Sphinn has been around for a while now and while the users and content are good there is one particular thing that I just can’t stand.
I’m always looking for ways to improve my efficiency and be much more productive. I do things like use Google Reader, obviously, to collect and read all of the content I’m interested in. One of the feeds is Sphinn. Inevitably though I find that many of the posts on Sphinn are simply pointers to another article on a different blog. That’s what Sphinn is setup to do, I know that. However, the bar could be raised a little bit higher.
I read the headline in my Google Reader, click it, then I have to click again to get to the entire story on the 3rd party blog. What do you think I do at this point? I add that blogs RSS feed to my Google Reader and as a result pay just a little less attention to Sphinn stories cause I’m getting all of the good content directly from the blogs being mentioned on Sphinn.
I see two opportunities to making Sphinn better:
1. Urge users to post unique content directly into Sphinn that is not found on another blog or site.
2. Raise the bar on the level of commentary needed to describe a story being linked to. A minimum number of words - 250 or 500 or something like that.
Either of these two options would greatly improve the content on the site, and make it alot more sticky for me! Please comment - I want to know if I am out to lunch on this one!
5 Comments
I’m always looking for ways to improve my efficiency and be much more productive. I do things like use Google Reader, obviously, to collect and read all of the content I’m interested in. One of the feeds is Sphinn. Inevitably though I find that many of the posts on Sphinn are simply pointers to another article on a different blog. That’s what Sphinn is setup to do, I know that. However, the bar could be raised a little bit higher.
I read the headline in my Google Reader, click it, then I have to click again to get to the entire story on the 3rd party blog. What do you think I do at this point? I add that blogs RSS feed to my Google Reader and as a result pay just a little less attention to Sphinn stories cause I’m getting all of the good content directly from the blogs being mentioned on Sphinn.
I see two opportunities to making Sphinn better:
1. Urge users to post unique content directly into Sphinn that is not found on another blog or site.
2. Raise the bar on the level of commentary needed to describe a story being linked to. A minimum number of words - 250 or 500 or something like that.
Either of these two options would greatly improve the content on the site, and make it alot more sticky for me! Please comment - I want to know if I am out to lunch on this one!
5 Comments
Comments
While interesting thoughts, that basically defeats the whole purpose of what Sphinn is. Although, I think if more people commented on the articles here, it would help make it worthwhile for you and others to visit here directly.
Agreed. Too much duplicate content.I have seen a sphinn on a post, that was in turn just a sphinn, on yet another post. Then I have seen a sphinn where the commentary completely changed the topic of the post that they were sphinning to the point where it was just an excuse to talk about a brand new topic, as if they did not even know how to start a new discussion.Then there are sphinns where it appears that the sphinners did not even bother to read the posts that they were sphinning.Today, a sphinn on secuirty issues in WordPress is going hot based upon a popularity contest while a much better post written on the same topic by an unknown blogger just a few months ago only got sphinned 10 times.
Sphinn, like Google, is mainly an information filter, not your final destination."I read the headline in my Google Reader, click it, then I have to click again to get to the entire story on the 3rd party blog. What do you think I do at this point? I add that blogs RSS feed to my Google Reader and as a result pay just a little less attention to Sphinn stories cause I’m getting all of the good content directly from the blogs being mentioned on Sphinn."There are 200+ blogs out there covering search marketing. If you pick up all their RSS, you’ll be inundated with hundreds of new posts every few days. Shifting through that mess to find an interesting read or two isn’t going to save you time.Using longer descriptions also doesn’t make sense. People want to get their burger and fries in a flash. They don’t want to read a whole paragraph about the history of a big Mac. The TITLE/description is there to provide enough info to help people decide to click through or not. Less is better. There’s a reason why both TITLE and description have a char limit on Google SERPs.
Raising the level of commentary could be ok. But in regards to posting in sphinn, you suggest change the meaning of bookmarking. It will become a blog or a news site. I agree though that there are 3 levels we go until we learn the content of the post to know we like it to be saved in our profiles. I’d suggest it open as a separate window small one, for reading and commenting.
Wow! I’m loving this feedback. All truly valuable. Perhaps what I’m looking for is a little more content on the site and a little less bookmarking. A better blend between the two.In the meantime I’ll keep doing what I’m doing!