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If I see one more Sphinn post about BlogRush I think I'll puke
Went Hot: September 22, 2007 - 1:03 pm
Posted By: Jill 288 days ago
Topic Type: Discussion
Category: Blogging
33 Comments
Comments
There is no way I could agree more.
Um, Jill...? You did realize that this is one more Sphinn post about BlogRush, right? :D
-Michael
(Oh, my gawd! (best valley girl voice) They added a wysiwyg editor to the Sphinn comments boxes! YAY!!!)
@Danny - Umm, the
tag isn't working...
Yes, mvandemar, the irony was not lost on me. And I'll be happy if this post/thread gets deleted as spam with the rest of the blogrush spam posts.
So you are proposing censorship?
I would agree that most of the posts submitted, including the majority that hit the front page contained purely opinion based upon very sketchy facts but it seems the Sphinn community like that content more than posts that contain real statistics.
Why don't you propose blocking people who submit 10 stories from their own domain within 10 minutes first?
(yep, nice to have HTML coming soon, but the formatting isn't great and no blockquotes)
I'm afraid somebody will post:
Jill Whalen: BlogRush Spam Revisited :-)
Eventually there has to be some moderation when it comes to people discussing the same thing over and over again, or posting about someone elses post, or trying to one up the next guy.
And yes, I'm sick of hearing about BlogRush too. But that won't stop me from going and adding the widget to my site and blog about the experience! -kidding.
A good reason why we need that vote down button sooner rather than later. :)
That said, some BR posts are actually quite interesting and informative. It certainly warrants discussion how JR has managed to create such buzz. A few of us could all learn a thing or two from the experience.
I think its pretty amazing how for some, BR has gone from hero to zero in about as much time as it takes to grow mustard cress in a darkened cupboard.
"Nothing wrong with censorship. If this was my site, those posts would be dead meat before they ever got published. Censorship (in real life) only applies to govt. owned things."
Jill, you're starting to sound like Google :D Seriously though, I haven't even had a chance to read any of the Blogrush posts. I figured what is there to know besides opening up an account and sticking a widget in my sidebar?
But I'd be interested in reading a piece disecting Blogrush's marketing blitz, and how we got all these bloggers marketing Blugrush for free.
Sounding like Google? Thanks, I'd be very happy with that.
If you don't like them, don't read them. Really it is as easy as that. Some of the articles may be good and talk about the writers experience with blogrush. The blogrush articles get sphunn by others for whatever reason does not mean you have to like the article, it also does not mean the article should be filtered as spam and removed. That does not make it spam by any means. Yes there have been a lot of talk about blogrush lately, I think that is what they wanted to happen. Just because you are sick of seeing articles about it does not give anyone the right to label it as spam. The topic of filtering out all blogrush posts is beyond stupid, this site was made for internet marketers to get together and share news and information. I know it’s the weekend, maybe you had a long week or a bad week, whatever the case may be you wanting to implement a spam filter for "blogrush" is just crazy. I am hoping the reason why this has received so many sphinns is due to the fact of people are tired of seeing blogrush posts, and not the fact that Jill Whalen wants to see a filter be put in place...unreal.
Steve
I agree. Some 42 separate topics posted here in the last 9 days, 41 in the last 7 days, is really far too much now. Just 6 of them went hot, so the voting system here does at least work.
Thanks Jill! Nothing against BlogRush, becuase to be clear as of this post, I dont know what they do or what it is. But, recently within the last weeks every other post was related to Blogrush. Thats overkill, in my opinion. And I didnt post about it, not to sound like the sourpuss! But cmon BlogRush guys, we get it!
Most of them are just morons trying to get clicks to their own affiliate links, or whatever they are. They have just their 1 lowly sphinn.
It's ridiculous. Sphinn is better than this.
Nuke the F*ckers
Just another trashy widget...not worth our time.
I don't like it either, but I hope Sphinn doesn't become a club that excludes unpopular opinions.
I guess Jill has been more concerned about the quality of submissions especially on "What's New" and she wish to see more active objective role of Sphinn's moderators rather than censorship.
The numbers of BlogRush posts talking about the same subject which g1smd mentioned aren't encouraging at all:
"Some 42 separate topics posted here in the last 9 days, 41 in the last 7 days, is really far too much now."
In Google language; thats too many "duplicate contents" which usually indexed under supplementals not within the main index :-)
For the time being, we're leaving it to the Sphinns. I'd hope those submitting would get the point that unless they've got something super unique to say about Blogrush, don't say it, don't submit it. Personally, I hadn't heard of it until it hit Sphinn, and I was sick of it about three hours after it came up. It seems way over hyped, and the affiliate link/pyramid scheme nature of what I've heard is an even bigger turnoff.
Exactly, Danny! If nothing else, I hope this discussion about it does serve to stop additional useless posts on the topic.
@Harith, you got it right as well. I do like to review the new topics to find interesting articles for my own knowledge and to Sphinn, but it does get discouraging seeing the same topics over and over.
Harith - Duplicate content was when Jills article was Sphinned to the front page twice, hosted on 2 different sites and without a link from one copy to the other. Also when Marty recently received 2 front pages for the same article within minutes of each other.
I think the biggest problem is that Sphinn doesn't yet have a page filtering based on your friends.
The what's new page is going to grow increasingly conjested and some people are used to Pligg based sites accepting not just their best, but all submissions, even pulling the RSS feeds.
I just filter posts out when I see 5 articles or more submitted by the same person from the same blog and don't bother to click through. They are generally submitted by people who have absolutely no interests in submitting other people's content that they think would be useful for the community, and don't take part in sphinning submitted articles or in the discussions.
I have already noticed a disturbing trend that people are sphinning articles based upon whether they agree with it or not, not whether the article was worth reading. In an industry that so little can be thought of as factual, such voting habits will prove damaging.
I like to think some of my posts get submitted because they are worthwhile, not because I have a lot of friends and readers active on Sphinn, but that isn't necessarily the case.
If lots of people are blogging about the same topic, there is a good chance that is newsworthy and not just because of referrals.
When Kevin Rose launches something new, everyone blogs about it, oh and invite only - a great way to grab new readers and be popular. Within "Internet Marketing" or "Information Marketing" circles, when John Reese launches something or is involved in some ways as an affiliate, it tends to make extremely big waves.
An example was Stompernet, he was the No.1 affiliate for the launch, that is a $20M/year membership site.
I have had some direct communication with John over Blogrush after I sent them some suggestions. He is very committed to making this part of income.com work.
When everyone was writing about Sphinn's launch, there was no complaints that there were so many articles about Sphinn, and there still aren't. If it wasn't Danny's and if there wsn't so much concerted effort to make it a success, most of the SEO industry would have immediately dismissed it as just another Pligg site.
In the internet marketing circles, John Reese has a similar level of influence and a similar level of commitment to make things work.
Jill, This IS another post about blogRush :)
It just occurred to me that it would be a good idea to include either the word BlogRush or Sphinn in the title of anything I submit from now on. Many good articles on "real" SEO/SEM topics are getting lost due to the attention that goes to BlogRush or Social or other fad-type topics.
There seem to be two different groups developing on sphinn with quite divergent opinions on what the site should be providing.
I'll admit there has been a glut of stories on blogrush, but is that surprising it's quite a significant development in the world of internet marketing?
The quality of the stories vary, but then so does the submissions on any topic on any social media site.
I understand people's annoyance with them, but I think I'd rather see something topical than a yet another vague and generic "five ways to improve your blog traffic"
But at the end of the day the readers have the power vote for what you like and ignore what you don't. It seems like a bury feature isn't far away either...
There's been a few posts lately about wanting things you personally don't want to read about omitted from the overall flow of content. Might I suggest you just not read them? I mean if you are forcing yourself to read every post on Sphinn or anywhere else, then that's a situation you need to sort out for yourself. I get Sphinn and most everything through an RSS feed. I just scroll through until I see something I want to read, ignoring what I don't. That solves that problem without telling other people what they should or shouldn't post. I know it's all tongue and cheek and everything but really, don't want it: then turn the channel, page or scroll on down. Complaining about feed polution to me is just being self centered and kinda lazy.
Agreed, Jill. :)
Danny, allowing affiliates to spam your site just because they're not getting voted is a bit naive, IMO. You have a strong site here, so the barrel-scraping affiliates will be after the sphinn pages ranking and the clickthroughs from there. Didn't you ever see what happened to Netscape? I know you don't want to police submissions too tightly, but certainly a policy disallowing affiliate ID's is a common policy on community forums.
2c & sphunn.
iBrian, we don't allow affiliates to spam. IE, if affiliates were submitting links to Blogrush as if these were articles, we'd nuke those. We also have nuked affiiate drops in threads and warned against them. But an affiliate writing an article about Blogrush, using their affiliate code in the article? Probably isn't compelling, but it's not necessarily spam.
Brian that is extremely biased. Even Google has no problem with affiliate links, they even instruct webmasters how to set things up so they don't get duplicate content issues when affiliate links are 301 redirects. On the otherhand 50% of SEO sites (probably more) have paid links of one kind or another. Do you really think there is less incentive to build up links for people who sell links, compared to people who use the occasional affiliate link in an article?
You know what is strange? I felt infinitely less insulted being called a "guppy" the other day
>>But an affiliate writing an article about Blogrush, using their affiliate code in the article?
@Danny - okay, no problem. :) Having ignored the wave of blog rush items on sphinn, the idea that they may be tolerated even containing aff ID's set off warning bells, but it looks like I misunderstood Jill's comment.
@AndyBeard - I was referring to bottom-end affiliates spamming communities. I have no idea how you translate that into links selling issue?? It's not an issue against affiliate marketing as a field, as much as that when you run a community, and then affiliates join for no other reason than to post their affiliate link up on some post, you have a process that actively works against the community interest. These aren't usually the intelligent affiliates either, but just barrel-scaping scum who think making it in affiliate marketing = spamming communities to the eyeballs. I regulalry have to clear that out of my own forums, commonly posted from a string of South/East Asian countries in particular. I would think there's a big difference between that practice and placing affiliate links in your own articles on your own sites, which I figure usually has a real strategy behind it. 2c. :)
Well, here's an example, Jill:
http://www.best-earning-strategies.com/blogging/damn-john-reeses-and-his-stinkin-blogrush-launch/
OK, that was on Sphinn. It's a short review of BlogRush, nothing wonderful, but I've seen short reviews like this by others about BlogRush or other products. Does it exist only to spam Sphinn? No. It's part of someone's blog, to their audience, and they submitted here. Is it spam to submit so-so content? If you did a lot of it, sure. If you're doing some posts selectively, and you decide this is the post you want to waste the attention on Sphinners on, so be it. It is a waste, and they'll pay less attention to you next time.
Now say you came along and tried to submit your actual BlogRush URL as a topic here. Yeah, that's clearly spamming to me. We'd have a billion people doing that, each trying to claim a slight alteration of the BlogRush URL as if it is their own.
Yes, seeing the explosion of BlogRush articles is annoying to me, as well as you. But no, not all of them are spam, and we can't just easily go in and start nuking every post about BlogRush. We'll lose some serious ones in doing that. My feeling is that as I said, the "excitement" if it were will die off naturally.
This headline delivers so well that I sphunn this without even clicking on it. For some reason I felt that was worth adding as a comment ;)
Ok, gotcha Danny. I do see the difference.
But I'm still gonna puke. Will try not to get it all over sphinn...
There's one crucial difference between Sphinn and a traditional-style forum.
In a forum environment I would have hit the edit button and merged the topics into less than half a dozen comprehensive threads.
The selection would have been based on their pro- or anti- angle, or on some other prominent differentiating factor.