Off the Fringe…

Last summer, NXTbook Media became the first (and still the only!) digital publisher to set up channel agreements with social networking sites Digg and del.icio.us, to make it easier for people to share digital edition content. At the time, we felt these sites were perhaps a bit “fringy” for our customers, but had faith that our customers would come to embrace them (and other social networking tools) because – at the end of the day – social media works for its users.

Now, we’re seeing that in fact these tools are moving more and more into the mainstream. One of the many things Seth Godin is known for is his Web 2.0 Traffic List, where he keeps track of the Alexa figures of the Web’s trendiest sites. Alex Ishold has taken this data, analyzed how the list has evolved and posted his analysis here. The most enlightening conclusion:

Perhaps the most interesting information is the Average % Rank Change, because this information indicates growth. We were somewhat surprised to find that the six players in the Social Bookmarking space saw the most substantial growth in the last six months. This indicates that social bookmarking is heading towards the mainstream.  

In fact, Social Bookmarking had the greatest upwards movement in the chart of any Web 2.0 category!

This is a trend that every publisher will want to pay attention to in the coming months and one that NXTbook Media’s product is specifically designed for.