comes as a total shock.” Ok, regardless of what the moderators do or did their job or not, it doesn’t matter. They represent… Let me put it like this, and Chris, this is going to be directed directly at you, if Corey or any of the Mixx crew sat there and said, yeah, they responded to a comment and, I can’t think of anything right now that would happen, but say an issue happened and it did not get back to you. You as a CEO of Mixx, Corey technically represents you, correct?

Chris: She represents the company and she’s empowered to represent the company.

Brian: Correct. Those moderators, whether they did their job or not still speak for Digg. It’s like when I used to work at, work for Specks Music. If I went off on a customer, it wasn’t me going off on a customer. It was Specks going off on that customer.

Greg: They’re anonymous. When you get banned from Digg for whatever reason even over some minor terms of use infraction, they email you receive from Digg feedback is not signed.  You have no idea who it is you’re communicating.

Jay: Right, here’s another thing. But he said “We read the comments.” Ok, have you ever fucking looked at the comments of goddamned Digg.com? It’s ridiculous. It’s like reading a very bad episode of fucking Cracked Magazine.

Greg: A better example of that…

Jay: Ok.

Greg: You don’t find your digger. You don’t find the story that broke there on the front page about Heath Ledger’s death. And don’t read some of the god-awful comments of some of those…

Jay: That’s fucking terrible.

Greg: Kevin Rose is telling us that he’s reading the comments. Why are some of these people active participants of Digg? They’re not submitting stuff. They’re just commenting and trolling

Brian: That’s exactly my point. Basically it comes down to, and I’ve said it before. It’s like re-electing Bush and he does a better job the next time around. It’s, and I said it in my blog post, everything was fixed with the “Trust us.” And I’m not saying that Jay and Kevin are not going to take a very good, that they may actually take a very long hard look at what’s going on. But at the same time, is anyone of you cost me 15 million dollars or 300 million dollars or whatever, I can guarantee you, I will say anything to you to make everything all better. I will sell a lady in white gloves a Ketchup Popsicle.

Jay: Right, here’s the thing.

Greg: Sorry, Joe. I was speaking over you. Go ahead, mate.

Jay: Now, they’ve got Kevin and Joe now on audio, its recorded saying “We’re going to do this.” You know what? It’s fucking put up or shut up time. If Kevin and Jay are going to come back and live up to what they said they were going to do, and if they don’t, there’s the integrity of Digg.com right now. If they don’t do what they say they were going to do.

Brian: Let me say that I honestly, respectfully disagree on this whole subject. When it comes to that much money on the line, these guys, sure they can make a couple of changes here and there, but like I said, “Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it.” There’s too many times where these guys have don stuff. Even in writing, they said they were going to do something. And if it did get through, it took forever or for whatever reason.

Jay: Yeah, that’s cool and all. I’m just saying that what came out of it was they said they were going to do this. Ok? The top Diggers have it on audio, Kevin Rose and Jay Allison saying “These are our plans. We’re going to do this.” Ok? They’ve opened up a line of communication. Now like I said: it’s put up of shut up time. That’s it.

Greg: That leads me to the closing point on this whole discussion, about the Digg Revolt. I’m segwaying into some Mixx propaganda, Muhammed Saleem. Basically, guys, if you’re listening to this and you haven’t started out checking out Mixx yet but you’re an active Digger. Here’s what I have to say to you: “You’ve been complaining about the people behind on the scenes of Digg, not listening to you. Well over at Mixx, the Mixx crew listen to the user bites.

Jay: This was point number one…

Greg: The suggestion during the revolt of having some kind of form where people can voice their concerns and suggestions, we’ve already got that in the form of the Mixxing Bowl.

Brian: Hold on. Or feedback at Mixx.com. You just can’t throw the Bowl out there because every time, and I got to give it at Chris, Corey and all of them, and we must not let this go by without mentioning Cary at least, they always get back. You said you send something to feedback at Mixx.com, you’ll all have something back, I say, within 12 or it will probably be less.

Greg: Right. And I mean and they get back to you about things, even if you’re doing something that’s not the right thing to do at Mixx. They’ll get in touch with you. It’s not like you’ll get banned, automatic banned or whatever. They really look carefully at users and individual circumstances and so on and so forth. It’s really all the stuff that all you guys are asking for and complaining about over at Digg, we’ve already got it at Mixx. We really have. So come and join us. You will find that the community there, here at Mixx, is not only, it’s very devoted to Mixx and to the concept of community and it’s running a lot smoother than what Digg ever has. So please. And I’ll put up a blog post about this some point in the future. I’ll lay down my own personal Mixx challenge to Diggers. Come and check it out. Drop Digg for a day, come and check out Mixx.

Brian: And here’s the excuse they’re going to have. But personally I don’t care about this and a lot of people say “Well Mixx doesn’t drive the traffic.” And I don’t care about traffic personally. Those people who probably do are marketers. I’ve seen a lot of comments of people basically saying “You know what, why should I go to Mixx because it doesn’t drive traffic?” But the one thing I find is first off, Heath Ledger’s death made it to the front page well before Digg and the other sites.

Greg: Exactly.

Brian: And the other stuff break way earlier too.

Greg: And the other thing is like if you’re complaining about traffic. You becoming a member of Mixx is going to help the traffic factor as time goes on. Because the Mixx members we have the more visitors we gonna get to the site submitting. Even if it’s self-submitted or otherwise. Mixx has got a lot of things going for it and the big thing that we’ve learned anyway from all this Digg revolt and the one thing I thought of, it was like 3 o’clock in the morning or whatever, I was in bed that night during that whole thing. I was saying to myself, “Well I thank Rose I’ve got Mixx now. I don’t have to put up with this shit anymore. Stuff was happening when I was in Digg and I was tearing my hair out with the whole stuff. Maybe that goes to show how much of a life I didn’t have at that stage.

Brian: Exactly. Let me ask you this, Chris, and feel free not to answer it, is: How does this whole Digg thing now? You can say you don’t know but I do. I’ve noticed that since that whole revolt or whatever, a lot of new faces, especially that day and the day after, a lot of new faces showed up. A lot of new accounts were created. And, man, the front page. Whereas the user took about 30 or 40, high 30, mid to high 30’s to get through the front page. Stuff was hitting 50, and 60 and 70, no problem. In fact, Mr. Baby man almost beat the all-time vote record with his one thing. He had a 166 in less than 12 hours. So I was just curious, it’s not a gloating at all because a lot of these guys are still over at Mixx. Did you guys notice a huge influx of traffic or users or submissions that day, or was it Wednesday down on to Friday?

Chris: So the answer is “huge is a relative term.” For us it was huge. For Davy it wasn’t huge. But it was really nice for us. Those people at least for the 72 to 80 hours that has happened since, they seemed to have continued their activities, which is really nice. And it’s really nice. And the whole thing, it’s not like we didn’t pay attention. We did pay attention. We don’t obsess on Dave because we like to think that we have Digg elements. But we have other elements too. But we’re just trying to take away things that we can learn to make a better site. But we also didn’t set out on Day one to kill anybody. We just set out to, we said it’s tacked up on the wall as you come in, our mission is to connect users and publishers in relevant circles and we’re just, we’re trying to learn from everybody whether its Digg or other sites, what they do right and what they do wrong so we can accomplish our mission.

Brian: Awesome. Well let me ask you, this may be a little long but I hate to leave this guy out because he just now jumped in with a question. This is Dave. Dave’s offered a lot of help. He had about a few questions. But he says he has several questions. He’s pretty enthusiastic about this. He says his first question is about awards. He says that he wants to know if eventually members will have the ability to look at their own profile or another user’s profile and view an awards’ history that lists an award for them. I know that you guys extended the time period in which these things showed up. But he’s more interested to know if you guys are even considering maybe like having an awards tab and it shows the history, I guess, timeline or I’m not sure.

Chris: That’s a great idea.

Brian: You can’t give me yes or no on that, I know that. But I think that’s a pretty cool consideration. It helps inflate your ego a little better.

Greg: He’s got another loaded question there, if you don’t mind me jumping in with this one, Brian? It’s actually 3 questions in one. What differences do you see personally between the contents submitted over at Digg and here at Mixx? And secondly, what is your whole take on the auto-berry conspiracy with Digg? Do you think such a thing exists?

Chris: Ok, let me take this individually. The reality is that I don’t look at Digg everyday. I love Digg when it came out. I loved the concept behind it. But there really wasn’t anything for me because I had specific interests. And I got it that everybody had their own specific interests. I’m not trying to cop out. I couldn’t tell you and I do look at Popular over at Mixx but most of the time I’m looking at a combination of Popular and the subjects which I have personalized. There are, I can give you a rundown of my page. It’s popular, but it’s also Washington, D.C. It’s I happen to be an ardent Red Sox fan. It’s environmental news. It is actually Alzheimer’s happen to run in my family and I really do not want it. And when there’s news on Alzheimer’s, that’s front page news to, as it’s probably front page news to a niche of people out there. So the other day there was something on Life science about a drug that apparently reverses Alzheimer’s in a matter of minutes in lab rats. I never would have found that. I’m not copping out but I couldn’t tell you really ‘because I just don’t spend that much time looking at Digg everyday. The second question I think, remind me of the second question.

Greg: The second question is “what is your whole take on the auto burying conspiracy with Digg? And do you think such a thing exists?

Chris: The answer is “I have no idea.” We never thought burying an article was ever a good idea. You’ll never be able to bury an article on Mixx. You’ll be able to report an article. If you down-vote, you can see your down-vote so you take responsibility for your down-vote. People down-vote for different reasons. And they can be seen. We’re never gonna institute a mysterious bury function.

Greg: Right and that’s another thing if there’s any non-Mixxing Diggers out there. You’ve been screaming for transparency like little children for God knows how long. Well Mixx has got the transparency there. There’s another thing why you should come over and join us. Chris, we’re almost out of time, mate. I sincerely want to thank you for taking the time. I know you’re very busy. I really appreciate the fact that you’ve come on and joined us on the show tonight. This will be up online most likely Wednesday night. You’ll be out to check it out then. So thank you, mate.

Chris: Listen, the honor’s been mine. You guys, the Bowl rules. Social Blend rules and the whole community involvement is it makes it really fun to go to work.

Jay: Well, we’re glad to hear that and you make it fun for us to go to work.

Greg: Joe, that’s all you do at work. You go to Mixx, dude.

(Laughter)

Brian: Let me put it like this. This is how much time I spend at Mixx. And it was from Rob Dianna, he basically got a contest because he basically had to report or throw something, you know how I do my little spammer. But he goes in and he’s like “Dude, seriously, I’m really tired of it.” He’s like “Does Mixx pay you to police the place?” He put police in quotes. Here it goes “Brian, do you have a job or is Mixx paying you to police the place?” And he’s like “If you don’t have a job, well I will hop away to remove my foot from my mouth.” Honestly the first thing I do, I don’t fire up my company email, man. I fire up Mixx and check the Popular, the Recent, the comments. Go check out the Bowl real quick. Then by that time I’ve forgotten to open up my company email. I used to get a call from my supervisor “Please check out the email, did you check out the email I sent to you?” And I’m “No, not yet.” Let me get to it. And that’s how much time I spent on it.

Greg: Before we jump into the Mixxland, Chris, I just wanted to mention one of the things that came in to the discussion of the Digg Revolt the other night, was Kevin and Jay were hoping to try and do like a monthly town hall kind of get-together kind of thing for the Diggers. I was wondering do you think there might be a chance we mighty be out to invite you back to the Social Blend for every once a month or every couple of months, something like that, so that we can address the questions and issues that Mixxers are having?

Chris: Yeah, I think it would be cool. Let’s get Carey on one time. Because the other difference is that the site, other than my user profile, you really won’t see my face on it. Because I don’t want it to be a cold thing. I want it to be about the community for the community. The people who work at the company, you know we’re not exactly big, I feel like I do all the work. Those guys do all the work and those guys can come up with better answers than I do. But I’d be thrilled not only myself but I’ll bet other people would to.

Greg: That’ll be awesome. Thank you, Chris. Before we close off, I want to jump into the Mixx Lounge really quick. Quick shout-out to Andy Sorcini, aka Mr. Baby man. I noticed that you popped into the Mixx Lounge the other day and your story of the second episode of the Digg revolt from the Drill Down as mentioned in the favorites there. So congratulations to you, Andy. Fat Lester, I’m really happy to see your new avatar there, there’s nothing like a good-looking rooster. We’ve noticed that we’ve got a new Most Contentious Award winner in part, Andy as well. So congratulations to you there.

Brian: And Tamara got of the side there.

Greg: Yeah.

(Laughter)

Greg: Okay, that’s it for Social Blend. People, thank you very much for listening again. Chris thanks for coming in. Diggers, Diggers, please come and check us out at Mixx.com. We’d really welcome you there. Check it out and you’ll probably like it a lot more with the good reputation you’ve been hearing so far. So thank you very much. Good night everyone and we’ll see you next week. Join us for Friday Fest at the Mixxing Bowl as always. Bye.

Jay: Good night!

Brian: Take it easy.

Chris: That’s it.

(Music playing)

Categories: Transcripts
Tags: Social Blend, Transcripts