Well Facebook is once again making the headlines, once again involving one of the giants of the web.

• It has been reported, according to the Wall Street Journal that Microsoft are in talks with Facebook to buy a stake in the social media site.
• It is thought that Google are also interested in purchasing a steak in Facebook.
• Microsoft are believed to have valued Facebook in the region of $10 Billion dollars (wow)
• Microsoft already have a relationship with Facebook as they are the soul provider of online advertisements on Facebook.
• All parties have refused to comment about this.

Well I wouldn’t have expected Microsoft to do this if I’m going to be honest, lets see what happens over the next few days.

As many people are still only just getting to grips with social media bookmarking websites there are a few small things you should know. It doesn’t matter how good your story is – you might have discovered a living Dinosaur at the bottom of your garden but if you don’t follow a few basic tips no-one is going to know about it – to be honest I wish that example was real, dang! Do not expect to pop on to Digg or Stumble and post your website or story and expect the traffic to roll in, be friendly!

1. A title of your story is as important as the story itself – Now this is also relative to which social media website you are going to post this story to. Websites like Digg and Reddit demand a catchy interesting title to quickly grab the attention of the browser. The more wacky the better usually works well in this field, I like many people use Digg to be entertained and to quickly find out if there is anything funny or interesting happening on the web. For websites like StumbleUpon, Sphinn and BlueDot you have a more techie based audience so the theory of the story would be a better choice of title.
2. Include images – I enjoy a good article as much as the next person but images help break up the reading and keep the less educated viewers happy.
3. Write your story or article in your perspective - people are becoming more interested in what individuals have to say about stories rather than a company name, they can relate to it more and relationships can be created.
4. The top 5 social media websites in my opinion and experience are: Digg, Reddit, Stumble, Flickr and Sphinn. These websites can give you thousands of unique hits per day! If you don’t rank particularly well in the search engines this can really help you. Sign up to these sites and just start socializing, bookmark and review till your hearts content. Why? Well because each of these sites have various ways of making your reputation more valuable. For example, if I stumble 1 page, just me, I can expect to see around 150 unique visits to that page – from just pressing a button! The more you give to these sites, the more you get back, a lot of people have not grasped this yet.
5. These categories work best with the top 5 social media sites:
· Digg – Entertainment/News/Photos
· Stumble – Internet
· Reddit – Facts/News
· Flickr – Photos, art
· Sphinn – Technology/Internet/webmasters

If you just follow these small guidelines you can dramatically increase your websites traffic, not only that but you will be helping the social media community, thank you.

I have been aware of a website called killerstartups.com for just under a year now, I came across it one day as I checked my analytics program and saw a spike in traffic from this unknown site. As I viewed the source of the referral I was pleasantly surprised as to what I found.

The website is designed to make users aware of new websites and to learn about what they are and what they do. I was lucky enough to get a small interview with the CEO of www.killerstartups.com Gonzalo Arzuaga who took time out of his busy schedule to help us understand what they hope to achieve:

MR: Could you tell us briefly what Killerstartups.com is for the people who have not come across the site and what position you hold at the company?

GA: KillerStartups.com is a blog that reviews 30+ internet startups per day. Our community of internet startups, investors, press and bloggers and the techie enthusiast in general come to our site to try to get a hint about which startup might be the next Youtube, or the next big thing online. I’m currently the CEO.

MR: As you may have noticed over the past year, social media and social book marking websites have increased in popularity. Now people like myself work in seo on a daily basis and see people dismissing “Social Bookmarking” as a phase when really they should be using it in their strategies. What would you say would be the benefits of being listed on killerstartups.com for new websites.

GA: Visibility. If you think of that, everyday we publish 30+ reviews. That’s really helpful for other bloggers who want to write about. Also killerstartups.com in 6 months became a top 5,000 site in alexa. Last month we reached 170,000 visitors according to Compete.com. That’s basically a good way for a startup to get the word out, and get some people checking their site out.

MR: The way I understand Killerstartups.com to work is that anyone can submit a “killer” new website but it does take some time to appear on the site. What is done in this period? Do you not think you are losing out to potential traffic by doing this?

GA: Our members can submit their startup for the community to vote if they think it’s a killer or not. We’re working around the clock to make our submitting process faster. We get sooo many reviews per day… We’re soon launching a feature that’s called Speedy Submission, where members can pay a fee for us to review it within 24 hours.

MR: In terms of branding and marketing yourselves what strategies have you implemented to help you compete against rivals such as Sphinn.com?

GA: We don’t see sphinn.com as competitor at all. We’re only focusing on reviewing internet startups, 30+ per day. Our goal is to be the best at it.

MR: I noticed that you are still in the beta stages on the site, do you have any idea when the finished article will be complete and will there be any new features you can give us a sneak peak at?

GA: We’re right now focusing on improving usability on our site. We expect to be in Beta for at least 6 more months. Been busy right now thinking and planning some social features, can’t tell that much, sorry

MR: On a website’s listing you have a feature that describes what the future might possibly hold for the described website, do you know if any of the predictions have been realized, if so which ones?

GA: Too early to say. We’ve been online for around 8 months. We have to give the startups some time, let say 1 more year or so.

MR: Does killerstartups.com receive any substantial traffic from similar sites such as StumbleUpon or Sphinn and have you in any way encouraged this?

GA: No. We don’t get any traffic from SU.

MR: Have you ever been offered a large amount of cash for a stake in Killerstartups.com?

GA: Nope..

MR: Do you have any more projects on the go at the moment besides Killerstartups.com?

GA: Nope. It’s hard enough with this one

MR: Thanks for answering these questions Gonzalo, is there anything you would like to say to our readers before we end this?

GA: Sure, go check it out! www.KillerStartups.com