Viralogy

Contact: jnafarrete [at] gmail.com
Twitter: @Jonathan360
Websites: http://jonathannafarrete.com/, http://roadhero.com/
Current Project: http://www.fiestamovement.com/agents/

Why you should listen to this interview:

I met Jonathan on Twitter last year.  We’ve been talking back and forth for a while now, but finally got the chance to meet last month in San Francisco.  It’s really amazing meeting your Twitter friends in real life.  I’m sure you know the feeling: you feel a little nervous, but at the same time, you instantly move past all of the awkwardness of a first meeting because it’s as if you already know each other.

Jonathan is currently living the life.  He’s an agent for the Fiesta Movement and is getting paid to drive a car, make some digital media, and do what he loves.  It’s crazy to think that in this day in age, if you love traveling and road trippin’, you can make a career for yourself by utilizing social media.  He’s also a Power Digger and talks about his knowledge of the Digg world.

So to break down this video, the first half is about Digg and some secret things that you may not know about it.  The 2nd half is about what he’s currently working on and Jonathan as a person.  Enjoy!

Conversation Breakdown:

How did you become a Power Digger?

Jonathan started submitting stories to Digg and it began hitting the front page which became very addicting.  It’s all about finding good stories, submitting it, and promoting it.

How does the Digg Algorithm word?

It’s a very secret algorithm that is consistently changing.  Digg recently completely removed “shouts” from Digg.

Some interesting things:

• If you send a link to a friend and they Digg it but they don’t open it, it doesn’t count
• If you’re Digging straight off of your friend’s submission page it doesn’t count
• If you’re Digging more than 200 stories a day as a user then it’s almost impossible to hit the front page

Does it matter if the Digg user is new or if he has an old account with a high Front Page %

It doesn’t really matter too much if it’s from a new or old user.  What does matter is the mix of where you’re receiving your votes.  If most of your votes are coming straight from Gtalk, then your Diggs won’t count as much.  If you can show that you’re getting Diggs from Twitter, Aim, Gtalk, Facebook, and other sites, then you have a good mix of Diggs and your chances of hitting the front page increase by that much.

Can you walk me through the process of getting a story to the front page

It’s all about the sources.  If you have a brand new site that has never hit the front page of Digg, it’s a lot harder to get it to the front page as oppose to an article from the Huffington Post or Ars Technica.

Digg may have a “white-list” of sites that are easier to get to the front page.  If it’s a brand new site, it’s harder to get to the front page just because Digg doesn’t want anyone gaming the system for this random new website.

Tell me about the Fiesta Movement that you’re currently working on with Ford

Ford chose 100 different agents spread all over the country and gave them a Ford Fiesta to play around with.  There was a big application process, and Jonathan was one of the few that were picked for the movement.

Jonathan has to do a mission every month to promote the car, gain visisbility for Ford, and utitlize social media.

What do you think is the biggest mistake companies make when entering social media

The biggest mistake is a full on spammy blitz.  When a company goes online and starts telling everyone to “come look at me”, “go buy this” through Twitter and Facebook is just plain annoying to the users.  When there is not conversation being built, or community being developed, then a company ultimately ends us losing.

What would you like to say to the Viralogy viewership?

Do what you want to do.  To all the bloggers out there - just keep it up.  There are always a lot of down days, but if you keep persevering, then you really have the potential of succeeding and exceling at what you do.

Also, get out there and start meeting people.  Social media is amazing, and sometimes we forget that we can actually go meet people in real life.  There are things that we can do that go way deeper than 140 characters or a blog post.  There are so many events going on right now in your community based around social media that there is no reason you should be behind your computer 24/7 without engaging people in real life.