Andy Beard - Internet Business Systems Discussion - Latest Comments in Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:30:05 -0000

What is your problem Andy?

Danny mentioned BUMPzee! and a number of other similar services on the Daily SearchCast on 7/12 when Sphinn was launched. It's not like he ignores the existing services completely in is coverage of search marketing news.

He mentions Sphinn (his baby) more frequent; of course he does. He also mentions SMX more often than SES, especially right before a SMX event. He will still cover SES and PubCon etc.

That he does self promotion is completely natural. They over at SEL also have bills to pay.

I never heart him talking bad about BUMPZee or making claims like "Sphinn" is much better than xyz. It would be inappropriate, if he did.

That friends of SEL and Danny are more likely to post about something they do and probably also in a more forgiving and favorable manner is also normal.

David Naylor and Rand etc. are Danny's friends. David for example posted about Sphinn the same day Danny announced it on Daily SearchCast, as he said during the show, without Danny asking him to do so.

Am I missing something?

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Carsten Cumbrowski — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:30:05 -0000

What is your problem Andy?

He mentions Sphinn (his baby) more frequent; of course he does. He also mentions SMX more often than SES, especially right before a SMX event. He will still cover SES and PubCon etc.

That he does self promotion is completely natural. They over at SEL also have bills to pay.

I never heart him talking bad about BUMPZee or making claims like "Sphinn" is much better than xyz. It would be inappropriate, if he did.

That friends of SEL and Danny are more likely to post about something they do and probably also in a more forgiving and favorable manner is also normal.

Am I missing something?

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

AndyBeard — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:59:11 -0000

Sorry for tripping the spam filter, links to Google.com do trip it due to a long spate of someone spam commenting with just links to Google.com

Danny if you or SEOmoz were using tagging on your blogs, and wrote a post regarding the search results for buying blue pills, then tagging it "buy viagra" wouldn't be a problem.

There are all kinds of ways you could have a more extensive approved category architecture.

In many ways you executed an ideal marketing strategy for the launch.

Invite key people to beta test a few weeks early - that almost guarantees coverage, but it almost guarantees positive coverage, overlooking any shortcomings.
I have read loads of reviews and people who when they do paid reviews of services whose opinion I trust a huge amount only wrote 100% "PR" like reviews of the service.
In many ways I am disappointed in them, because you did mention a competitor in your announcement and due to various commercial reasons it is hard to talk about a competitor in any way if you have a similar product launch.

Those blog search results are not very conclusive

One is my story
One is a splog picking up your story on Google News
Your story doesn't appear because your feeds aren't very RSS search friendly
One is a comment by Carsten that I linked to in my post
Maki always writes indepth reviews covering multiple angles - I would be shocked if that wasn't the case
One is my story on a competing social site that hasn't been kicked out yet
One is an article on Lockergnome by Tinu, again I would expect Tinu to cover all angles despite being an avid user of both PlugIM and Bumpzee.
Then there is also the coverage from James' Affiliate Marketing Blog
Can you spot the SEO blogger among those that mentioned both?
I can't...

So now we look at normal Google search

Most of the listings are for people who have the Sociable plugin, or my Antisocial variant of it (better for SEO) installed, or a link to a community on bumbzee.

Even Pandia's post only appears on a category listing that contains a mention from March.

All it really highlights is that Pablo Palatnik needs to look at how his RSS is indexed by Google, as his story wasn't appearing in Blogsearch.

I suppose it is only a minor thing that there are 1500 mentions on Sphinn on Blogsearch and 4 or 5 mention a competitor which you included in your announcement.
http://blogsearch.google.co...

The fragmentation isn't just going to be in the SEO industry, it will also happen in Affiliate marketing.
As an example Affiliates4U which I have only glanced at in the past and didn't even sign up.

I do agree that multiple communities can do well, but I hate seeing a potential way of unifying various niches under a single community go to waste.

I will be supporting Sphinn, I have a plugin update to finish as one example, but it is a shame about the missed opportunity.

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

AndyBeard — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:59:11 -0000

Sorry for tripping the spam filter, links to Google.com do trip it due to a long spate of someone spam commenting with just links to Google.com

Danny if you or SEOmoz were using tagging on your blogs, and wrote a post regarding the search results for buying blue pills, then tagging it "buy viagra" wouldn't be a problem.

There are all kinds of ways you could have a more extensive approved category architecture.

In many ways you executed an ideal marketing strategy for the launch.

Those blog search results are not very conclusive

So now we look at normal Google search

Most of the listings are for people who have the Sociable plugin, or my Antisocial variant of it (better for SEO) installed, or a link to a community on bumbzee.

Even Pandia's post only appears on a category listing that contains a mention from March.

All it really highlights is that Pablo Palatnik needs to look at how his RSS is indexed by Google, as his story wasn't appearing in Blogsearch.

I suppose it is only a minor thing that there are 1500 mentions on Sphinn on Blogsearch and 4 or 5 mention a competitor which you included in your announcement.
http://blogsearch.google.co...

The fragmentation isn't just going to be in the SEO industry, it will also happen in Affiliate marketing.
As an example Affiliates4U which I have only glanced at in the past and didn't even sign up.

I do agree that multiple communities can do well, but I hate seeing a potential way of unifying various niches under a single community go to waste.

I will be supporting Sphinn, I have a plugin update to finish as one example, but it is a shame about the missed opportunity.

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:51:05 -0000

Danny Sullivan said: "Carsten, why not launch with everything we could think of? Because we had enough to start with, and at some point, you want a real site with real users to give you real feedback. I don't consider it half done at all. I consider it a solid foundation that will grow."

Danny, I believe you misunderstood my comment.

I said that opening BUMPzee! up, to allow the creation of any type of community, is a blessing and a curse at the same time.

A blessing, because it allows to expand into other verticals and a curse because it also deludes stronger communities within BUMPzee! and reduces the growth of them.

It is much harder now to promote BUMPZee to a specific vertical. Go to the homepage of BUMPzee! and tell me about the strong communities within the site. Do you see what I mean? You can't tell?

I don't mind having another platform out there. As I said in my comment at SEOMoz Andy was referring to: "The more the merrier I guess, at least does it provide choice and will cause each platform to develop further to the excitement of us users."

I also said that you will use your position in the industry to promote your new service of course. Scott did so too with BUMPzee! There is nothing wrong with that I would have been surprised if you wouldn't do it.

Not everybody here is agreeing with Andy's assessment. You are not the only one :)

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 14:51:05 -0000

Danny, I believe you misunderstood my comment.

I said that opening BUMPzee! up, to allow the creation of any type of community, is a blessing and a curse at the same time.

A blessing, because it allows to expand into other verticals and a curse because it also deludes stronger communities within BUMPzee! and reduces the growth of them.

It is much harder now to promote BUMPZee to a specific vertical. Go to the homepage of BUMPzee! and tell me about the strong communities within the site. Do you see what I mean? You can't tell?

Not everybody here is agreeing with Andy's assessment. You are not the only one :)

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

AndyBeard — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:48:47 -0000

In many ways Scott's roots in affiliate marketing only really cover half of the industry. I think I probably have closer connections with the "other half" of affiliate marketing, which I am referring to as "internet marketing" from my time on various forums such as HowTo and The Warrior Forum among many others, though obviously many people have some cross-over.

One of the things missing, and I have been told it will still happen is functional category filtering, which would improve things significantly.

I would then be able to launch my /wordpress community to monitor all the updates from plugin and theme developers.
I have had that community in "reserve" since the initial "beta" phase of additional managed communities was introduced, the no nofollow / dofollow community was an afterthought a couple of months later, initially intended to be run on a Wordpress blog.

I gain a fair amount of exposure from Bumpzee purely because I promote Bumpzee extensively and the same may well become true of Sphinn.

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

AndyBeard — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:48:47 -0000

One of the things missing, and I have been told it will still happen is functional category filtering, which would improve things significantly.

I gain a fair amount of exposure from Bumpzee purely because I promote Bumpzee extensively and the same may well become true of Sphinn.

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Danny Sullivan — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 10:14:46 -0000

Andy, I'm fine commenting here. Registration isn't going away, even if PlugIM doesn't require it. I think it's a bare minimum to help control spam.

1) On tagging, no, it's not a duplicate content concern. It's a concern that you could submit one story, then tag it up as I dunno: viagara, cheap viagra, buy viagra, oh where o where has my viagra gone, and then I'm hosting a lot of potential search space. Suffice to say, when I saw how tagging worked with Pligg, I decided for very good reasons that it wasn't something we needed to enable right now. If that means we don't get a tickmark in the master feature list of social site, so be it. I generally don't think things should get measured up by having the most ticks anyway.

2) I can't help you with the split attention factor, nor will I argue it further. It occurs in so many places and in some many ways that I feel you're somewhat unreasonably holding Sphinn to account. If you want to close your blog and then choose some much more popular site to post all your views and comments, then you're on better ground. If not, then you are contributing to split attention yourself (though I won't hold that against you).

3) Didn't say Matt had trackbacks. I said that simply because Matt does a post, that doesn't mean all the conversation has to happen about that post at Matt's blog -- and in fact, because it can take place in different locations may add to much richer conversations. I know you seem to want some master centralized hub -- that's just not life. Also, unless everyone is going to put Bumpzee modules on all their sites, Bumpzee doesn't solve that.

In terms of my own stuff, I prefer the conversation happen with my own audience, and that's who I will react to first. My audience is radically different than the Digg audience, which is often immature and sometimes amazingly ignorant of search. I have taken part in conversations there when I've found it useful outreach or occasionally, if I was looking for something entertaining. But far be it for me to somehow suggest that Diggers can only talk about my stuff in my own "house," as it were. Talk about it wherever you want. By that argument, we shouldn't be talking here. We should go back to Sphinn :)

5) Sphinn has had major support from SEOmoz, along with SEL itself. I trust SEL is allowed to talk about it? SEW has not mentioned it. WMW hasn't mentioned it. A host of other sites haven't mentioned it. Didn't read about it on Digg; didn't see it on TechCrunch. Shoemoney has mentioned Bumpzee several times; Sphinn's not been mentioned once. You're overstating the initial support. And there have been plenty of minor reviews mentioning the other sites. Go do a backlink lookup on Sphinn in Google blog search, and you can see this. Or

http://blogsearch.google.co...

That's 7 reviews with both sites mentioned together.

http://www.google.com/searc...

That's 750 web matches with them both together.

By the way, I finally spent a little time over at Bumpzee. It's far more like a MyBlogLog than a Digg (or Sphinn, for that matter). Nor is it focused on internet marketing. It's focused on anything anyone wants to build a community around. Good for it. But that's also why SEL didn't cover it much, I suppose -- it's not a search-specific thing.

Still, whatever. I've said my points. I get the impression you're convinced Sphinn is enjoying a lovefest that was denied to Bumpzee. For me, as I said, any initial attention ultimately doesn't count for much if the community itself doesn't deliver. I'll try to keep delivering to our community.

Carsten, why not launch with everything we could think of? Because we had enough to start with, and at some point, you want a real site with real users to give you real feedback. I don't consider it half done at all. I consider it a solid foundation that will grow.

Darren, I really don't think it's all the same voices. I wasn't kidding when I said I'm seeing stuff from people I'd never heard of, good stuff that I'm thrilled is getting attention via Sphinn. As you say, time will tell.

Andy, let me also conclude that I do appreciate your thoughts and comments. I'm giving you pushback in areas where I don't agree, and I suspect the only way I'd fully please you is if Sphinn didn't exist and it were all Bumpzee all the time. But all I can say is I've watched various communities thrive, rather than kill each other, within the SEM space. Sphinn's our community site, and we need that regardless of what others do. If all it does is provide an easier way for people at SEL to comment, then it has fulfilled the most fundamental goal of the site. If it does more than that, I'm happy too.

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Danny Sullivan — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 10:14:46 -0000

Andy, I'm fine commenting here. Registration isn't going away, even if PlugIM doesn't require it. I think it's a bare minimum to help control spam.

http://blogsearch.google.co...

That's 7 reviews with both sites mentioned together.

http://www.google.com/searc...

That's 750 web matches with them both together.

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Darren McLaughlin — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 09:47:23 -0000

I hate to be negative about a new service, but Sphinn (Sfin) sure does appear to me to be the same old "talking heads" and SEO Rockstars (haha) that already dominate the small SEO niche. I've never felt like part of their "community" so far, and I doubt this offering will be any different.

If this website plans on being anything other than another derivative Digg/Pligg clone, then Danny will have to do his best to bring in some new blood from the huge majority of SEO "community types" who aren't part of the in-crowd. Otherwise, it looks just like one more gratuitous ass-kissing and pseudo-link-exchanging circle jerking website to me. In essence, it's not hard to believe that a website like this is designed to promote web conferences, rather than do much for the community at large.

Of course I could be wrong, and time will tell.

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Darren McLaughlin — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 09:47:23 -0000

Of course I could be wrong, and time will tell.

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 07:50:40 -0000

Hi Andy,
Interesting post. BUMPZee! got a lot of attention in the affilaite marketing space and Scotts deep roots in that industry was helping him to get the needed attention to get the project off the ground.

You can compare it to what Danny did in the seo/sem space with Sphinn. Both used their status in their respected industries. Okay, Scott would be more like a Aaron or Rand, but if either of those two would have launched a site like this, the results would have been similar.

To open up BUMPzee to create any type of niche community was a good thing and a bad thing. Opening it up allowed the access to other verticals, but it also added problems of separation and duplications due to over diversification. Have a look at the amount and types of communities that were created at BUMPzee over the past months and you will know what I mean.

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Carsten Cumbrowski — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 07:50:40 -0000

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Tim Nash — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 03:33:41 -0000

As a web site owner I love publicity for my sites, as a psuedo Internet marketer I can see the benefit of social media but I can see the flaws.

It was only a couple of months ago when we as a community were crowing over the fall of Digg to a small minority. For many in our community it was the proof that the social media site had indeed been gamed but not by us. Everyone cried out for need to never let it happen again, Digg suffered particularly because its nearly impossible to moderate this style of site, you can only automate the process so much (those of us being auto buried for using the S acronym will tell you) manual moderation also fails when the site reaches a critical mass.

But Digg has another problem, personalities determines what reaches the front page, or rather large friend lists, I digg my friends list (though I might be in the minority that I actually have a 'real' friends list) but some Diggers have 1000's amazing if you think that many of these Diggers are probably spotty teenagers who live in cupboards. Its interesting that the more well known bloggers don't have the same draw of friends in these mediums so when your use to being the most popular boy on the block what do you do?

well one option is to clone a broken system, one we know can't operate at critical mass, use personalities to push the system, and split and fragment the user bases of other systems.

Danny to his credit has actually tried to avoid this but it was always about Danny If I had created Sphinn would we be talking about it now?

Now I have nothing against Sphinn I joined more or less straight away I have started to use the system, making contact with my "friends" but I can't help feel some de ja vu coming, as the friends list grows the smaller bloggers with great content will continue to drop of the radar to be found by the few. The larger more popular blogs will while dominating the main page gain little after all the same people voting will already be their readers and the little guy who makes it to the front page he might just might get that first break.

I want Sphinn to work and I applaud Danny for trying, but it could have been so much more then a Digg clone and while I'm sure more "social tools" are coming why release something half done.

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

Tim Nash — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 03:33:41 -0000

As a web site owner I love publicity for my sites, as a psuedo Internet marketer I can see the benefit of social media but I can see the flaws.

well one option is to clone a broken system, one we know can't operate at critical mass, use personalities to push the system, and split and fragment the user bases of other systems.

Danny to his credit has actually tried to avoid this but it was always about Danny If I had created Sphinn would we be talking about it now?

I want Sphinn to work and I applaud Danny for trying, but it could have been so much more then a Digg clone and while I'm sure more "social tools" are coming why release something half done.

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

AndyBeard — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 03:32:33 -0000

I do realise that the quality of comments on social networks in many cases are "the nature of the beast" but this perspective from Muhammad Saleem on the way widgets actually take traffic away from your site shows that my views on this are not totally off target.

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

AndyBeard — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 03:32:33 -0000

Re: Sphinn – SEM Attention Wars

AndyBeard — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 03:11:03 -0000

Whilst I would love to agree to holding this conversation on Sphinn, unfortunately my readers would then have to register with Spinn if they wanted to contribute.
I am aware that the same is true of all other social news sites.

In the past I have praised PlugIM for being aware that a vote using their button doesn't require membership, and doesn't take readers away from your site. It is not an exit route.

1. Regarding Tagging, you must have been listening to Rand too much about duplicate content, and not Matt Cutts.
If there was a problem with tagging and tag pages, Technorati wouldn't show up so much in search results, and Bumpzee wouldn't have 315,000 pages indexed, and only 2 reported as being supplemental.
I know there are lots of problems with the reporting of supplemental results, thus that isn't definitive, but ultimately that isn't bad for a site with only 100,000 links as reported by Yahoo.

2. Split attention is a factor when you have a good idea who each of the people is who have Stumbled your content in the past, or decided to only submit to Sphinn this time around.
It is a major factor when someone clicks the Sphinn button and they are taken to Sphinn. It is a major factor as to whether a button remains on my site, or where I might position the button.
Digg is already likely to disappear soon, or made to appear only on traffic appearing from Digg.

3. From what I remember, Matt doesn't display trackbacks.

I am a strong believer that the primary conversation about original content should revolve around the original content.
In some of the heated debates about your own content that have happened on Digg, wouldn't you really have preferred that conversation to happen on your own blog (the meaningful stuff) in a nice threaded conversation?
Marty just linked through joining in the conversation, and gets a link back that is followed.

In my experience discussions on social news sites in general are less useful, maybe Sphinn will be different.

Threadwatch would be perfect for another Pligg though I seem to remember someone suggesting it and it being rejected.

5. Crowds migrate to the services that thought leaders suggest.

From the outside at least to me it seems a little like this...

Various people determine that there is a need for some kind of social news site for SEO / SEM and related industries such as affiliate marketing and internet marketing.
I fully agree with that. There is a clear need.

A few sites are launched that in some way fulfil that need. Maybe not perfect, but usable

Many of the higher profile sites give them little or no coverage, because they know that something else is eventually coming (so how many people were alpha or beta testing this?)

Probably delayed, Sphinn appears, though in itself isn't perfect, but immediately gets support without any sign of a constructive review or mentions of competing sites.

You think there might be room for 5 or 10 niche social news sites for SEO / SEM and similar industries.

They are all much smaller niches than tech, politics, computer games, and possibly Apple zealots, Microsoft Zealots etc.
Can those niches really sustain 10 or more social news sites as well?

I honestly think 5 or 10... successful sites is a stretch for the niche or combined niches, so it certainly becomes a SEM Attention War as per my original post title.

Any such niche site is going to deliver more targeted traffic than Digg is capable off, so there is really no question of it being direct competition, but there is still a need for critical mass.

It is quite possible that Sphinn can gain some level of critical mass if you can align all the other movers and shakers in SEO in your favour.
You might find it more difficult to align the Affiliate Marketers and Internet Marketers.
The fact that the site concentrates on promoting your own brands, which in many ways might compete with their own won't encourage as much involvement.

It is funny, Sphinn reminds me of a conversation about Digg buries over on PronetAdvertising not too long ago, and I think it appropriate to quote it.

Cristian Mezai in response to Rex Dixon suggesting people should use his Pligg site.

Rex said:-

http://givemeafrigginbreak.com --- you won't get buried there! Just need users to start joining, giving feedback, and we can change the whole "friggin' break" idea, and just go head on digg. Fine by me.

Cristian replied:-

No room for self-seo here Rex..
Sorry to say, but you just dissapointed an already dissapointed bunch of professionals that can create 10 of those websites in a single day.

I noticed one comment from Matt at Small Business SEM on Sphinn that Bumpzee didn't provide an instant traffic surge when he tried it.

The reason that happens is that very few sites adopted it in the SEO / SEM arena, including the voting widgets.

Matt does use a modified version of sociable, but that doesn't encourage clicks anywhere near as much as the widgets.