Mixx has recently launched an interesting advertising tool called the Sifter in which advertisers can submit ads and have "elite" members of the Mixx community decide just how effective those ads are. Mixx CEO Chris McGill and another Mixx spokesperson discussed the Sifter with WebProNews.

How it Works

Mixxers rank the overall content on a scale of one to five, and provide qualitative, private feedback about their likes and dislikes. Marketers then receive raw data and a report detailing the gender breakdown of the people who voted, age distribution and a snapshot of their top interests. The highest-rated creative piece is then selected to appear in various high profile positions across Mixx, and the marketers use the data from the test to determine broader implementation of the creative content.

This is also a money-making tool for Mixx. Companies pay Mixx to place different types of creative like banner ads, new product designs, movie trailers, etc. and get the feedback, which can not only be helpful when advertising on Mixx, but can help them improve ad performance when they advertise anywhere else on the web. Advertisers like LivingSocial and Clorox have already taken advantage of the sifter.

Mixx CEO Talks About the Sifter

To get an idea of where feedback will be coming from, I asked McGill what it takes specifically to be considered an "elite" mixxer. "Users earn this status through their activity… they earn Karma points for submissions, voting and comments," he explained.  "They can also lose karma for ‘bad behavior’  To become a ‘PowerMixxer’, users need to gather 500Karma points, be active on the site over a 2 week period and exhibit no bad behavior.  The bar for ‘SuperMixxers’ is much higher and the rewards in terms of what Supermixxers can do on the site is much greater."

When asked if the reviews by the elite Mixxers are a good indicator of how the rest of the Mixx community will respond to the ads,  McGill said, "Yes.  The community has already been very, very receptive."

I asked McGill how the Sifter can help advertisers improve their ads across the web in general.

"The sifter gives advertisers nearly instant feedback of what creative resonated with what consumers and tells them on an aggregated basis, not only what their average age and gender is, but what their passions are in life," he says. "It does this by pulling the data (on an aggregated basis) off their personalized start page and indexing it against the norm.  Companies can use this to make product decisions, marketing decisions, channel decisions and much more.  It also give users (who tend to be some of the most influential people) a stake and say in what is important, it brings them into the process and can make them a champion of the product/ company."

Mixx on Pleasing the Investors

Another aspect of the sifter is how it makes Mixx money itself. This is an aspect the investors who gave the company a couple million last year are surely interested in.

"Sifter is also the new monetization model for the site – one that helps further distinguish it from other news aggregation sites like Digg and Reddit," a Mixx spokesperson tells WebProNews.

"We want to balance our duty to our investors and our commitment to the Mixx community," says Melanie in a post on the Mixx Blog. “We don’t like flashing, floating and scrolling ads and have worked to keep them away from our most Loyal Mixxers—you know, those who register and keep content and activity flowing through the system. We’d like to continue to keep the site as clean and pleasant a place as it’s always been. So we’ve come up with what we think is a revolutionary plan to generate revenue while keeping you in control of what ads are seen on the site."

Mixx has partnered with GeniusRocket to provide the Sifter service to its clients. This is a company who Mixx says is changing the face of ad creative and distribution by incorporating a huge community of developers and artists. Mixx isn’t disclosing many more details about the partnership at this time.

The Mixx Sifter can easily be located from the blue menu item in the navigation bar on the Mixx home page. I’d like to thanks Mixx for chatting about the service with me.

    Mixx.com Home Page

Also, it’s not as if new investors had to be lured in; according to Eric Eldon, Intersouth Partners was already onboard, and was responsible for leading a previous round.  Aside from seeing larger amounts of money or additional investors, its repeat business is about as good a sign as anyone could ask for.

Still, Mixx has some work ahead of it.  The idea of social news is tied to Digg in many people’s heads, and Conde Nast’s Reddit is another competitor in the field.  A comparison between user bases, size-wise, probably wouldn’t work in Mixx’s favor.  (Compare the number of votes on the front page of Mixx to the number of diggs, points, and comments at the other two sites, if you want.)

We’ll see how things go, though.  The Mixx Blog has documented a steady stream of upgrades, and in a recent development, the company tightened its bond with Reuters.  Also, although plans for the $2 million haven’t been spelled out, the money’s not likely to hurt matters in any way.

In fact, if the economy continues to worsen, it may prove crucial that Mixx received funding at this point in time.

Certainly there have been a lot of interesting blog posts about Mixx, but these are certainly the best ones.

So, without further delay, here are the blog posts that I think are the top 10 blog posts about Mixx for 2007:

Please note that I have not put these in any particular order.

First Look: Mixx’s Digg Alternative

Mashable was one of the first (if not the first) to take a good, hard look at Mixx. I think this was the first time I had heard someone important say that Mixx is the “Digg alternative”.

Mixx does a good job on the social news angle, but the real twist here is the personal start page. Mixx allows you to choose the categories you would like to see on “Your Mixx” and then allows you to see the most popular, recent, and commented items within your categories. You can then organize YourMixx page with a drag and drop editor. Additionally, Your Mixx lets you keep track of what your “MixxFriends” are submitting, voting on, and leaving comments about.

Techcrunch: On Mixx and the MixxingBowl
Mixxingbowl.com wrote a great blog post about Michael Arrington’s followup article. This is a must-read if you haven’t read it. Apparently after Techcrunch talked about Mixx there was a huge surge in new members on Mixx.

Since the publishing of that article, this Mixxer (Bdog2g2) has noticed a huge surge in registered accounts on Mixx. The MixxingBowl forums also gained about a dozen new members.

Digg Refugees May Be Heading To Mixx

Here is the original post by Michael Arrington at Techcrunch, telling everyone that Digg refugees are heading to Mixx. This post was a must for this top 10 Mixx blog posts list.

Digg users, including top contributors, are showing an increasing amount of frustration with the Digg community, and many are leaving. Conspiracy theories that Digg auto buries stories with certain topics or linking to certain sites only compounds the problem.

Mixxing In, and Why Early Adoption is Important: A Review of the Newest Social News Network

Tamar, one of my favorite “techie bloggers”, one who is always “mixxing” it up, did a great review of Mixx, and, like me, has been an early adopter of Mixx:

That’s why Mixx has a lot of potential. It’s so new that the community is being created right now as we speak. At this point, you can be part of it too. I’ve said before that social media requires a time investment, but right now, you can be one of the first influencers and the investment will not be as substantial as it would be if you were trying to break into an already-established (and well-formed) community. Mixx is a little island that is growing in its membership and each is contributing his/her unique flavor to the melting pot. Your voice can be heard now, and it should be.

Why Mixx Is Better Than Stumbleupon

All you have to do is mention why Mixx is better than some other social networking site and you’ve got my vote. Turnkey Business blog Moxie-drive.com has a great number of reasons why Mixx is better than StumbleUpon. In fact, there are 8 advantages that Mixx has over the other.

Overall, Mixx is a different kind of social media site. It’s design is borrowed from some of the best characteristics of all the popular social sites including Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, del.icio.us, and more. The biggest difference is that it is very much easier to “rinse and repeat” the process on a daily basis and keep the traffic coming without having to communicate to your network that you have a new post.

latimes.com Gets Personal with Mixx

Okay, so this is not a blog post. But this has to make the list because, well, it’s the Los Angeles Times. And they are Mixxing it up. Cool. Especially cool because they put their money where their mouth is so to speak. They invested in Mixx.

“Mixx is leading the way in making social news accessible to a mainstream audience, and we are pleased to have formed a strategic and progressive arrangement with them,” said Jason Oberfest, managing director of product strategy for Los Angeles Times Interactive. “Latimes.com’s collaboration with Mixx perfectly complements our mission of providing our readers with the kind of content, services and tools that add up to a great online experience. In order for news, stories and videos to be relevant, they must be personal, local and timely and content must be flexible and compelling.”

Most Popular Diggers Leave Digg for Mixx

Techpin reported that the most popular Diggers were leaving. The posted about their experience, and then talk about moving to Mixx.

There were many rumors traveling over the Internet among bloggers, suggesting that Digg applies preferential treatment for specific users that link to specific websites or write about specific companies.
After these came at TechPin’s ear we realized immediately that it had actually happened to us too.
We were using our account on Digg to post the most interesting stories from TechPin daily, together with interesting news coming from other websites.

12 Reasons to Join Mixx and Abandon Digg

The guy with the taco hat says that there are 12 reasons to join Mixx and abandon Digg. Definitely a good post, and hey, I just love that hat.

Why is that? I want to tell you why, I will provide you with 12 reasons to join Mixx and thus also to abandon Digg. Many of them also apply to Reddit or Propeller.

What A Mixx Up: Interview With Mixx Founder Chris McGill

Any interview with Mixx Founder Chris McGill should make this list. But this was definitely the best one. Collective Thoughts does a good job asking the proper questions. I just love the question and answer to this one:

4 – What’s your whole take on Greg (aka cGt2099) getting banned from Digg episode? Looks like quite a number of Diggers have come over to Mixx since this episode.

Let me start off by saying that we have a lot of respect for what Digg has created. They’ve provided their users with an amazing set of tools to recommend content to each other. They also have a very strong community, and they have obviously been very successful and a key part of the Web 2.0 movement.

As far as Greg getting banned…I have no idea what happened. All I know is that Greg is a fabulous and active member of the Mixx community and we are very happy to have him.

Mixx, a Gorgeous Digg Competitor, Gets in Bed With LA Times

Read/WriteWeb covers the Latimes.com Mixx partnership, I think this is the first time I heard about it. They also talk about reasons to join Mixx.

Mixx was clearly built by people paying attention to user demands at Digg. Its popularity algorithm is said to be a simple one, according to Matt Marshall’s coverage of the LA Times deal today, but there’s a lot that’s interesting about the site.

Well, there you have it, some of the best posts about Mixx that I could come up with. Certainly there may be more, so feel free to mention some in the comments if I have left any great Mixx blog posts out.

Comments

  "Mixx is not a one-size-fits-all recommendation site where users run over each other and a single niche group can dominate the conversation – no one gets left behind with Mixx," said Chris McGill, founder and CEO at Mixx.

"Built on a structure that captures the ‘long tail’ of content and personal interest, Mixx empowers users who are interested in all types of media and unleashes the promise of Web 2.0 for publishers."

Mixx users can control the flow of media by interest and location by creating their personalized "Your Mixx" start page so users can find their own blend of topics and media. Users can vote for the stories, photos and videos that they like or against the one they don’t like and they can share media with other users in specific categories, tags and locations.

The social networking tools in Mixx allow users to share items among a group of friends by creating or joining "Private Groups." Users can also designate "Mixx Friends" so they can invite and share items with other users and see their friend’s activity and interests.

The site is similar to other established social news sites including Digg and Reddit. Once Mixx is out of private beta and launched publicly the real test for the site will begin.

The IAB and PwC reported the numbers yesterday from the MIXX Conference and Expo. Internet advertising revenues for the US were approximately $7.9 billion, a new record and a 37% increase over the first half of 2005.

In the second quarter alone, revenues totaled nearly $4.1 billion, representing a 36% increase over same period 2005, and a 5.5% increase over Q1 2006.

Greg Stuart, CEO of IAB, indicated that interactive Internet capabilities were becoming crucial in the marketing world as businesses look to maximize search, broadband, lead generation, behavioral targeting, consumer-generated content and, eventually, mobile and iPTV.

“The latest results reaffirm the Internet’s growing importance for marketers to integrate online advertising into their overall media plans,” said PwC’s David Silverman.

“While search advertising remains the largest format in terms of revenues, we expect to see new formats like video ads to continue to emerge as advertisers seek to leverage the branding opportunities afforded by the growing installed base of broadband users.”

“Internet advertising continues to reach new milestones, exceeding $4 billion in quarterly revenues for the first time, and on pace for another record year of revenues,” said Pete Petrusky of PwC.

“With the seventh consecutive quarter of growth behind us we are confident that the Internet will continue to reconcile the imbalances between its share of media consumption versus its relative share of total advertising spend.”

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