First Look at the CLCKD Social Networking Project

CLCKD is a recently-launched social media website that aims to not only take on the social media establishment, but to make sharing links natural again. Founder Ryan Deal explained, “With CLCKD, I’ve tried to give users lots of features that let them do whatever it is they would like to do with the content.”

The primary goal of CLCKD is to make sharing content easy, similar to Digg or StumbleUpon. The difference, however, is that CLCKD has additional features that bring something new to the bookmarking table. For example, users can vote on submissions/content, make comments, and utilize an entire Q&A section where users can ask and respond to questions. Features like link shortening and interactive web badges are expected to be added in the near future. There’s also a leaderboard and a toolbar, making stumbling on great links almost inevitable.

Worried about bad links and span on the front page? So is founder Ryan Deal, who expressed his concerns in an interview with NowSourcing: “There is no way to avoid spam these days, so I’m certain lots of people will submit links that have no business being on a site like CLCKD. For that reason CLCKD has an upcoming section where all links go until they are pulled for the front page. There are admins in place to make sure the things that make it to the front page deserve to be there.”

Deal’s method of combating spam should be fairly effective. This quality control will ensure that the stuff that you see on CLCKD’s front page deserves to be there and isn’t determined solely by a gameable  system.

After exploring the site and checking out a few of the front page’s links, I came away impressed by the simplicity of the site. Everything is straight-forward, clean and organized, with the focus on the content rather than ads. You’ll also see some early analytics functionality, for example if you share a CLCKD link, it will keep count of views right on the site.

CLCKD is currently in beta form, but you can sign up here.

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