h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Following on from a conversation I had with Rich on my journal about Social Bookmarking.

I'ts basically an idea to increase the Post's off-site readership in order to generate more interest in the site.

Whilst promoting my new site, I've been using Digg and StumbleUpon to a fairly high degree. The benefits of using them are twofold:

1) Post pages would be cached. Within 24 hours of Digging my site, it had been cached by Google and was appearing in the listings. This means we won't be relying on Google cacheing the h2g2 front page, then the post main page, then individual articles.

2) We'd increase readership. The best thing about StumbleUpon particularly is that it will take you to random sites that have been stumbled before. Quirky, entertaining content ranks highly here - precisely what we do.

Doing it is easy. We'd need a master Post account on Stumble & Digg (maybe Reddit, but I don't use it myself) who can post the initial review (and if needs be, a link to it), and then a few other people who can get the ball rolling by posting their approval/comments.

I reckon it'd take 30 minutes to do the initial reviewing, and everything else can proceed at it's own pace.

You're talking all techie.

This is something Jodan was suggesting, though a little less specifically. It would also be a way to get the site as a whole publicised more easily.

When you say '30 minutes', do you mean per issue, per article or to set the whole thing up? We go 'to print' tonight, so if it's something that can be set up quickly and easily I could get it up and running in time for me to mention it in the editorial. If it needs a little more time, it's something we could set up and start using from September.

30 mins per issue. To set up a Stumble or Digg account takes less than ten minutes each.

In fact, if you take one and I take the other, I reckon we'd get the site done on both within about twenty minutes. The only time-consuming bit would be the reviews/summaries, but it's the Post - each article has a summary on the main page anyway.

Sorry B'el! I needed to write it quick, so it needed to be techie shorthand.

That's OK, I was joking.

I think I got the gist of how to do it now, but still have no clue how it works, not being somebody who reads blogs, or 'twitters'.

When you've got a bit of time, could you explain all of this to those of us who are still more at home with a pen ?

Ok, fella. I've just had a scan, and it looks fairly straightforward.

I have to have a nap in a mo, then appease the future missus with some wedding planning. Then I should be able to give the uploading of tonight's issue and this idea a bit of attention. If you feel like setting one or t'other up, go ahead, and I'll catch up with you later on.

It would be good to try this out and see how it all works over the summer, when we haven't got submissions and full issues to consider. If it's not too much of a time commitment, we'll look at taking it on every issue from the autumn.

Cracking stuff.

I think, mvp, that it's something that would make more sense when you see it on a page

But is really the ideal corner to promote for attracting newbies? A lot of it is very hootoo-centric, so would outsiders "get" it?

Or will you be sharing individual articles, rather than the whole issue?

Some of us haven't graduated to the pen. I'm still on green crayons.

So, is the point of this to get The Post into a Google search? What would people be searching for to see it?

*checks the forum title*

I don't think Post articles are very h2g2-centric, Mal. The last issue had articles about South African wildlife, gardening, apartheid and Wimbledon, all of which have wider appeal that h2g2. And none of those pages are indexed, lest we forget, so they are almost unnoticed by the rest of the Internet.

Jordan has already suggested promoting the site more widely and independently, and there's no reason why someone couldn't do something similar with the EG if they wanted to. I'd rather get on and do things rather than endlessly discuss the ins and outs until nobody does anything at all.

Well, that's true. I just meant we should probably pick individual articles rather than promoting the entire issue.

Ah, I see what you mean. Well, I don't think there's a need to filter out any h2g2-specific articles. Someone might conceivably come in via a Meet report, and even if they didn't it's not like there's a finite supply of links - we wouldn't lose anything by having every column in there.

Now, must have this nap!

I'm just saying, if the first thing they click on is Bel's excellent, but hootoo-centric Random Ramblings, that'll be one confused newbie who's not coming back!

The beauty is that once we've got the ball rolling, individual articles will get differing levels of attention.

I'll be submitting individual articles individually. Something hootoo-centric won't be voted for or rated highly by Digg/Stumble users and will drift into obscurity. Something well-written, amusing and enlightening will be highly rated and then be shown to more people.

This isn't an artificial process, we're just giving it a push and seeing how things develop.

As for the purpose - it's to get a wider audience. Being found by Google is just a pleasant side effect.

This is basically an excellent idea.

And you needn't worry about whether something is 'insiderish'. I often hunt around for information and stumble upon some website on which the participants obviously have a history - and a lot of inside jokes.

Such as the Mudcat Cafe (because I'm a folklorist, among other things, but don't belong to that site).

A glimpse into somebody else's community can be interesting, and amusing - and might even make the casual browser want to join, because it looks like fun. (Otherwise you'd have to drop most of the poetry, and you'd certainly have to rewrite the Post editorials.)

So, nothing wrong with the occasional inside piece, at all...lets people know there's a community there.

Also, I don't know if you've been keeping an eye on that Twitter stuff on the fp.

Just because people are tweeting certain kinds EG pieces ('Hey, I always liked that tv series') doesn't mean anybody will start choosing their topics on that basis. (At least, I hope not.)

Very good idea and I agree with dmitri that we don't need to worry so much about the context. Intelligent new users would recognize that there is a broader context - like when you see a word you're unfamiliar with and your brain fills in the gap. Besides which, as has been pointed out, the nature of these sites is that the cream rises to the top, so that new users are only likely to see the things which sort of 'suck people in'.

I think it would be a great thing for The Post, but I also think it would be great for the UG and EG. It might be worth seeing whether and how it works with The Post first.

I'd volunteer to help, but I've never used any of these sites...

Right, I've got the accounts set up.

Right, the two homepages are set up and ready to go:

http://digg.com/users/ThePostTeam
http://thepostteam.stumbleupon.com/

To stumble, you needs to have a Stumble account. Go to the Post team's page, click the article you like then click "I Like It" in the top toolbar. The adventurous can leave a review.

To Digg, you need a Digg account. If you've been paying attention, you'll know you need to go to the Post team's page, click the article you like then click "digg" in the Digg box next to the article.

As I'm a trustworthy chap, I haven't used the above to Digg or Stumble my own blogs .