Social Alerter in Detail

Table of Contents

Introduction 

This page explains in detail what Social Alerter (SA) is, what it does, and what you can use it for.

The problem:

  • A reader submits a page from your site to digg or delicious. Slowly it accumulates votes and edges to popularity.
  • The submission goes popular on Digg or delicious and others.
  • A ton of traffic lands on your site, bringing down the server. Because you have more than one site on your server, they're all down too.

If only you had a chance to prepare... by using Social Alerter, you can!

How does Social Alerter work? 

Social Alerter has two parts:

  1. It monitors Digg and delicious in real time to log every single URL in Digg's upcoming list, Digg's popular list, and the delicious popular list.
  2. You sign up and tell Social Alerter which sites you are interested in tracking. You can track as many sites as you want. As Social Alerter monitors Digg and delicious, if it finds one of your sites it emails you. This way, you get a heads up to prepare for a likely wave of traffic.

Of course, you can monitor more than just your sites: your competitors' sites, and your favorite sites.

Tracking websites and Alerts 

So which sites should you track? Well...

  • Obviously you should monitor your sites. All of them. You just never know if one site goes popular and brings down your server with all your sites on it.
  • Your competitors' sites. Hey, the Web 2.0 social services are essentially marketing channels. You need to watch them there too.
  • Your favorite sites. I like many sites that I like to Digg their stories if I see them. Sometimes, though, these websites don't put a Digg button or a delicious button. Social Alerter helps me keep an eye on what's hot on my favorite sites.

Interface and navigation 

Social Alerter has an interface that lets you add, manage, and see the current Alerts. An Alert is created if a URL in a website you're monitoring is found. The Alerts are emailed the moment they're identified (see later for info about just how quick this is...) and all Alerts are listed in the Alerts Summary page.

These links are always available in the navigation menus at the top and to the right.

Tracking times 

Some numbers for your interest:

  • 40-65 seconds: the average time it takes for Social Alerter to find your sites and send out an Alert.
  • Once a minute: When Social Alerter checks Digg.
  • Every 30 minutes: When Social Alerter checks delicious. It doesn't update faster.

Any guarantees? 

Nope, none. Why? There are too many factors outside Social Alerter's control:

  • Social Alerter depends on the APIs of digg and delicious. They can block the access at any time without notice.
  • Although there are many checks that all stories submitted to digg are found, very rarely one will not show up.
  • Social Alerter's site might suffer downtime. I do my best to keep it up, but hey, hosting sometimes just doesn't work. As time goes by, more infrastructure will be added to keep up with usage.

In short: Social Alerter is "advisory".

Help, policies, contact form, etc 

Help-wise, Social Alerter has an extensive Help Section. It is a series of pages each discussing a specific topic. Please feel free to just dive in!

Privacy Policy: Using Social Alerter, you'll need to tell it your email address. Be rest assured that Social Alerter will not send you unsolicited emails. The email address will be used only to send you Alerts and send you important announcements like downtime or significant features. Please read the full Privacy Policy for details.

If you need to contact me, please use the Contact Form.