It’s no secret that I think that OregonLive does a horrible job with their reddit implementation. And with the recent redesign of their site, the value has decreased even further.
Oregon reddit is now buried 2150 pixels down the page. Far below the fold. The equivalent of running in the gutter on page 19 of the dead tree The Oregonian.
Couple that with the fact that I’m still incredibly interested in making sure that people are getting their stories heard, that people are getting to see the cool stuff happening in the Silicon Forest, and that people are getting the chance to voice their opinions and share their thoughts, and suddenly it seems like I should quit whining.
And actually try to do something about it.
Back when it became obvious that composing posts was never going to be an adequate means of keeping up with all the news around here, I began experimenting with ma.gnolia.
Now, those ma.gnolia link posts have become a near-daily addition to the writing here. And a way of sharing more of what’s happening—and giving more folks coverage.
And as I noticed that the Silicon Florist group on ma.gnolia was approaching 1000 bookmarks, it dawned on me: that’s still too filtered. And it’s only really filtered by me.
So I’d like to try new experiment: Silicon Florist reddit.
How can you participate in Silicon Florist reddit?
First, you can work submitting sites and stories that you like to Silicon Florist reddit. Tech? Events? News? Cool blog posts? Good geek hangouts? They’re all fair game. Just so long as they have something to do with the Silicon Forest.
Second, I’ve already created a button that you can embed in your blog posts (and all of the Silicon Florist posts will now carry this button in place of the Oregon reddit button):
And I’ve created a little bookmarklet (Silicon Florist reddit) that you can drag to your browser. This will allow you to submit pages you find to Silicon Florist reddit at the push of a button.
Third, I’m still trying to work out the widget, but this is what I’ve got so far:
http://www.reddit.com/r/siliconflorist/top/.embed?limit=10
In a perfect world, any number of Silicon Forest blogs throughout Oregon and Washington could be running something like this, giving folks more broad exposure to what’s happening and what people choose to highlight.
Is this a perfect solution? Nope. Is it a start? I think it may be.
And I’m hoping you’ll join me in the experiment.
[Update] I just noticed that reddit is running a competition for the fastest growing reddit. If we win? Friends of the Florist will be cashing in on all the cool loot. We’re already at 6 subscribers. We are so winning this thing.