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Digg has been notorious for driving a server-crashing influx of traffic to web properties worldwide. The social news site has been able todrive anywhere from 1,000 to over 1.3 million page views in mere days.

Reportedly 70% of Digg’s user base have blogs, which when promoted to popularity are picked up by other bloggers, driving additional traffic. This helps websites attain additional exposure.

Why the New Digg for Your Business?

The new Digg will allow publishers to grow a targeted following much like Twitter, without having to promote content to Digg’s front page. When you submit (orDigg) your content, it will be exposed to your following on their My News page (see below). 

When people who follow you “Digg” your content, the story will be posted on the My News page of people who follow them. This will allow for viral exposure as your submission is posted on more My News pages. The submissions with the most votes, or Diggs, will appear on your following’s Top News from People You Follow widget posted on the sidebar of the My News page for added exposure.

The new Digg is similar to Twitter, but aggregates the top news of people you follow on Digg.

The main function of Digg will be to expose news that is supported and enjoyed by people you follow.  Thus, Digg will become a viral marketing engine that facilitates the spread of your content through interested people who wish to support it, like a retweet.

Businesses could reach out to people in their immediate network’s network. Thus the proportion of a business’s following that visits its websites, subscribes to its RSS feeds and email newsletters and buys its products or services can dramatically increase with each submission.

Read more at: What the New Digg Means For Your Business

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If you run a search for anything, somewhere in the top results of the search will be a Wikipedia page. So even before Facebook decided that your company or business Wikipedia entry would make good support for community pages, you had good reason to consider a Wikipedia page. Say what you will, the site is a good source of content on the most disparate topics.

What is Wikipedia? It's a free, Web-based collaborative encyclopedia in many languages. The project is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its name is derived by combining the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from Hawaiian "quick") and encyclopedia.

The site more than 14MM articles, 3.1of which are in English, have been written by volunteers. Almost all of them can be edited by anyone with access to the site

There is a whole conversation around Wikipedia being reliable, how so few editors decide what the content is going to be, and so on. I was pondering this while reading a newspaper article about how the whole history of the unification of Italy was written without the women that contributed to it in it - in other words, they were edited out.

Indeed, even history is written by the perceived winners. With that in mind,and for a couple of obvious reasons -- search along with third party validation -- you may want to figure out how to create content on Wikipedia.

To write an entry in Wikipedia, you'll need to register on the site. Other things to think about are:

• plan the entry -- figure out how to structure the content, what information and images (search for images in the Wikimedia Commons) you'll want to include, the format you'll follow -- chronological order, for example -- the categories you'll include, etc. before getting online

• play in the Sandbox to get familiar with the process -- it was set up so that people would figure out how to get started. Experiment here

• research references ahead of time -- whenever you make a claim in your content, you'll need to have a reliable source to back it up, just like in an academic publication, a book, or any other credible source. Third party content works well here

• add links to other entries in Wikipedia -- since links are the currency of the Web, you will want to reference other entries whenever possible to improve cross-referrals among articles

• improve or add a stub -- you probably saw them, these are incomplete entries the eventually become full articles. Wikipedia describes a stub as a short article in need of expansion

Once you write an entry, you'll see how the community reacts to information you post. If you created a page about a business, you'll probably notice that unless you have third party validation on claims, they get stripped fairly rapidly by the volunteer editors. Follow Wikipedia on Twitter for more tips and factoids.

Have you created a Wikipedia entry? What was your experience? 

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Photo: Nojhan

Sony Pictures has released the first trailer for the upcoming movie, “The Social Network”, which is loosely based (sensationalized) on the history of Facebook. While the new trailer doesn’t provide many details, it definitely emphasizes the dramatic perspective of things. The movie’s official site has been posted and is currently slated to be released later this year.

Whether or not this movie ends up being a winner, it is most definitely attracting a lot of hype. With tons of coverage of just the new movie poster, there’s no doubt that many onlookers will rush to see this movie despite its questionable historical accuracy. Add to the movie an all star crew, any reference to Facebook, and you have the recipe for a buzz-worthy movie. We’ll have to wait and see just how great the actual trailer looks once there are shots from the movie. In the meantime, you can see an early teaser below.

What do you think of the teaser trailer? Are you convinced that a Facebook movie is a good idea? Let us know in the comments.

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Watch out, Google: There's a new Doc in town. 

Docs.com, also known as Docs for Facebook, officially launched at Facebook's F8 conference on Wednesday. Created by Microsoft's FUSE Labs, the online app allows you to create, edit, and share Microsoft Office documents with your Facebook friends.

As of now, the service is still in beta; anyone can view documents, but in order to edit or create new ones, you'll have to join a wait list. I was able to take an early peek at the full functionality, though. Here's a look at what I found.

Docs for Facebook: Getting Started

At a glance, Docs for Facebook seems awfully similar to Microsoft's recently announced Office 2010 Web edition. And it is: The service is actually powered by Office 2010. The main difference, really, is the existence of the Facebook connection and the added sharing opportunities it presents.

That connection starts with your very first step: You sign in to Docs for Facebook using your Facebook ID, either at Docs.com or within the official Facebook app. Once you're signed in, you can create or upload new Word, Excel, or Powerpoint documents, or you can view documents created by any of your Facebook friends. The experience is essentially identical whether you're accessing it via Docs.com or via the in-site Facebook application.

The actual viewing and editing interface will feel familiar to anyone who's used Microsoft's Office products (which, in this day and age, is pretty much everyone): You have a menu bar filled with formatting options at the top of your document, along with standard menus such as "File," "Insert," and "View." Spreadsheets allow you to resize columns and perform most basic functions.

One plus of the program not present in other Web-based collaboration tools: Docs for Facebook allows you to move any document into your own desktop-based Office software for viewing or editing; there's just a single button you click to make the transition. The desktop viewing and editing functions are compatible with both PC and Mac versions of Office; you do, however, need Office 2007 or a more recent version in order for them to work.

Docs for Facebook: Getting Social

The sign-in and editing process is all fine and dandy, but Docs for Facebook's biggest selling point, obviously, is its social component. Upon creating or uploading a new document, Docs for Facebook gives you the option to share the file with any number of friends on Facebook. You can specify individual people as approved readers or editors, or you can opt to make the document public -- to all of your friends, or to the entire Internet -- and have it posted on your Facebook Wall as well.

When it comes to the sharing, the appearance of Docs doesn't look terribly different from what you're used to seeing: A shared document appears on your Facebook Wall and News Feed the same way a shared photo or status update would, except it says "via Docs" at the bottom. Anyone can click it to view it, and anyone can "like" it or comment on it, too.

Docs for Facebook does offer a couple of options to expand its Facebook presence: You can add a specialized tab to the top of your profile, making all of your created documents accessible in a single location, and you can add a Docs bookmark onto your Facebook home page so you can access the app without having to search.

Docs for Facebook: Final Thoughts

Generally speaking, Docs for Facebook is pleasant enough to use, though it did move a bit slowly during my tests. I also encountered a couple of errors while moving through the program, and the documents I shared on my Wall had an out-of-place-looking blank image where an icon should have been. With that said, the program is still in beta and is likely being bombarded with traffic right now, so these may or may not be long-term problems.

One can't help but wonder whether Docs for Facebook will be able to hold its own next to an established and widely used service like Google Docs. Personally, I suspect it could end up attracting a largely different audience; the type of people using Google Docs for business-based collaborations seem unlikely to port their projects over to a socially oriented service like Facebook, even if the offering does bear Microsoft's name. Businesses looking to use Microsoft Office online, one would imagine, would be more apt to veer toward the standalone Office 2010 Web edition.

Make no mistake about it: Docs for Facebook makes its target clear, and it certainly doesn't seem to be the business-based user. The service's "Overview" document, written by Microsoft FUSE Labs' Pat Kinsel, describes Docs as a "social-productivity experience" and indirectly addresses the obvious Google Docs comparisons.

"There are other services out there that let you create and collaborate on documents," Kinsel says, "and there are others that support sharing, discussing and discovering documents. But what makes Docs special is it's the only service that supports the complete document lifecycle. That coupled with seamless integration of Microsoft Office 2010 and Facebook makes Docs the best possible document service for the Facebook environment."

The question, then, becomes whether a "social-productivity experience" is something people actually need -- whether collaborating on documents is an activity users want within their Facebook worlds.

Microsoft and Facebook are clearly betting that it is. Only time will tell if they're right.

JR Raphael is a PCWorld contributing editor and the co-founder of eSarcasm. He's on Facebook: facebook.com/The.JR.Raphael

PCWorld

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