By Dino Dogan
Let’s face it. If your friends and followers knew just how funny, insightful, and smart you really are, they would be commenting, retweeting, sharing, and engaging with you non-stop.
So how do you show them your true genius?
These five sites will help you find content that will delight your Twitter followers, titillate your Facebook friends, and mesmerize the Blogosphere with the genius that is you.
Imgur
You’ve seen your cool friends post those hilarious memes in your Facebook newsfeed and you’ve wondered where are they finding such gold? Well, wonder no more. Imgur.
Imgur is a free image hosting site. It’s that simple. But it has a voting, commenting, and browsing function, which has made it a repository for images people are posting elsewhere.
Over the years, it has attracted a tremendously active community of Imgurians that are fervently active on the site, delightfully upvoting things that appeal to them.
It has effectively become a real-time barometer of whats popular and engaging online.
Extra Tip: I prefer to copy the image to my local hard-drive and upload it to Facebook, instead of sharing it via Imgur share buttons. I do this because it looks better when it’s posted on Facebook and it doesn’t require my friends to leave Facebook to view the photo.
Reddit has become a media darling of late, so you may have heard of it.
It is a platform for posting anything you find interesting (images, videos, graphics, etc.), which other members can then upvote or downvote.
If you’ve guessed that a lot of images on Reddit are hosted on Imgur, you’d be correct. In fact, Imgur was founded by a Redditor named McGrim who found that posting images on Reddit was a pain in the ass. And so, Imgur was born.
There are thousands of specialized areas called subreddits, each focused on a different topic. The most common complaint for new users is “how do I find what I need?” Read the tip to find out.
Extra Tip: A Redittor has made a Google Doc containing just the best subreddits minus porn, politics, products, companies, celebrities, and similar. Only useful stuff.
Tumblr
There are two things you need to know about Tumblr. It’s an easy-blogging platform, and the average age of a tumblr is 17.
Armed with that information, we can make the following conclusions:
- It’s often someone’s first foray into Blogging
- Mining Tumbr for data can give you a pretty good sense of what teens are into
Using Tumbl’s search function will turn up delightful and often bite-sized content (usually images) that you can share with your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.
And who knows, you may even find your inspiration there for your next blog post. I know I have.
Extra Tip: Tumblr is not just a blogging platform, it’s also a social network. You can follow others, and you can even reblog other people’s content, comments and all.
Extra Extra Tip: Triberr has made a Tumblr-style reblog and comments feature for WordPress bloggers. It’s basically an inexhaustible supply of guest posts.
4chan
It may not be pretty, but it’s powerful.
4chan.org is a simple bulletin board system a la Reddit, however, it predates Reddit by about 2 years.
It’s one of the highest-trafficked US sites, and it is responsible for spawning such Internet memes as LOLcats, Tay “Chocolate Rain” Zonday, and “Rickrolling”.
However, the most important thing you need to know about 4chan is that it is entirely anonymous. It DOES NOT require you to create an account to post, comment, or otherwise participate.
Yes, you may have guessed it. 4chan is the ground zero for the Anonymous movement.
Extra Tip: NSFW
Digg
I know what you might be thinking. Digg? Really? That site’s still around!?
Yes. Digg is still around, and I would argue, it’s better than ever.
Once upon a time, Digg was the shit. In fact, Digg had to fail for Reddit to become the “frontpage of the Internet”.
So after many ups and downs, Digg is back and it’s very clean, simple, and useful. It may never return to its previous luster, but if you want to find a trending story, Digg is a place to be.
Extra Tip: Use the Upcoming link to glimpse the future.
What’s Your Secret?
If you have a super-secret site where you get all your best content from, why not share it with everyone?
Leave your suggestion in the comments.
