I’m dropping Scribd from my list of favorite Web 2.0 News Release Sites.

Yesterday I returned to Scribd to post a new document and I noticed that the option to enter rich text has been removed.  I uploaded my document in Word format - and the links did not work when I checked the article after it was published on Scribd.  Well, I thought, what a waste of my time!  Not to be easily daunted, I re-saved my document in .rtf format and uploaded it the same way as the Word Doc - with the same results - no working hyperlinks in my article. 

Then I spent 30 minutes looking for an account setting or an option somewhere that I’d heard about on Scribd, where you could turn off the option of your document showing up their special flash-viewer.  No Luck.  I could not find that option anywhere.

So I’ve removed Scribd from my list of Hot Web 2.0 Favorites - and moved it back into the Research and Monitor mode.  It may be possible that the links work on the document once it’s been downloaded from Scribd, and the service may still have some small marketing value.  We shall see.

I’m sure Scribd HAD to do this.  I’m sure they had to remove the functionality of the working links in order to protect themselves from bad spammers.  But now all us ‘good’ spammers who made Scribd the service that it WAS - will now be moving along, for this pasture that once was Scribd is nothing but a dry gravel pit now.

Find a Web 2.0 news release service

The next leg of my Web 2.0 Education will involve a systematic day of registering for all of the following publishing websites:

  • Bubbl.us
  • Campus Reader
  • Clipmarks
  • Digg
  • Gabbr
  • Hypeshpere
  • NewsGator
  • Newsique
  • Newspicker
  • Newsvine
  • Now Public
  • Propeller 
  • Reddit
  • TXT Signal
  • VFlyer
  • Video News Live
  • Wired

Once I’ve completed all the registrations, I’ll return to each site and post variations of the same article to each service.  The articles are intended to act as news releases with links to the full story on Site A.

During this process I plan to take careful note of which services have a Tag system in place, and where I can draw RSS feeds from the Tag pages.  As I post my article in each service, I’ll collect the URL’s for the Tag page RSS feeds.

After each article is posted in each service, I will bookmark it with OnlyWire, using matching tag phrases.  Again, I take note of the RSS Feeds of the Tag pages in the various social bookmarking services.  (that is one short statement that encapsulates four hours of *really* dreary data collection).

Finally, once the articles are all posted and all the bookmarking completed, it’s time to organize all the RSS feeds from all those Tag pages. I like to create a new section on a similar website that I have hosted on a different server - call it Site B.   This new section consists of themed pages that pull together several RSS Feeds from various Tag pages for the same keyword phrase.

In other words, Site A has the real article, the real product, or the real ‘action’ that we want the visitor to take.

All of the (15) News Release Services contain various clips from the real article and link back to Site A.  With variations in Tag phrases, let’s say we end up with Ten different three-word phrases that we use to Tag these News Release services. 

Step Three - Bookmarking each News Release with (12) Social Bookmarking services. 

12 news releases x 12 bookmarks each = 144 instances of places on the Net with your marketing message.  In addition, more than 1440 variations of the Tag pages will be created, which also link back into your new mini-net.

It is a massive process - and JUST as tedious as it is BIG.

Initial results demonstrate that the excitement on the other end will be much greater than the tedium required to get there!

And so on I stretch and pull myself - like a happy inch-worm!

Cheers

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