And the approach is earning GE some praise from the notoriously tough crowd at Digg.

A Digg reader posted a screenshot of the GE sponsorship to Imgur.com and submitted the image (with his commentary) back to Digg: “New UI feature for digg.com debuting early? I think it’s a classy and non invasive way to feature revenue generating links.”

Another reviewer, the author of the respected brentcsutoras blog, reminds his readers that on other occasions he’s come out as a critic of ad integrations on Digg — before going on to say that he’s impressed with the tastefulness of the GE program:

“Clean, non-intrusive or annoying, the click-able banner takes you to a pretty cool landing page off HealthyMagination, which is GE’s attempt to help people become healthier ‘through the sharing of imaginative ideas and proven solutions’ by helping gather, share and discuss healthy ideas…. I have to say I am rather impressed with GE and their use of social media.”

The brentcsutors blog isn’t just respected by its readers like me, either. It’s highly regarded by Google’s PageRank algorithm too. Here’s how that benefits GE. Right now when a user goes searching for that high-profile socially-curated news site called “Digg,” Google returns brentcsutors’s favorable review on the first page of results.

GE has gone one better than “positive association with the Digg brand,” it has literally inserted itself into the online conversation about Digg.

I have a few more connections in Facebook (around 800) than I do in Twitter (around 700), close enough for unscientific experiments. On Friday I posted a link to one story in my Facebook newsfeed, and another I tweeted out in Twitter.

The Facebook-promoted story was Bugs Bunny Stars in Retro Comic Advertorials, which is about as close to a “broad appeal” as I get, pictures of Bugs Bunny and all. The Twitter-promoted story was If Twitter Community Had 100 Members, an infographic illustrating Twitter usage patterns. Less mainstream, but also highly relevant to other Twitter users.

Well, one of my Facebook pals left a comment (her family once starred in an advertorial, just like Bugs), but only a dozen or so of them clicked over to ChasNote. Google Analytics attributes 12 pageviews to Facebook.com.

The infographic about Twitter usage struck a chord with my Twitter followers. Four of them, one with 300 followers, two with 2000 followers and one (David Armano) with 19,000 followers, re-tweeted the story. Eight of Armano’s followers, with 1300 more followers, collectively, re-tweeted it again. So immediately the “reach” of my Twitter campaign jumped to around 27,000, almost 40 times the 700 I started with. And the Twitter crew clicked over to ChasNote in much greater numbers: More than 359 450 of those 27,000 (updated 8/5), or a 1.7% click-through rate. (Assuming the 210 pageviews listed as “direct” are mostly Twitter readers that use an app like TweetDeck or Twitteriffic.)

In raw numbers, Twitter crushed Facebook. (Though the click-through rate among my Facebook friends, at 2.5%, was twice that of fifty percent higher than that among the Twitter folks; maybe that’s because most who saw the link in Twitter don’t know me, or maybe Facebook’s percentage benefited from the math of small numbers).

There are a variety of reasons I’m connected with people in Facebook — we went to school together, or we work together or we’re related to each other. In all cases, though, it’s because we know each other and like each other and want to keep tabs on each others’ lives. It’s friendship on some level, and it’s two directional. The Twitter dynamics are different. Of the 700 or so people who follow me, I know a handful. Maybe more if I took the time to visit my followers’ profile pages to find out the real names behind some handles I don’t recognize. But the point is, we’re not connected because we’re friends or want to become friends; they’ve subscribed to my feed because they see some kind of value in what I post to Twitter. Since I don’t use Twitter to talk about what I’m having for lunch (I mostly post links to articles I’m reading to stay smart on marketing and the technologies that facilitate marketing), the value they must see is CONTENT value — links to stuff worth reading — not a social value. The Twitter relationship, at least for followers of ChasNote, is all about the links I send out, so it makes sense that my Twitter followers are more likely (than my Facebook pals, who might just like it that we’re pals) to click on links I tweet.

Another reason Twitter works better as traffic-driver to web content is that Twitter’s limited functionality doesn’t give followers much choice. If you like something you see in Twitter, you re-tweet it. That’s all you can do, really. In Facebook, I can post a comment or click the “I like it” button — or I can forward the link to my own Facebook friends (the equivalent of re-tweeting), but that’s the hardest of the options Facebook presents, so I’ve never actually done it, and I bet I’m far from alone.

That gets to the final point: Impact. When I do what Facebook encourages me to do, comment or “like” something, it shares my appreciation with a small group of others — the “publisher” of that link (ie, my friend) and the other individuals who, like me, posted a comment on that piece of content. When I do what Twitter wants me do, hit the re-tweet button, I’m sharing my appreciation (and the link) with everyone who follows me in Twitter. When four of my Facebook friends like what I post, I’m still sharing that post with only 800 friends; when four of my Twitter followers like something, the posted link is put in front of (in this case) another 27,000 people.

Back in May, when I posted that I was leaving FM for Digg, three friends shared the link with their Facebook communities. One was my cousin (1300 friends), one was a co-worker (1200 friends) and the other was a friend from college (325 friends) — say 2800 individuals across those three social graphs. I tweeted the link to my 700 followers, too, but no one re-tweeted it. Yet Twitter still drove more readers to the full story at ChasNote: 122 visits from Twitter versus 110 from Facebook. Less than 4% of the Facebookers who may have seen the link clicked on it; 17% of the Twitterers who may have seen it clicked on it. In this case, Twitter and Facebook ran a tie based on raw numbers, but Twitter clobbered Facebook in percentage terms.

“If just 7% of the 17% increase in direct traffic is a result of twitter links that are not being counted as twitter [because many Twitter users use desktop applications like TweetDeck that wouldn't show up as a referral site], then it is true that this blog gets more traffic from twitter than google.”

It’s a believable scenario given that @fredwilson has more than 27,000 engaged Twitter followers. Results may vary, though, since we more average Twitter publishers have only 126 followers. For PC Mag (with fewer than 7000 followers), Twitter is a much less significant traffic source, less than one percent of visits to Google’s 4%. But like Fred Wilson’s AVC, PC Mag’s top source of traffic isn’t Google, it’s a sharing site — Digg drives 81% of the visitors for some articles.

And as Bit.ly’s Andrew Kortina explains, most Direct Traffic to most sites isn’t really direct traffic from loyal readers that bookmark your site or type its URL into a browser. It’s traffic generated by readers sharing story links with her or her friends and followers.

“The only reason hits to pages other than your homepage show up under Direct Traffic is because they do not have an HTTP Referer Header. Typically, in your browser, when you click a link on Page X to Page Y, your browser sends a bit of data along with the request to fetch Page Y from wherever it’s being server that says, ‘by the way, this request was referred by Page X.’ Desktop applications — email clients like Outlook, for example — do not send this referrer data, so clicks derived from these apps get grouped under Direct Traffic….

“In fact, very little Direct Traffic is actually direct. A better name for Direct Traffic would be Shared Link Traffic — think about the apps that are likely to generate this type of traffic: email clients, twitter clients, desktop RSS readers, facebook clients. These are all essentially sharing tools.”

I followed Kortina’s instructions to calculate ChasNote’s Shared Link Traffic. Here are my traffic sources according to Google Analytics:

The message I take away from this overview is: Great, I’m pleasing 17% of my audience enough that they come back on their own. It’s nice that 46% of my traffic comes from editorial pick-ups by other sites (Referral Traffic), mostly blogs somewhere out there in the Long Tail, but I can’t do much to influence that. So I’m going to spend my time and resources getting more from Google. I better optimize my URLs, page layouts and story headlines for search, and if I ever invest in online marketing, the first call I’ll make is to Google.

When I isolate Shared Link Traffic — removing so-called Direct Traffic that lands on a story page (URLs too long for anyone to type into a browser and too static for anyone to bookmark) as well as Referral Traffic that’s coming from sharing platforms like Digg, Twitter and Facebook — I come to a different conclusion.

Forty-eight percent of my traffic is Shared Link Traffic. In my case it’s four sources — Digg, Twitter, TechMeme and Facebook — plus (I’m guessing) email sharing. This changes my strategy. First, I’m not doing as well as thought with loyal readers: They represent 8% instead of 17% of my audience. Second, I’m going to change my optimization priorities. Since Shared Link Traffic is 48% (to Google’s 37%), I should focus on “social media optimization” — making it easier to share my stories — before I invest in search engine optimization. And when that request for the ChasNote marketing budget clears Finance, I’m going to call Twitter, Facebook and myself here at Digg before I call Google.

Related: How American Express uses Twitter to reach new audiences.

When you click on the High-Res button, a message pops up to tell you what’s about to happen — with an Acuvue ad unit to the right of the message:

And what happens is this: The Graffiti image enlarges and (because the resolution is better) comes into greater focus, like that feeling you get when you pop in your contacts and see a more focused version of yourself in the mirror. If you’re the Joker, it looks like this:

(Graffiti credit: Rainna Langley.)

(Other credits: Rob D’Alto, Scott Haldeman and Eugina Valliades at McCann; Mark Kantor and Tim Suzman at Graffiti; and Jon Ohliger, Stephanie Loleng, Jana Hartz, Michael Cohn, and Paula Pentogenis at FM. Well done!)

FM worked with Verizon Wireless (and its agency, Moxie Interactive) to place Verizon ads promoting the BlackBerry Storm on Fred Wilson’s site, A VC, even though Fred had recently criticized the product on the site:

“In fact, that post which is critical of the Storm is still on the front page of this blog where the ad is running. And this blog has been no friend to wireless carriers and their abusive business models like demanding exclusives from device manufacturers.

“Conversational media and conversational marketing is coming of age. Marketers are understanding that you have to be part of the conversation even if it isn’t flattering about you and your products and services. And participants in conversational media are starting to recognize that marketers and their brands have a seat at the table and a role in the conversation. In this case, they are helping to fund it (sort of).

“Kudos to Verizon for understanding that you can’t control the content your campaign runs next to.”

An interesting conversation broke out among A VC readers, including BlackBerry fans that came to the brand’s defense and others who applauded Verizon for supporting the discussion.

“It could be very effective for Verizon. This blog hits a bullseye on the product’s target market. Plenty of people will disagree w/ Fred’s view on the Storm (I do, fairly strongly!) And there’s a LOT of people who feel married to Verizon or can’t/won’t use AT&T or T-Mo (and thus iPhone, G1 etc) and will now choose the Storm despite reservations…. I am convinced that there is TONS of potential here. People are sick and tired of all these years of ads making grandiose, inherently biased claims for their products. ‘Marketing’ as it’s done in the US has become equated w/ mistrust. I’d bet that a company’s active endorsement of a balanced discussion, pro and con, about a product will cause the public to listen rather than tune out.”

And:

“I’d be impressed if people from Verizon made this decision based on the content & context of specific posts on your blog as opposed to simply picking your site from some broad technology category.”

And this, from my FM colleague John Schneider:

“Yes, this was a conscious, and human, decision that was made. With fewer than 200 properties, FM always handpicks the best fitting sites — there are no fancy algorithms. In Fred’s case, he has an engaged and influential audience that has strong opinions on new technologies and product offerings. Ultimately, it’s Fred’s audience we are trying to reach. They clearly respect his opinions, but form their own as shown here in this comment thread.”

And:

“Well, I think it’s brilliant that you did because of the tension created by Fred’s recent post about the BlackBerry Storm. There’s hope for advertising.”

Hope for advertising?! I’m welling up over here!

Congrats to the teams at Verizon Wireless and Moxie Interactive. And thanks, John Schneider, for putting this program together, and Fred, for MC’ing the conversation.

The concept — a retailer acting like a publisher, providing useful lifestyle tips in addition to product offers — is adding to the ranks of the I Heart Target club, like this Twitterer who felt compelled to tell her network about it:

Of course, coverage of WePC itself spiked — it didn’t exist prior to the last week in October.

But press hits for “ASUS” alone also spiked the week WePC launched — up 10% over the prior week, and up more than 100% over the final week in September.

Articles and blog posts that mentioned both “ASUS” and “Intel” jumped roughly 65% versus the average week in October.

It will be interesting to watch how this plays out. The giant press bonanza hit the week of launch, which explains the peaks on these graphs. As visitors to the site build their dream-machine concepts and share those concepts (or others they like better) with friends, I wonder, will the buzz expand outward from the mainstream press and professional-grade bloggers to the far reaches of the conversational media landscape? If so, will the WePC project carry the ASUS and Intel brands with it as the bloggers chat it up?

Last week American Express announced the launch of the Economy section to its OPEN Forum site for small business owners.

“the Economy section of OPEN Forum features blog and news commentary, expert tips and advice for surviving the downturn, personal experiences from business owners across the country about how they are managing in times of the downturn and polls about what the state of the economy means for small business.”

Several leading authors (and FM partners) such as Guy Kawasaki, Anita Campbell, Mike Masnick, John Jantsch, Scott Belsky and the team at the University of Pennsylvania’s Knowlege@Wharton are contributing content.

Engadget.

Gizmodo.

CNET.

PC Magazine.

ZDNet.

ComputerWeekly.

PC World India.

UberGizmo.

Core77.

Geek.com.

The Tech Herald.

Salon.

Mashable.

Seachblog.

Techmeme.

FastCompany.

The Guardian.

ClickZ.

Marketing VOX.

GottaBeMobile.

Gadgetell.

The Inquirer.

(Disclosures: UberGizmo, Mashable, Core77 and Searchblog are affiliated with FM.)