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Avatar Went Hot: July 23, 2007 - 9:06 am
Posted By: aimClear 410 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.aimclearblog.com)
Category: Other Social Media
Andy Beard spoke out for the detractors in his post "Sphinn - SEM Attention Wars" which sparked emotional debate in his blog. Danny Sullivan, founder of Sphinn, jumped in for voluminous dialog which had emotional overtones in public, rare for Danny Sullivan. The dialog is totally fascinating…link-baiters debating link baiters for and about link baiting communities…chicken egg/egg chicken.
9 Comments     

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from dannysullivan 410 days ago #
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And, of course, the discussion here :)

http://sphinn.com/story/1077

from aimClear 410 days ago #
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Yup, let's not forget the lively debate within Andy’s submission of the blog post the Sphinn thread itself, "Sphinn - SEM Attention Wars | Andy Beard - Niche Marketing." That's actually what started the conversation. :)

http://sphinn.com/story/1077

from DianeV 409 days ago #
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To be honest, I don't see what the problem is. Why can't Danny do his own thing? I don't get the argument against that.

from Stretch 409 days ago #
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Andy seems to be focusing on quibbles, though his POV is well-reasoned. Personally I think the benefits of Sphinn outweigh any supposed shortcomings. Hey, it's already fostering a bucketload of interesting discussion.

from toprank 409 days ago #
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Personally, I like Sphinn because of the new blogs and info I would likely have not found otherwise. If our blog gets some traffic/subscribers because of OMB content getting "Sphunn", fine - but that's ancillary.

from aimClear 409 days ago #
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I agree with Lee. There is a lot of value here. The initial shock of having ANOTHER writing commitment each day has worn off :)

from AndyBeard 409 days ago #
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Stretch - you might look on my views as quibbles, but the overall problem is that there are very few quibbles out there.

In many ways if those were paid reviews, they would most certainly give the impression of the review being "required positive"

Many people are a lot more diplomatic than me for various reasons, and in very extreme ways are conspicuous in their lack of coverage.

I don't tend to coat things in sugar

Lee it is going to be interesting how you differentiate your mashups based upon the Top Marketing Blogs

from dannysullivan 409 days ago #
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Just to be clear, Andy -- we didn't pay anyone to do reviews. Not sure if you were suggesting or implying that, but I'll clarify all the same.

As for quibbles, I've seen plenty of it. Fair to say perhaps I've been monitoring the reviews more closely than you have?

There's been a lot of positive, generally flavored with a "looks promising, but we'll see."

Then I can swing things over to where John Andrews has me and Rand conspiring to bring down Threadwatch:

http://www.johnon.com/341/sphinn-spin.html

Then apparently somehow in my spare time, I'm also ordering Dave Naylor to launch a massive botnet attack on WebmasterWorld to stop it from my quest for global domination:

http://www.johnon.com/348/seo-soap-operas.html

That the type of extreme you're talking about? Had you even seen that?

Of course, what John doesn't mention is that I also employ him to spin these things out so that I can point to him and say "see, it's not all positive."

Meanwhile, it just gets confusing. On the one hand, you write a post suggesting it's a lovefest of positive reviews for Sphinn. Then above, apparently there's a conspicuous lack of coverage?

I'll tell you the reviews that matter. The ones that I get here on the site itself. I have a bug list we're working through, along with a wishlist of things people want. I've got a site that gets the vast, vast majority of its traffic not off search engines (too new for that) and not off referral links (not a lot of people pointing) but instead off people themselves coming back to the site, to interact and share here. So I'll work to help make it a good site for that group (1,276 members to date).

from AndyBeard 408 days ago #
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Danny I wasn't implying that the reviews were paid for.

As I mentioned in the comments on my blog, it is a very good marketing tactic to get people who are influential in a niche on-board as beta testers because they are more likely to write about your service, and they are less likely to write negative things in that review because they have been part of the development process.

Most of the reviews on higher traffic blogs stated that they were beta testers. Some of those that didn't I am assuming at this time just forgot to mention it.

I did read what John Andrews wrote, that was a little over the top.


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