A recent survey by Pew Research shows that more and more Americans are consuming news on social media sites – this excludes twitter.
It is clear. Be it buying goods or reading content on the web, we have begun to give a higher weightage to social endorsements. And as a result, publishers are giving a Social Push to their content by embedding “Like” buttons on almost every page of their site. Sounds like a plan.
And this is not surprising. We all look for social endorsements in what we read. An article that you receive from your trusted friend is going to be treated very differently than the one that comes from an automated mailing list.
That said, there are inherent issues in social media sites that do not make it an ideal hunting ground for content. The first issue is intent. Do you login to facebook to find good articles to read ? Mostly not. You are there to get a sneak peek into the lives of your nearest and dearest, or to share updates about your own. Finding articles is only an afterthought.
And there is the problem of matching your interests. Your facebook profile might have your friends from college, your colleagues, cousins, their friends..and the list goes on. Needless to say, you all do not have the same interests, and hence not all articles will excite you. Fishing for what you like on your timeline is akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. Good Luck !
To summarize, we like socially endorsed articles, but social sites are not great places to read. How do we get the best of both worlds ? How do we extend this phenomenon of socially endorsed articles beyond the purview of social sites?
Before I answer this question, let me introduce you to your Web of Trust. Your web of trust is a set of sources which you rank highly and love to hear from – it could be Techcrunch when it comes to entrepreneurship news, your well-read colleague when it comes to work related news, or your college professor to know about research advancements in your area of expertise. Socially endorsed articles command premium mind share because they have a quality stamp from someone in your web of trust.
Your web of trust is scattered - a few publisher sites, selected profiles on social sites like twitter, LinkedIn and facebook, and friends who mail articles to you all the while. Your reading too, is scattered. You might visit NY Times for Obama’s latest comments on the visa row, Cricketnext for updates on Dhoni’s captaincy review etc.
How do you benefit from your entire web of trust across all these places that you read from ?
Pugmarks brings the Build Once, Deploy often phenomenon to your web of trust. When you sign up for Pugmarks, you get to curate your web of trust and download the browser plugin. This plugin is now a mirror image of your web of trust. No matter which article you are reading and which site you are on, Pugmarks will bring you relevant articles from your web of trust. Consider Pugmarks to be a real time mashup of your context and social signals across the web. This is Social Pull – socially endorsed articles at the point of consumption.
I was just reading up on Steve Jobs on Wired.com and this is what Pugmarks had to offer :
Isn’t it amazing that I can now see what Pete Cashmore of Mashable and Bharath, my colleague at work, have to say on Steve Jobs, just when I am reading about him ?
If you are interested in trying out Pugmarks, do register for an invite at Pugmarks.me. You will hear from us soon.
Aditya