At 11:00 am today, Third Door Media and Search Engine Land will announce a new social news site known as Sphinn. This site will offer users the ability to submit articles about interactive marketing, search, and social media, and then other users can review those articles and vote on them. As with other social news sites, such as Digg and Reddit articles that receive the most votes will be shown on the home page.
I had the opportunity to preview the new site over the past couple of days, and think it will offer people a quick way to find the hottest articles in the search and social media landscape. This can act as a proxy for scanning tons of individual search marketing and social media blogs. How important that feature is to people will, in my opinion, determine the success level of the site. As a cousin of that, if the readers come, then those who submit articles will certainly come, as it will become a target for getting traffic.
Creating an account was easy, and submitting my first article, and joining into a discussion or two was easy as well. Unlike Digg and Reddit, where submitting your own content is taboo, users are also actively encouraged to submit their own content as well. Honestly, I think this makes more sense. Self-promotion should be OK on these types of sites, and if you submit garbage you will get predictable results and eventually lose interest, as it will be a poor way to spend your time.
