MediaVision Blog : Search Engine Marketing

Digghas announced that they are going to be booting Google as its online advertising partner and moving to a company Digg’s top executives described as “young and willing to take risks”: Microsoft Corp.

Doesn’t quite sound right does it?

I find this very interesting, great for Microsoft, not so great for Google. This is a huge blow and has created a lot of controversy amongst Diggers.

All was revealed two days ago when Digg co-founder Kevin Rose wrote this on his blog:

“Hey everyone – I wanted to give you a heads-up before the official announcement is made later today. We’ve signed on Microsoft as our new partner to sell and serve the ads on Digg. It’s a deal similar to the one Facebook signed with Microsoft last year.

This move gives us an advertising partner with a larger organization and a more scalable technology platform to keep pace with Digg’s growth…” Read more

The reality is that with Digg and Facebook under its belt, Microsoft may be able to seal deals with other social networking sites. For Digg, however, the decision could backfire. Digg has been referred to on numerous occasions as “the domain for those who do not particularly like Microsoft.”
According to comments left on Kevin’s post, Diggers seem to have mixed feelings about the deal. There are some positive comments rooting for Microsoft and some very negative comments. There have also been several comments from Digg users saying that they would be leaving Digg for Sphinn.

This in turn is great for Sphinn. It certainly seems as though many Search marketers are growing tired of Digg.

According to Jim Hedger in his blog post SEO Tools: The Benefits of Being Social:

“Digg became the biggest social sharing network for written content and it has provided enormous amounts of traffic, therefore quickly used and abused by many on the (ummmm…) more “cutting edge” side of the sector. Before long, other Digg users became militant about voting down anything remotely relating to search marketing or website promotion. Digg was thus rendered relatively useless for SEOs.”

Then recently Sphinn came along, built specifically for those in the search marketing industry. I wrote a post about Sphinn last week, its two weeks down the line and Sphinn has become an instant hit. It is keeping a tight focus on search and search marketing, relevant and focused. From the comments left on Sphinn, it’s clear that there are already a lot of Digg users that have already moved over to Sphinn.

Any way you look at this deal - it’s a big score for Microsoft and a blow to Google, maybe not in terms of the big money but in terms of a high profile blow. Let’s hope that this proves to be a good move on Diggs side, they undoubtedly in need of catapult, it’s their integrity and the trust of their users that is of paramount importance. I am curious to see if if its not too late to win that back.