One of the worst things for a Web 2.0 social community to do is debut, and then sit idly, hoping success will immediately follow, with users rushing in and accepting the site as-is. A stale site is the biggest sign that one service will fail while another will survive, and could be an early "tell" as to the developers' dedication. SocialMedian looks like it's in this race to stay.In the month following my initial coverage of SocialMedian, the online social news site has undergone a wealth of tweaks, visual enhancements and new features, and it looks like user growth has been dramatic.
You can see the growth of popular networks on SocialMedian
In the first week of April, the top 5 most popular news networks on SocialMedian contained between 50 and 100 users. But now, to make this list, it takes more than 200 users, with 729 being part of the Web 2.0 network. In fact, growth over the last month has seen the site's tech users drive similar topics, including Tech News, Social Media Watch and Social Networking, ahead of the initial leader, Campaign 2008.
The news feed shows interesting stories and comments
On Friday, as announced in a blog post, SocialMedian added some new features likely to raise the site's popularity further, including the reduction of duplicates in "My News Feed", and making Clipped stories look like votes, with those stories gaining the most votes getting a higher level of attention, Digg style. The design of the site has also improved a great deal in just a short time.
(See the Product Development Blog)
As with other social media networks, you can add stories to your news feed by using an embedded bookmarklet, and you can make comments on friends' clipped items. Where other entrants have sputtered in the face of strong competition, it looks like SocialMedian is going to make a serious run at being increasingly visible and increasingly relevant.
If you haven't tried it out already, you can get in with the code of "London". (Sign up here)