Socialbookmarking is Broken

3 Ways Social Bookmarking is Broken and 3 Ways to Fix It

Like so many toys we are given, we have finally broken social bookmarking :(

Basically, any time you try to implement anything that remotely relates to a Top Story/Top Post/Most Viewed something on the internet, people are going to get competitive. Anyone ever play the games on Neopets(really lame example, but one that I have been bothered by since I was young, hahaha)? Those people on that site were NOT playing around. They were competing for the top spot on each game, racking up millions of points. And you always saw the same person as the top scorer and wonder what they’re doing with their lives…

People are adding stories for their own sites and racking up views/votes/whatever so they can get more actual views. Everyone wants their website to be popular. And people are willing to cheat to get that fame. It’s just like anything on the internet; an innocent, earnest process will always become corrupt once it gains popularity and introduces competition in any way. At the end of the day, people don’t really care if they’re messing up the algorithms on digg.com by adding a million useless websites.