News Source: http://controversialmarketing.blogspot.com
Story Found By: SamFreedom 1317 Days ago
Category: Sphinn Zone
25 Comments
Sorry this site requires JavaScript to be enabled in your browser. See the following guide on How to enable JavaScript in Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox and Safari. Alternatively you may be blocking JavaScript with an advert-related or developer plugin. Please check your browser plugins.
News Source: http://controversialmarketing.blogspot.com
Story Found By: SamFreedom 1317 Days ago
Category: Sphinn Zone
25 Comments
Upcoming Conferences
Search Engine Land produces SMX, the Search Marketing Expo conference series. SMX events deliver the most comprehensive educational and networking experiences - whether you're just starting in search marketing or you're a seasoned expert.
Join us at an upcoming SMX event:
- SMX Advanced Seattle - June 5-6, 2012
- SMX Paris - June 7-8 2012
- SMX Melbourne - Sept. 5-6, 2012
- SMX East - Oct. 2-4, 2012
- SMX Stockholm - Oct. 15-16, 2012
- SMX Social Media Marketing - Dec. 5-6, 2012
- SMX Munich - Apr. 9-10, 2013
- SMX West - March 2013
- SMX Toronto - April 2013
- SMX Sydney - May 2013
Latest News From Marketing Land
- Yahoo Shutters Livestand iPad “Living Magazine”
- Marketing Day: May 25, 2012
- Marketing Biz: Tracking Google’s Dune Strategy
- How Performance Marketing Is Influencing The Next Generation Of Internet Startups
- New Google+ Android App Adds Vivid Imagery & Additional Functionality
- - See more news at Marketing Land -
Upcoming Webcasts
Learn more about search marketing with our free online webcasts and webinars from our sister site, Search Marketing Now. Upcoming online events include:
- Search, Social and Mobile: What Travel Marketers Must Know - June 26, 2012
Latest News From Search Engine Land
- Microsoft: Yes, We Do Send Takedown Requests To Bing, Too
- SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 25, 2012
- Search In Pics: SEO LEGO, Facebook Cooler & A Happy SEO
- Google Disapproved 134M Ads And Disabled More Than 800K AdWords Accounts In 2011
- Microsoft Integrates More Nokia “Infrastructure” (Traffic, Geocoding) Into Bing Maps
- - See more news at Search Engine Land -
Comments
lol it says ZERO sphinns! Big fish in a little pond syndrome is alive and well!
"certain lustful males continually sphinning their favorite females"That quote alone is worth a Sphinn. But really! Were you drunk when you selected the category for this Sphinn?
I haven’t sphunn anything for a while, mainly for the reasons you stated. Very well put.
Well, measuring the success of the site based on Alexa rankings is a terrible choice. For one thing, Alexa changed methodology over the past year. For another, well, Alexa’s never been a good measure of anything.If I’m measuring success, I’m looking to commenting activity (which I think has been great), stories hitting the home page (there’s still great stuff that does make it along with, yes, the typical "6 Tips For SEOing Your WordPress Page Sculpting Setup With Paid Links That Google Unfairly Bans" articles), page views (strong), member sign-ups (growing) and RSS subscribers (growing). Looking at those, I’m confident we have a healthy site.
Danny, thanks for a reasonable reply -- I give such professional, non-defensive replies to criticism far more weight than just about anything else. In reply --I can’t quite subscribe to the idea that Alexa is not a good measure of anything. A lot of people still believe it is... so, in the very least, going with your presumption, Alexa would be a good measure that a whole bunch of people are still being duped by Alexa... true? A lot of people still consider SOME kind of a measuring stick.Semantics aside... another example to my point is that Andy Beard is both a great guy, one hell of a marketer and very bright. For him to bounce out of here citing the pressure of the "collective" is pretty telling. Even if you have a cogent argument that attempts to mitigate his departure, there’s just a lot of people who respect his position and realize some of what he had to say has merit.But, let me conclude by saying, that if you email me privately, I’ll give you a couple of ideas that I think will help Sphinn... outside-the-box stuff. Something that allows greater proliferation than the usual inbreeding. ;)Nice hearing from you...Sam
A lot of the arguments are pervasive across all social media sites, not just Sphinn specific.
ps. In response to the desphinn comment by the inimitable BrentCsutoras (isn’t that also a dinosaur?) --"Desphunn for not understanding basic social media fundamentals. Don’t bad mouth the site your submitting to :("I’m trying to remain cordial but HIS understanding is the very kind of stuff that, ironically, inhibits growth and diversity. Just imagine, he believes it is FUNDAMENTAL that you should not submit your unfavorable review of a social news site to that social news site... as if the community members should not have an opportunity to agree, disagree, deny, argue, debate or even know about it?Pardon me for being a tad bit brash but what the hell else can I say but, "DUH!" Who the hell is he to suggest such a fundamental exists? It’s a fundamental of the country I live in that if you are disappointed with something, you EXPRESS it. And let all the grown ups pick it apart and have their say.Remember folks (and Brett), some of the best moments in life are preceded by a good amount of "friction." Bada-bing! Bada-boom!
ok UTAH... make me a list and I’ll take them all on one-by-one. But, for today, it’s SPHINN... and the points still remain intact. Does all of them having such a situation mean it’s ok?
nah man, your points hold validity in flaws of social media/networks. wish i had a good answer on how to solve it.
Dude, ya know I love a good rant... but according to Alexa my blog has a higher ranking than SPhinn.... lol... don’t that just say a TON about that metric?
Hi Dave, I get it that Alexa is not something someone should consult for precise analysis yet lots of people still consider it SOME kind of authority... just like people continued to use Overture for keyword analysis even though we all knew the results were padded by so many factors other than actual searches.
I’m with Danny & theGypsy on this - using Alexa data is, I’m afraid, a good way to spoil what otherwise might be a valid point - this isn’t to do with semantics, it’s simply a totally flawed way of judging success. I don’t trust any 3rd party analytic tools, but tend to give Compete slightly more weight and it tells a different story. As does Google.<div></div><div>As for submitting critical comment to a community, I’m all for it.</div>
Thanks Ciaran, but I think at this point Alexa is a semantic that can divert from the issue which is the long, slow death of social networking sites due to a kind of inbreeding, cliquishness. I realize, perhaps, for some who are stuck at home with children, or working from their bedroom, that this is the best chance of social contact they have -- that’s fine. But when such little songbirds start to take their online pseudo-popularity too seriously and, banding together with others, end up skewing results based on their affinity for each other *rather than* on merit, you get that long, slow death I’m talking about.And, despite Alexa’s unreliability, it WAS what initially led me to research a little and what, ultimately, led me, much to my surprise, Andy Beard’s farewell explanation... amazing how it coincided with my own observations.Somehow, Alexa still served a journalistic purpose.
I’m sorry to say that I’m with you on this, Sam. I think the functionality of the site needs some serious makeover. There have been many suggestions but change apparently comes very slowly. Trying to be both digg-like and forum-like just doesn’t work with the present mechanisms. I too took the sphinn buttons off my blogs some time ago. It’s a pity since there are some really good contributors.
@SamFreedom "It’s a fundamental of the country I live in that if you are disappointed with something, you EXPRESS it. And let all the grown ups pick it apart and have their say." Dude the founders of Sphinn are British. And, so are most of the people complaining about your attitude problem. A few of them are from Down Under, too.Be that as it may, All of the traffic on Sphinn occurs while America is awake and on America’s timetable. That is just my two cents worth.
these problems manifest themselves in every community, not just online social networks. They are rooted in human nature. I don’t think there is a technological solution.incidentally, when I compare Sphinn to most other social networking sites, they come out looking pretty good. A smart and creative newb can do very well here, which is more than I can say for Digg or Reddit.
Sphinn is mostly fine. It’s sad that Andy has left but traffic, number of comments and links etc. is increasing or remains high. It’s possible to get 800+ visitors with one story by now. Sphinn is one of the most popular niche social sites. Look at Design Float, Hugg or even DZone. I was popular on DZone just a week ago and it was horrific. 95% bounce rate, stupid comments.Of course there’s a much better social news place out there for search marketers ;-)It’s http://www.mixx.com/groups/seo20
@JohnHGohde - I’m not exactly sure what you perceived, nor what you meant, when you said, " Dude the founders of Sphinn are British. And, so are most of the people complaining about your attitude problem. A few of them are from Down Under, too."If look at the original context in which my quote took place, you’ll see it was specifically to Brent who suggested it was a FUNDAMENTAL of social networking sites that you don’t submit your own criticism of a site to that site. Maybe that sounds good to him, in theory, but as a fundamental, it would suck. I stated that I came from the US to emphasize that, regardless of WHERE I am, I am used to, and comfortable, expressing myself as fully as a situation requires. If you, or anyone else, wants to play the, "This isn’t a Democracy" game, then hell if I care -- I MADE my points already. And the response to which you are referring was to a guy who has his *** pointing towards ASIA.@Dark Matter -- you said, "when I compare Sphinn to most other social networking sites, they come out looking pretty good. A smart and creative newb can do very well here, which is more than I can say for Digg or Reddit."Digg or Reddit aren’t specifically stated as being for "internet marketing news and discussion", as is Sphinn. Factor that in, too, then recalcuate.
@SamFreedomWhen in Rome, do as the Romans do.
@john lol, you crack me up... platitudes are ok but entrepreneurs and free thinkers don’t do as the Romans do... they find ways to do better.
So here I am, new to the industry, I just start to get the hang of this sphinn thing and now I hear that its DOOMED.Why can’t the industry just stand still for a bit? :-)
@rfergieBelieve me, rumours of Sphinn’s demise have been greatly exaggarated. There’s a lot happening in the space at the moment. BTW - Welcome to Sphinn ;)
Catching up a bit...Sam, I do have thoughts about Andy’s departure, and if you want them, see here:http://sphinn.com/story/25260I spent plenty of time on it. In short, sorry to see him go, but the site has honestly thrived even though he’s not a part of it. That’s the way any good forum or community site should be -- not dependent on one particular person.You can message me your ideas for Sphinn or just post them here. However, I’d really ask you to consider something. In your own article, you said you haven’t been here for six months. I’d really like you to spend some time using the place before sending ideas on how to improve it. I don’t mean that negatively. It’s just that I think you’d have a better idea of what really needs to be done.Barry, we’ve regularly said that the site is having new functionality put into it. To repeat that again, it’s being entirely rebuilt from scratch. The biggest issue we face is spam, and most of out attention with the old platform has been to get the right tools in place to combat that. I think we’re doing a fairly good job. The new platform will allow you to do things like see stories filtered by those who are in your network, plus might allow us to weight voting better. But it wasn’t something we could just slap into the existing software. Right now, we’re hoping to bring the new system up in the first quarter of next year. That’s longer than I’d like, but I’d also like to do it right.
@rfergie - no worries, I said "long, slow death...", could be a hundred more years, or so...@danny - look, no doubt you’re a level-headed guy who does his best to moderate fairly. That really doesn’t change the inbreeding that goes on. Perhaps there should be an algorithm in place to detect "sphinn fraud"... not just the obvious black hat kind but the kind where the same old people just keep sphinning the same old people, often without even visiting the article. I’m sure this has been discussed, to some extent before, but maybe it needs to be revisisted......which is, in part, why I haven’t been around for the last 6 months. I just grew tired of it around the time of the Semmy’s, which resulted in, Controversy at the Semmy’s -- a Scene Out of Deliverance... please enjoy a good laugh, but don’t miss the message.I know you can’t really control the clique-happy sphinns down to every last molecule, but something should be done about it... there are glaring instances of people who create some posts so unnewsworthy, mediocre, and often crappy but because the author sports a pair of labia, they get sphunn through the roof... it’s just a real turn-off to those who don’t mind working hard but don’t want to have to kiss ass to have an equal chance to those less deserved.** As for having a look around before making suggestions, Danny, I’m a marketer -- I can immediately tell what many sites need just by GLANCING at them.Appreciate your diplomatic nature and wish you well... Sam
Desphunn for not understanding basic social media fundamentals. Don’t bad mouth the site your submitting to :(