Archive for January, 2008
Written on January 31st, 2008 by Graham
Entrecard Members are greeted today with three great new features that will shock and amaze.
UPGRADED DASHBOARD
The first is an upgraded dashboard, displaying the most recent 15 cards dropped in your Inbox.
The cards pop up and maximize in size when you scroll over it:
NEWS FEED
The next feature is a News Feed, heres a snapshot as seen on your dash:
Keep in touch with what your favorite bloggers are saying in the forum, selling in the shop, adding favorites, updating their card, who they’re buying ads on, and more!
DROP RANK
On your profile, you will now find a “drop rank” which profiles your dropping behavior in a fun and casual way:
Take some time to get acquainted with all the new features, and all your privacy settings now available on your dashboard. We want all our users to be aware of all the privacy and contact options available to them.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!!
The first 31 people to write blog posts about our these cool new features, and include all four images above, will receive 100 credits! Just write the post, include the images, and leave a comment/linkback right here on our blog, and you’ll be the proud new owner of 100 Credits.
Cheers!
Written on January 29th, 2008 by Graham
Good news everyone! Entrecard is growing faster than ever. Yes, Entrecard is still less than three months old. In fact, February 7th will be our three month anniversary.
The other day we passed the 3,000 widgets mark. Here’s why it’s interesting.
It took us from November 7th -> December 17th to sign on 1,000 brave bloggers to install the Entrecard widget on their blog. But from December 17 -> January 27 we added an additional 2,000 blogs to make a grand total of 3,000 blogs.
Going with the 1 month and 10 day growth period, which so far has been strangely consistent, it looks like we’ll add another 3,000 or 4,000 blogs by March 7th.
The truth is, as much as Entrecard has been the center of a healthy debate and controversy, the fact still remains that it DOES increase your Alexa rank, it DOES bring you traffic and the opportunity to catch eyeballs, it DOES bring you comments, and you can cash in all those credits you earn when people drop cards on you for everything from iTunes and WalMart Gift Certificates to advertising on over 3,000 blogs, blog reviews, comments, and yes even choice recipes!
New feature: News Feed
We’re just days away from releasing our “Facebook style” News Feed which will allow you to keep tabs on your favorites. Initially, it will tell you who they are buying advertising from, who they are favoriting, what they are posting on the forum, and what they are listing in the shop. Then, a little down the road we’ll add in links to their blog posts, so any new post can automatically be syndicated to the dashboards of everyone who has favorited you!
Quick note about earning credits
It’s also time to mention something that most members know, but I think everyone needs a little reminder. The only legal way to earn Credits is to actually visit a blog, and drop your card. Any website or program that allows you to drop a card without visiting a site is not only illegal, but you will be automatically detected and your credits will get zapped. A couple of people have tried this and found out the hard way. We will not hesitate to delete the accounts of anyone try to game the system. If you want Credits, you need to visit people’s sites like everyone else. We fine tune and upgrade our anti-fraud gear daily to insure the environment is legitimate and beneficial to everyone. In addition, I’d like to thank the people that take a moment out of their day to report suspicious activity and websites to us.
So, once again, be on the lookout for our News Feed and a totally revamped Dashboard! Thanks everyone for helping to make Entrecard a premier destination for bloggers!
Written on January 28th, 2008 by Graham
Entrecard is growing quickly and now I would like to introduce another channel of communication with current and potential Entrecard members. As of today, I am going to leverage iMoondo Live as a sort of virtual office-space. A place for people to stop by, say hello and ask questions, via video chat.
The way it works is whenever I am live, you will see the Imoondo Live badge on the right sidebar.
Click it, and you will visit my Imoondo Live page where you can see me working on Entrecard, and ask me questions via text chat. You do not need a webcam or anything like that to participate.
While the email support and the community forums are still pretty standard avenues of communication, there’s nothing like asking a quick question via the online chat. The video component is a way of attaching a human face to my internet personality and provide more personal service. I can’t say with any certainty how often I’ll “be in the office,” but rest assured whenever you see the live badge, I’m there!
About Imoondo
IMoondo is a premier video classifieds site that is poised to revolutionize the classifieds industry. Their latest innovation is the advent of real-time live classifieds component that allows individuals and small businesses to promote their products and services via video. Check out their blog for more information.
Written on January 28th, 2008 by Graham
Just a quick heads up. An Entrecard Member, Stefan of PerfectBlogging.com is holding a Birthday contest and is giving away $20 to 50 lucky people who subscribe to his RSS feed by full email.
So head on over to PerfectBlogging.com, subscribe to the feed, and win that 20 bucks!
Congrats on hitting 100 subscribers Stefan!
Written on January 22nd, 2008 by Graham
Things are about to get a whole lot more interesting here at Entrecard. We’re juicing up the entire social network to give you more relevant information.
GEOLOCATIONS
First lets start with the Geolocations. You’ll notice from your dashboard a new link to “Change Info”
This link allows you to input your location. Once we collect a few days worth of geolocations, we’re going to flip the switch and allow you all to see other members who are located in your geographical area. It’s totally optional, so if you don’t want to enter your city/state/region and country, you don’t have to.
SEE OTHER MEMBERS FAVORITES (from their profile)
Aside from seeing other members who are located in your general area, we also going to let you see each others’ favorites. From now on, members you tag as your favorites will appear in your profile. Of course, you can change your privacy settings at any time to remove your favorites from your profile.
PRIVACY SETTINGS
These Privacy Settings we keep talking about are found on your dashboard. They allow or disallow your favorites and your geolocation to be shared with other members. We’d like to encourage everyone to share this information to promote the community.
So everyone who wants to participate be sure to head to the “Change info” link on your dashboard and input your city and state. And be sure to keep taggin’ those blogs you love as your favorites. In this way we can all help each other discover blogs more relevant to our interests and our lives!
MORE BLOG CATEGORIES ADDED
Just a quick note that we also added some requested categories to the mix. You can now join the Gaming category if your a gamer, the Blogging Resources category if your blog is about blogging, and the Pre-Teen category if your a younger blogger.
Enjoy!
Written on January 18th, 2008 by Graham
Today marks a landmark day in Entrecard history: 2500 blogs now sport the Entrecard widget!
We’re signing up more daily members than ever before, and the growth up to this point has been tremendous! Our doubling time is still under a month, so according to our projections, we should have well over 5000 members by the end of February without breaking a sweat.
And speaking of February, February 7th will mark our 3-month anniversary. It’s crazy to think that as of writing this, the site is only two months and two weeks old!
We’ve got a lot of exciting features being rolled out between now and then, including a “news feed” for your favorites, a new pricing structure, more sellers and a cleaned up design for the shop, and more.
Have a great day everyone, and thanks for using Entrecard!
Written on January 18th, 2008 by Graham
Entrecard is launching a search for an Economist to analyze and comment on our growing economy. Being headquartered in Boston, we’re night next to Harvard and MIT, so those are going to be logical places to explore.
However, if anyone out there in cyber land has a friend or relative that is currently pursuing a Masters or Ph.D in economics, and who might be interested in an in-depth project, please forward us their contact details!
Written on January 16th, 2008 by Graham
Lots and lots of changes here at Entrecard. First, lets start with a feature that has been heavily requested, that’s finally done.
Favorites:
Favorites is now here. From anyone’s profile page, you can now select “Add to my favorites.” This will make them appear on the “Favorites” list, currently located on the campaign page. Soon, you’ll also see a “news feed” for your favorites, including posts from your favorite’s rss feed, who they buy ads on, who they add to their favorites, and more! All of the options, of course, will be opt in, so if you want to keep any or all of this information private, its up to you.
Ads:
You probably noticed the ad block on the right sidebar throughout the site. These ads are handled by Project Wonderful, a company that has a very unique and interesting advertising model. The ads are based on a daily bid rate, and the lowest bid is listed on the bottom of the ad space. So, if you see that the minimum bid is .20, you can place a bid for .20 and you’re ad will run for a full day. That’s because whenever you place a bid on this advertising space, you are bidding on a full day worth of advertising. It will be interesting to see how high it gets bid up, as non-Entrecard members are also allowed to bid on this ad space.
See that $0.60 is the minimum bid for one day of advertising here. What a bargain!
Rankings
Finally, the rankings and pricing. We haven’t changed them yet, but we’re going to soon. There is a current disconnect between the cost to advertise and the actual traffic a website receives. Also, we feel that the rankings should more accurately reflect what a site like Technorati or Alexa would tell you in terms of a blog’s ranking. So we’re going to retool the pricing and the rankings a bit. Stay tuned.
Written on January 15th, 2008 by Graham
Twenty new sellers have been unleashed on the Entrecard shop, all with interesting, unique and valuable things to sell for Entrecard credits!
Their items will appear once these new sellers create their listings in the shop, so make sure to check in regularly for the latest deals and items for sale. We also stocked a bunch of fast passes and featured statuses (the gold border around some members), so get on down to the shop and see whats going on!
Written on January 14th, 2008 by Graham
Tomorrow we are upgrading the next batch of members to seller status.
If you wanted to sell something in the shop, now is your chance to get in! Just email us at support at entrecard dot com and tell us what you would sell, and how much you would charge.
We’ve already arranged for about 20 more members to become sellers, and we’re going to be upgrading accounts throughout the day tomorrow. So if you want in, let us know, or else you’ll have to wait until the next batch of members to get upgraded seller accounts which could be over a month!
Just to recap
The Entrecard Shop, which launched at the turn of the new year, is the place where Entrecard Members buy and sell things with Entrecard Credits. You can find things like blog reviews, SEO consultations, Text Links, advertising, raffles, and all sorts of things. Our long-term vision is to eventually have thousands of items for sale in a full-scale blogger to blogger marketplace. We’re well on our way with the addition of over 20 new sellers tomorrow and tons of new items.
