I would have to disagree with this statement just a little bit. While I agree it is probably important for many businesses to have a blog, a business that is almost entirely local *probably* doesn’t need a blog (for example, a place that cuts hair probably gets all of their customers through regular WOM).

Other than that…I would agree that many businesses, especially those with a global presence or product, should blog.

Digg traffic:
I personally like seeing traffic come from del.icio.us (the company I works for tends to get more from del.icio.us). My personal take is that these folks are probably more “sticky”.

It’s prefectly fair that you don’t like digg traffic.

Your analogy is interesting. Personally I think that anything that spreads via WOM is viral, and from then there’s different levels of viral topping of at the one that never stops spreading.

Cameron Olthius, in replying to a fairly negative post by Noah Kagan, states a universal truth of the Widgetsphere:5. Widgets work! I’m not saying that you can build a widget for anything and expect it to work but a lot

so i need the right people and the ones that might subscribe to mine from digg are great but they not be the ideal readers. i think of it like this. if i asked all my readers for money the ones that came from digg and stayed wont pay me. the ones who found me from friends, links from others and/or other places are more valuable. i wont deny any traffic but i just prefer it more from other places. fair?

hugs.

1) it is worth it..or
2) they are stupid.

this is a really deep topic. here are my quick thoughts on it:

i tell you, you tell hiten, hiten tells aneil. aneil shuts his mouth that is word of mouth

i sign up for something and email you. you email all your friends, they email all their friends and it never ends. this can have a part of word of mouth where people are telling their friends to sign up. i think it is when the product will ONLY succeed and there is a CLEAR incentive for you to invite your friends.

say there is a site where you need people to make it successful aka all social networks. some work better than others because there is more incentive to sign up and want to tell/invite your friends. i think a great study on viral marketing would be to look at the social networks that failed and why no one wanted to spread it. some viral things are undefined and just happen.

okay this was a ramble, hopefully you are still reading=) go tell a friend to read this. oh yea one more thing. viralness needs tools. aka shit to help you tell friends.

You’re right though, a lot of widgets suck, but there’s still a lot that have been done right and serve good purposes.

Think of widgets like a tattoo. If Nike offered you $5 to tattoo someting to your body would you do it. Technorati did not create a widget. They created a useful way for people to get recognition into their system.

Don’t get me wrong. A few widgets are great. the meebome one isn’t bad. the how much is my blog worth was cool.

bottomline: they are overemphasized and not as ROI as people think.