Many of us have heard that Microsoft is dumping Jerry Seinfeld from their recent ad campaign. Apparently this strategy was always set to play out and Microsoft announced it will move into “phase two” of its campaign on Thursday. Seinfeld will bow out to a menagerie of personalities like author Deepak Chopra, actress Eva Longoria and musician Pharrell Williams.

So can anyone tell me what they’re trying to achieve here? I’ve read that Microsoft is attempting to reach the average user but IMHO these ads are just way to awkward to reach anyone. I mean, they definitely made you stop and watch but it was entirely due to the unusual pairing of Gates and Seinfeld and the fact that Gates was in a commercial at all. The campaign cost Microsoft $300 million to produce and Jerry received $10 million of that. So far it’s probably the shiniest turd I’ve ever seen.

Microsoft, I know you’re having a hard time trying to reach the Apple demographic but you’re not going to win them over when you use a celebrity that was on a sitcom that ended over 10 years ago. I personally loved Seinfeld and who didn’t? But you have to get a bit more up-to-speed with the times and the personalities that reflect that. You tried advertising on Digg which seemed like a good strategy since the Digg demo is loaded with Apple fans but I guess that wasn’t enough or maybe it just didn’t work.

Here’s the thing…as a social media and search marketing expert I know you can promote a piece of content to the point of exhaustion without much traffic in return. The reason being is that if the content isn’t good, controversial, funny, entertaining, or unusual enough then you’re not going to get anywhere, no matter how much money you spend. So if your content is Vista which is a buggy resource hog, or it entails spending lots of time and money turning photo albums into big-ass interactive tables, or riding the ipod’s coattails with the uncool Zune… if the content blows, you’re not going to get anywhere no matter how much money you spend on promotion. Start making good and innovative products like you did 23 years ago and the people will follow. Photosynth for example, is badass…make more stuff like this and then integrate it into mobile applications. You might want to improve on a mobile OS however (think bigger screen) if you’re going to fight both Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android.

So save those ad dollars and put it into R&D because even though we all love Jerry, he’s not going to make us want to go out and buy Microsoft products. You’re going to end up spending a lot of time and money chasing the tails of the innovators when you should be making revolutionary products like you did…23 years ago.

Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht host the online show Diggnation where they can be seen commenting and recapping on the week in Digg and other online happenings. From the comfort of a couch with laptops and beers in hand, Kevin and Alex go over some recently submitted content by yours truly. Squareoak submitted Geeky Weddings LMAO which to date has received 2285 Diggs. You can forward to 26:16 to hear the commentary. Thanks for the mention guys!

With all this chatter about people asking each other for Diggs, Spinns, Del.icio.us saves, Reddit votes and…Propellers, wouldn’t it be nice to have a social news site that was unsusceptible to gaming? With that said let’s take a look at Digg and combine its current model with new anti-gaming ideas.

1. First we need to look at how Digg votes are attained:

• Inside the Digg system: via natural user interaction and by ‘shouting’ to your friends
• Outside the Digg system: via sending the story URL to potential voters via IM and/or email

For this new system to work, we would have to filter which votes were attained inside the system alone. If a user were to access the story URL from an outside referral address, the vote wouldn’t count.

2. What if someone just creates multiple user accounts with unique IP addresses?

You could deter this tactic by ignoring votes that come from users who enter in a story’s URL directly without first accessing the main site. In order for a vote to be considered, there would have to be evidence of a bread crumb trail or a referral address within the system. If the user is on www.domain.com and enters in www.domain.com/story and there’s no link on www.domain.com to www.domain.com/story, the site would ignore the vote.

3. What if someone arrives on the site, logs in, searches for the story’s title, and then votes?

Voting using this method would work, but the weight of this vote would be less than 1. More like .25.

Implementing simple voting caps like this might ensure the integrity of the content’s actual popularity. The Digg community already does a pretty bang-up job at separating the wheat from the chaff but even if the content is valuable or interesting and deserving of votes, it can still be gamed. Once a story goes popular then a mob mentality sets in. People think that since a story has received (X) votes in (X) time then it must be something that deserves their attention and probably a vote. Often, this exaggerated popularity can push even mediocre content to a more prominent position within the site.

However, preventing the exaggeration of a story’s popularity on Digg could turn off some users. Social sites that gain enormous popularity seem to have a good balance at appealing to both the average end user and those who wish to influence them. If the influencers could no longer leverage a site, traffic might drop, even while the improved gauge of actual popularity could bring more/new users to the site.

Wikipedia is a site that is extremely difficult to employ for marketing purposes and is not the medium of choice for most influencers. Nonetheless, Wikipedia was receiving 917,000 hits per day as long ago as October 2004. Wikipedia was built on user participation and our need to document knowledge. Because of this the perceived integrity and value, Wikipedia enjoys great popularity.

Overall, improving the filters that maintain voting integrity within Digg may not only prevent gaming, but could also increase traffic by boosting the site’s perceived value.

Common Forms of Linkbait
Informational
Controversial
Humor
News
Tools

Benefits of Linkbait
Links – duh!
Link profile
Traffic
Branding
Bookmarks
Media Publicity

If you are looking to spread the word about a relatively boring industry then search Digg, Reddit, etc. to find what’s worked on these sites in the past pertaining to this industry.

Throw out ideas. Get them up on the whiteboard. Brainstorm.

Once your content is published you have to submit it to the social bookmarking and news sites.
Make sure you tag the story properly. Relevance and popularity are essential in choosing categories.

Keys to Promotion
Power account
Good titles & descriptions
Proper category & tags
Targeted sites