IBM Global Financing: Digging for popularity

A ‘social’ convention encourages the promotion of commercial content.

The Site

IBM Global Financing, the division of the IT giant that helps customers spread the costs of purchase, offers links to ‘social’ websites to promote its content.

IBM Global Financing’s site is integrated into IBM’s overall presence under Solutions. At the bottom of each page are four links: E-mail this page, Print this page, Digg this and Save to del.icio.us. Clicking Digg this, the window changes to a page on Digg.com, where you are invited to describe the page and classify it by topic from a list provided. The process is similar for del.icio.us, though with less help – you are asked to add notes and your own, free text, tags. Both sites require you to be registered before you can submit a page.

Once a page has been logged users of the sites can search on any of the labels it was given (for example, software, financing) or a keyword such as IBM, and see a page promoting the content you selected. It will be ranked by the number of other people who have recommended it, whose comments cab be read.

The Takeaway

Digg and del.icio.us icons are familiar on blogs and publishing sites such as BBC News, but are still rare on mainline company sites. By putting them alongside ‘E-mail this page’, IBM is making clear their role – to help popularise content. Where e-mailing might tell a handful of people about the page, these ‘social’ sites potentially promote it to millions.

While the mechanism will never be appropriate for most business web pages, it is worth considering for content that could appeal to a sizeable audience. As there are many other, competing social sites, it is interesting that IBM has decided to promote just these two. Del.icio.us is described on Wikipedia as a “social bookmarking web service”, while Digg is a “community-based popularity website”. Each allows visitors to promote pages by adding them to the site, suitably tagged or classified. The most-saved pages feature most prominently, which should mean the best pages are also the best displayed.

There is no doubt that the concept will become more useful after there has been a shake-out to leave one or two dominant players, so perhaps this indicates where Big Blue is putting its vote.

First published on 24 January, 2008