Viral content is made to be shared. It loves gossip and the more it is discussed (negatively or positively) the better. I recently entered the world of viral content and was surprised at how easy it was to vote for articles and trending topics. If you vote for something, you feel as if you are putting your little stamp of personal approval on it, for all the world to see. As a society, we all like to give our opinion and a Digg or Sphinn is just the same as placing an “x” next to the topic we approve of. So, what is it with viral content that we find so appealing? Here are a few viral content sites that seem to be getting everybody’s vote.
Viral content should be easily understood as well as topical. Above all, viral content should be easily shared, and this is where sites such as Digg, Sphinn, StumbleUpon and Del.icio.us come into play. Digg is a social site that invites you to vote on the things that you like best. From current issues to anything obscure, if someone has something to share on a particular topic, it should be on Digg. When you become a part of the Digg community, you can share information by submitting articles that have already been placed online. Once this is done, others can approve of your article by “digging” it (kind of like our South African slang, I suppose). If your article is “approved” by enough people, you get bumped up to the front page of the site. Just like when you were at school and you received a gold star for good work. Digg claims that they are here “to promote that conversation and provide tools for our community to discuss the topics that they’re passionate about.” So, basically, Digg shows us what we want to see by asking us what we like, and that makes sense, right?
Sphinn is similar to Digg in that you can register (you can never get away without giving out your details) and then submit your articles. Stories on Sphinn can get “hot” which means that they will move to the “hot topics” page, resulting in another gold star for you. This viral content site is aimed at interactive marketers who want to share what is going on in their industry. It’s also driven by personal opinion.
A site that I cannot seem to get enough of is StumbleUpon. This site lets you create a profile based on your likes and dislikes and then suggests sites that you might be interested in. If you absolutely love a particular site, you can vote for it by clicking on the “thumbs up” icon. The “thumbs down” icon does exactly the opposite (kind of like gladiator times, but with less bloodshed). StumbleUpon sees itself as a better form of regular search engine, and in my opinion, is a marvelous time waster which I must refrain from at times!
What is great about these viral content sites is that you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to submit articles and topic discussions. If you have an article from your site or a blog that you feel should be shared with the world, then you can submit it (after reading and understanding their terms and conditions, otherwise they’ll remove your article and make you sit in the corner with a dunce hat on). This means no more trying to read your friends’ Facebook notes or trying to decipher someone’s thoughts on a topic from their limited Twitter feed. All these viral contents sites want you to be active, and when you finish that article or blog and click the submit button, don’t you hope that someone out there will read it and actually enjoy it? These sites provide the ultimate in personal feedback from real people, without all the red pen and an eventual grade marking at the end.