After almost a month in Public Beta, we’ve noticed that some debates take off in popularity and remain in the Most Heated debates page for days, while others never even make it close.  Many of you have asked what you can do to increase the chance that your debate gets noticed and gets the attention of other debaters.  To that end, we present to you the Top 10 Tips for a Great Debate:   

10.  Make the debate title controversial.  This probably seems rather obvious but having a controversial topic that stands out from the rest will encourage people to click on and debate it.  

9.  Choose the right type of debate.  Is it a debate that can be broken down easily in two sides?  If so, choose a 2-Sided Debate.  If not, choose a Popularity Contest.  Not setting up the debate properly is a recipe for an empty debate.  

8. If it’s a two sided debate, pick clearly distinct points of view for each side.  Yes vs. No, Black vs. White, Democrats vs. Republicans are just a few examples.  Whatever you choose, make sure that they’re clearly opposing points of view.  

7.  Embed a link or a video as a central point for people to focus on during the debate.  This will ensure the debate stays on topic and does not wander into oblivion.  Make sure the link is from a reputable source so it will ground the debate in reality.  

6. Invite your friends to the debate.  Use the “Share This Debate” feature of CreateDebate to invite your Allies, Enemies, and anyone else in your Address Book.  Inviting friends to a debate ensures they know about it right away and can be one of the first to post their opinion.  

5. Add Research to the Debate.  Use the Research feature of CreateDebate to add RSS feeds regarding the topic being discussed. This is a great way to inform your users of the various points of view on the topic being debated.  

4.  Add an Argument.  Add an initial argument to one side of the debate that is well thought out and that clearly states why your side of the debate is the correct side. If you need help crafting a great argument, check out our previous blog post on How to Write Strong Arguments.  

3. Proofread your argument for grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. Nothing makes an argument weaker than a bunch of sentence fragments, misspelled words, and grammatical errors. Use the Spell Check feature of CreateDebate just to make sure your argument is correct before posting.  

2. Add references.  Back up your argument by citing reputable sources. Be sure to include a link to the source so others can view the entire text you’re referencing.    

1. Build debate traffic.  Submit your debate to the top social news sites (i.e. Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Mixx, del.icio.us, etc).  CreateDebate makes it easy for you to share your debates by using the “Social Bookmarks” tab in each debate.  Once you post the debate to the sites, leverage your network to move it in to the most popular categories where more people will view it and hopefully debate your topic.  If you need help learning how to make stories popular on Digg, check out this article loaded with great advice.  

Use these tips and you’ll be well on your way to getting a debate listed on this page.   

Social content sites like Digg are the catalyst of viral marketing. If you write a blog or operate a website and your content makes the front page of Digg, you can expect lots of good things to happen: about 60,000 unique visitors in the first 24 hours, a hefty amount of referral traffic from secondary websites, and a large number of high quality editorial links that will boost your search rankings.

In a perfect world, interesting content would be all that it takes to become popular on Digg. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world.  Unless you operate a large site with tons of traffic or your blog already has a loyal base of readers, you need to understand how to give your submission the right kind of nudge. You have to become familiar with the unwritten protocols and practices of Digg.

Since CreateDebate launched into public beta, we have been doing our best to execute a viral marketing plan. Our goal is to introduce new people to our site via relevant & interesting content. In the last 30 days, various content from our blog has landed on the front page of of Digg, reddit, delicious, Mixx, ShoutWire and StumbleUpon.

One of the things that we have learned is that when it comes to generating explosive traffic, Digg reigns king (at least until Yahoo!Buzz begins accepting content from new, smaller publishers). If your content becomes popular on Digg, it will almost assuredly become popular on several other social content sites. It doesn’t always work the other way around.

Digg is an ecosystem and in order to get something from it (traffic), you’ll need give something to it (interesting content, not  advertisements).  For all of the Digg noobs and budding social marketers out there, we thought it was time to share a few insights from our playbook.  Here you go, the top 10 Digg tactics:

10. Join Digg – Yes, you should sign up for an account.  To really join Digg, though, you need to read and participate on a daily basis.  You should begin to track the popular content, especially in the topics where your content will compete. You may find the Digg RSS feeds to be helpful.

9. Monitor the Comments – Understanding the Digg culture is paramount. You should make it a habit to always read the first few comments every article that you check out. A well-planted, snarky comment can go a long way when you are trying to solicit diggs.

8. Learn How a Story Becomes Popular -  The Digg upcoming section may seem daunting but understanding how it works is essential.  In the base case, it takes about 24 hours for a submission to become popular.  During that period, the submission will have the opportunity to achieve a number of milestones (i.e. becoming Hot in Topic).  Each milestone will put the link in front of more people, thereby increasing its chance to be dugg.

7. Track Power Users – The power users, the people who use Digg the most, are the influencers.  They aren’t hard to find, go to the front page and start checking out some profiles.  On the bottom-right, you can see their stats.  Find people have made at least 50 stories popular. Bookmark their profiles and check back frequently. Do your best to befriend them.

6. Become a Fan – Add friends, hundreds of them.  Don’t do it all in one sitting, remember: Rome wasn’t built in a day.  You should get in the habit of adding at least 20 new friends per week. Start by adding some power users, then add their friends and so on.

5. Build Your Buddy List – A lot of digg soliciting goes on behind the scenes, especially via IM.  Coincidentally enough, many diggers list their IM information in the About blurb on their profile.  Parse through a bunch of profiles and compile a list of screen names. Don’t just bombard these folks with digg requests though. Take the time to cultivate mutually beneficial relationships.

4. Build Your Profile – If you want to become a Digg power user, you need to look like one. Your profile should show lots of fans, friends & diggs. When people ask you to digg one of their submissions and it turns out to be interesting, take it a step further and make that story one of your favorites.

3. Submit Smart – Choose the topic that you will submit to wisely. Some topics are much more competitive than others. Of course, you need to make sure that you are submitting to an appropriate topic or casual web surfers may not have a chance to find your submission on their own.  Analysis has also shown that when you submit also plays a key role.

2. Send Shouts – Digg shouts are the single best way to solicit diggs. Of course, you can’t just send shouts to anybody, that’s why you need to add friends to bolster your network. When you send shouts, remember, its a two-way street. If you expect others to digg your content, you’ll need to regularly check your shouts and digg the stories that you find interesting. Don’t be afraid to remind others that you have dugg their stories. Most importantly, don’t keep sending repetitive shouts. Nobody likes a pest.

1. Submit Interesting Content – All of the Digg tactics in the world won’t help you unless you have some worthwhile content to submit.  At the end of the day, every digg that your submission receives will be from a intelligent, free-thinking individual. Nobody like to see crap hit the front page.

On a final, unrelated note, I’d like to give a quick shout-out to sarahintampa who maintains an interesting tech blog and wrote a great review of CreateDebate 2 weeks ago.  If you haven’t already checked out CreateDebate, please do so.  We are a new site, built from scratch on the ideals of collaboration and democracy, and our community is growing quickly!

We just implemented a completely new algorithm to make the debate scoring system more accurate and more transparent.  When you add an argument you will now have the opportunity to explicitly identify the side where you’d like your argument’s votes to be allocated.

To make it as user-friendly as possible, CreateDebate will do its best to predict which view you support but the final call is up to you.  If you realize that you need to change where the points are being allocated, you can just edit your argument and switch it up (so as long as nobody else has voted or replied already).

Thanks for continuing to share your thoughts & suggestions!  As always, we’d love to hear what you think of this new improvement.

We’re happy to introduce another cool new feature: The Waterfall.  The Waterfall gives you an easy way to find the newest arguments that have just been posted to CreateDebate, looking across every debate.  We think you’ll find The Waterfall to be a great all-purpose landing page since it serves up all of the newest content on a silver platter.  We have also whipped up a new RSS feed that can deliver The Waterfall directly to your favorite reader.  For more information about the RSS feed you can read this.

Keep sending us your feedback!  What do you think of The Waterfall?

Just rolled out a much needed feature that I hope you’ll all enjoy!  Finally, the voting buttons have a brain.  Throughout the entire site you’ll now be able to see which arguments you’ve already voted on (and how you voted).  Feel free to change your up/down vote for any argument as much as you’d like.  If you’d like to retract your vote, you can do that too.

Thanks for all of your feedback.  In the next couple of weeks we’ll be dropping a bunch of new features that will address many of your comments.  As always, we’re looking to you for your thoughts on how CreateDebate should work, so keep sending us your ideas & suggestions!

When you’re debating, you’ll come up against many styles of arguing, based on all different levels of arguing.   If you’re in the debate to win, you’ll have to spot the flaws in opposing arguments and point them out, or exploit them like a weak spot.  Sometimes it’s as easy as listening for fuzzy words.  Here are some words and phrases that are easy indications of flaws: 

many, all, a lot, every, none, nobody, much, more – Solid arguments use actual numbers with references to their source.   These words can indicate implied statistics that show the debater is making up a fact rather than working off real data. Example: “Many Christians disagree”

never, always, usually, tend, trend – These may be blanket statements that imply cause and effect, or assumptions about overall responses and opinions that don’t hold up under scrutiny. Example: “the rich have always been getting richer”

I, I don’t think, I believe – including yourself in the argument can indicate thinking personal experience equals the overall trend. If the debate is not a poll or about individual views, this can be Hasty Generalization.  Here are some examples from CreateDebate:  From: Should the US have seatbelt laws?  Someone who manages to use words from two categories:”I always choose to wear one”  From: Man vs. Elephant : can you escape?“I am much more shifty than an elephant and would be able to escape if ONE was chasing me in a large field by cutting and weaving.”and one rebuttal that found the critical flaw:”Elephants charge at up to 25mph. Way faster than you can run…”

So next time you’re arguing with friends or proving your point in an online debate, listen in for these hints for weak arguments and when you make your response make it stronger by avoiding the same flaws.

One of the basic premises of CreateDebate is that it must be simple to find the debates that interest you. This is why we’ve spent so much time building the main Browse Debates view. We have always let you sort the debates (and your search results) in a number of ways. If you haven’t tried it already, go ahead and play around with the sorting options on the right side menu: you can pivot the debates in many ways. You can also sort within specific categories (sports, entertainment, politics, etc).

Today, we are happy to announce the addition of the New Activity sorting option. This algorithm allows you to see which debates have had new arguments added recently. This sorting option adds a “traditional forum” feeling to CreateDebate because the debates with the newest posts are bumped to the top. Using this sorting option is a great way to discover upcoming debates that were recently created but haven’t yet built the head-of-steam needed to become heated. It is also a great way to a rediscover older debates that have fallen of the Most Heated page but are still getting lots of attention and participation.

What do you think? We always love to hear your feedback!

I just finished reading a great article, written by Albert Wenger at his Continuations blog. Albert is a partner at Union Square Ventures and I’ve found his writings to be concise (always appreciated) and meaningful. Last week, he wrote about the importance and difficulty of listening to your customers. More food-for-thought than advice, the article throws out three questions and some common problems associated with each.

As we continue to build CreateDebate into a business, we have frequently found ourselves addressing these same questions. In the spirit of transparency, I thought I would take a crack at answering Albert’s questions from the current perspectives of the CreateDebate team.

Which customers should we listen to?

This question should probably read: Should we listen to our early-adopters or should we listen to what we believe to be our “mainstream” customers? We are about 1 week into our public beta and, fortunately, we already have a nice stable of committed early-adopters that have found real utility in using CreateDebate. We are thrilled about this and we are committed to rewarding our early-adopters with a feature set that over delivers on their requests. At the same time, however, we must remain fully-focused on building CreateDebate into a highly scalable decision-making tool that is capable of providing significant value to paying customers.

Paying Customers? Don’t worry, we’ll never charge you to use CreateDebate.com. Rather, at some point in the near future, we do expect to charge licensing fees in exchange for private use of the CreateDebate application software. We have already been contacted by several enterprise & governmental organizations interested in deploying our software and we think this business model has a significant amount of promise.

At the end of the day, the answer to this question isn’t as tricky as it seems. First and foremost, we are dedicated to building CreateDebate into a community. To be successful, we must embrace our early adopters and their new feature requests. We always discuss new feature requests as a team and do our best to prioritize and temper those requests against our vision of the “mainstream” customer. In a nutshell, our strategy is to grow our community by continually improving our software. By doing so, it is our hope that the CreateDebate application will become a powerful decision-making software package worth paying for.

How should we listen to our customers?

We get a lot of critical feedback and suggestions via email. At this stage in the game, virtually every email that we receive prompts a personal response. We alway log the comments and do our best to group and prioritize them. The problem with email feedback, though, is that it sometimes proves difficult to accurately deduce exactly what our community really needs, as opposed to what a small, vocal subset of our community thinks that it wants.

In light of this contradiction, our preferred forum for listening to our customers has become the website itself. Last week, one of the most popular debates on CreateDebate focused on the new features that people would like to see incorporated the site. The debate spurred lots of arguments and votes and gave us a much better perspective on the new features that our community needs. As a result, we went to work and delivered a bunch of new features over the weekend, including:

• A new way to sort the arguments within a debate (“Sort By Newest”)
• A better way to catch up on new activity (“New Activity Quick Glance”)
• Permalinks for each argument to facilitate more sharing
• RSS feeds for the Most Heated and Newest debates
• A more secure Address Book

How should we reconcile listening to our customers with our strategy?

Our goal is to build an incredibly useful tool that will help groups of people to sort through issues, viewpoints and opinions so that better decisions can be made. I’ve already noted that our strategy is to grow our community by continually improving our software. This is a strategy that we fully believe in and are committed to following. To that end, we are dedicated to making listening to customers a priority and constant process as opposed to a one off exercise.

As far as the reconciliation process goes, I’m afraid that we haven’t yet fully figured it out. The good news, however, is that we are aware of the importance of the task at hand. I fully expect this year to be full of twists and turns as our community grows and our software becomes more sophisticated. Most of all, I hope that you will stay around to help us grow and let us know what we are doing right (and not-so-right). If you have feedback, please share!

We’ve been thinking about the feature suggestions everyone mentioned in the debate about What features should be added to CreateDebate. Loudacris already let everyone know that we added the date view to debates to view arguments arranged by date as well as the point view. This should make it easier to follow the logical flow of a debate, and to see what arguments might have influenced responses.

The second new feature from the feature requests is RSS feeds of the most recent debates and most heated debates, so you can keep track of the online debates on CreateDebate in your favorite RSS Reader. The About RSS page has the list of feeds we have set up, and more information about how to subscribe to RSS feeds. We’re still working on more of the features mentioned, so stay tuned.

Mashable, one of our favorite technology review websites, has recently started a series called The Startup Review (sponsored by Sun Microsystems) that showcases new startup technology companies. This morning, Paul Glazowski from The Startup Review wrote a great article on CreateDebate, which can be found here. Mashable finds CreateDebate to be a “a worthwhile place in which to spend one’s argumentative energies, one you may very well enjoy.”

Additionally, one of our newest users, JWitter, wrote a great blog post about using CreateDebate in the classroom yesterday. We think this is a great application of CreateDebate’s technology and one that could be very useful for middle school, high school, college, and graduate students. What do you think? Drop us a note and let us know what other applications you think CreateDebate might have. If you’ve experimented with it’s efficacy in the classroom or in a work environment let us know how it went.