A week in review, contest payouts, and New Features.
Written on July 20th, 2008 by Graham
Whew! What a week it has been! Just to recap:
- We launched the SezWho partnership on Tuesday to much fanfare, some overload on SezWho’s end, and then a settling down. Things should be working properly now. Remember, only comments that get rated highly will earn you credits.
- We held a “Secret Contest” -with a chance to win 5000 credits! We began paying out the winners today, and will most likely stagger it over a few days to avoid a sudden spike in pricing. So if you entered the contest, and got your tally onto the blog, sit tight, your credits are coming.
- I took a look at how you can invite visitors to comment your posts, and suggested a strategy that will help you build community on your blog.
- We held a Scavenger Hunt for blogs with photo albums, and talked about the best photo gallery plugin for your blog.
- We covered the syndication service BlogBurst, that is promoting Entrecarders’ posts on mainstream media sites like USA Today, Reuters, and Fox New.
- We held a commentRUSH for Things I’m Grateful for.
- Amazon web service was down Sunday morning, taking Entrecard widgets down with it. We’re back now though! Maybe we should think about leaving Amazon?
New Profile Features!
You may or may not have noticed us sneaking some new profile features into Entrecard. On member profiles, you will now see a recommendation for other blogs that people have enjoyed and bookmarked, that overlap with the blog your currently looking at. Check it out:
So the above shot is just taken from the bottom of someone’s profile. Altogether, your Entrecard profile now includes:
- Links to your five most recent posts
- Recommendations from others
- Advert approval stats
- Other blogs by you
- Your favorites
- quick link to advertise, visit blog URL, description, drop rank, and # of drops on you in the past month.
Other fun features
Did you know that now with because we have SezWho installed, you can see all of my latest comments from across the web by scrolling over my avatar at the top of this, or any post? Check it out!
Hovering here…
…makes my SezWho pop up here, with all my recent comments:
pretty cool huh? Is anyone else out there peeking at this feature? I’m kind of addicted to it, at least on the blog comments, seeing all the other comments people have left around the web. It’s so interesting.
Advertising for sale
If you’re interested, we currently have advertising available:
- on the Entrecard Dashboard in the recent buzz section
- Sitewide 125×125 advertising on the right sidebar
A big thanks goes out to all of our current, past, and future sponsors.
Stay tuned…
We’ve got some interesting stuff here on the blog this coming week, so make sure to stay tuned and Subscribe if you haven’t already!
July 20th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
Wow.. so many things done in just a week.
It feel like almost a month’s job.
Great team you got there Graham.
You are not only concentrating on how to improve entrecard but helping bloggers by giving so many useful tips to become a successful blogger.
Thanks for the 5k EC, I received it safely.
July 20th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
It’s been a busy week, I see that SezWho had some problems, but I gotta love that gadget! Thanks for turning us on to it!
July 20th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Lots of things happening.
Some things I’d like to see to help with placing ads:
a place to see who advertised on your blog recently (for ads that have already run), and a way that the graphics change color or say “ad placed” in your favorites page when you look at it.
I purchase most of my ads from my favorites, and it would be nice to see which ones are currently available v/s which ones have ads pending, all in that one spot.
Just some ideas.
Keep up the great work.
July 20th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
I really like the new features. After finding out about the 3.6 rating on SezWho I am a little bit saddened, but hope the partnership will work out for the best long-term.
Thus far we have dealt with a SezWho outage, small amount of ratings (why aren’t bloggers rating their users comments?), half-integrated blogs showing up within the Campaign, Blogger being difficult to install on (haven’t tried it, just what others say), and then WordPress’s plugin issue…. PHEW!
At least we got that out of the way. Now SezWho’s EC connection is on a different line and WordPress’s plugin is fixed (I think).
Hopefully bloggers will get on their horse and start rating comments.
Anyway, what an excitingly weird EC week.
BTW, I can’t wait for my credits!
July 21st, 2008 at 3:49 am
Indeed, it has been quite a busy week. There have been many interesting stuff and fun features posted on the EC blog. The SezWho campaign created such an outroar that I can`t help registering all 3 of my blogs! And the commentRush topics were also very interesting..
I have got a few queries myself and they were promptly answered. It`s nice to know that customer service is a priority here at Entrecard.
I know all of you are very busy… And I know that there are thousands of bloggers joining entrecard each day. It must really be a lot of hard work to put it all together but you were able to put it all together! What teamwork! And I commend you, Graham, and your team for all the efforts you`ve poured into this community to make it work. Two thumbs up for a job well done!
July 21st, 2008 at 8:39 am
Busy week. I agree with last point. change the service. Downtimes are not good. Still testing sezwho. If it brings comments it stays. Else ….
July 21st, 2008 at 9:40 am
I really like Comment Rush. This is the 2nd one since I’ve been an EC member. Both the blogs I’ve “rushed” are ones I might not otherwise have found on my own. I’m now subbed to both. What a great way to recognize and encourage ECers!
July 21st, 2008 at 10:06 am
@poetblogger….
I have been involved in a number of discussions where bloggers are resisting rating their users comments. In a lot of cases, sezwho was installed incorrectly–mostly on blogger–so that it appears below posts, not comments. Blog owners are happy with their posts being rated, but there is a groundswell of hesitance to rate their readers comments.
I think most of us agree we value our readers. And we especially value comments they place on our blogs. With few exceptions, most bloggers don’t want their valued readers comments being rated for fear of how it will make the commenters feel if they see their comments rated poorly.
Think about it, if someone is dropping entrecards, and it’s a wordless wednesday post, and some reader makes a comment: “That’s a beautiful picture.” That’s nice. But is it a quality comment? And what happens if that comment is rated a 1 or a 2?
I don’t want to expose my readers and commenters to that, and a lot of other bloggers feel the same way. It’s very nice that they stopped by and took the time to comment to begin with. And I think that as more people think about what is involved in rating comments and how it could affect those that do the commenting, you’re finding more and more that people will be reluctant to rate the comments for these reasons.
Cheers!
July 21st, 2008 at 11:09 am
Very well said Matt…
I also share the same views as yours.
First of all, I don’t want to rate my commenters comments.
Secondly, I don’t have that much time to rate each and every comment.
Any comment is a good comment. If it is not good, it is SPAM and SPAM are deleted straightaway.
Cheers!
Anurag Bansal
July 21st, 2008 at 11:46 am
Good recap! There has been much happening in the EC world.
SezWho appears to be bringing me more quality comments but how can we get other people to begin rating posts and comments?
July 21st, 2008 at 12:53 pm
we may need to tweek the comment algorithm and adjust it that encourages quality comments in a way that everyone feels the most comfortable with.
if anyone has some good suggestions for improvement, I’m all ears.
July 21st, 2008 at 1:27 pm
@Matt Urdan I know exactly where you are coming from. I get tons of comments that simply say “nice poem.” I don’t necessarily think this is a bad comment, just not exactly a ‘quality’ one. It goes along the same lines as someone simply saying, ‘nice post.’ Not necessarily bad, because maybe they really do feel that way, but it doesn’t further a discussion on the content.
If I vote a comment low, it isn’t because it is spam (I delete that). I just mean that it doesn’t further the discussion any. If I three star one, I feel that it is a solid thought out comment. If I five star one, I feel that it is a quality comment that gives great information.
I guess the star ratings is a bit confusing. I can see others leaving somewhat spammy comments and just one starring them and then giving ‘nice post’ type comments a three star. It is all just relative.
@Graham I don’t know exactly what can be done about this. Is there are limit on the number of credits that can be gained per day? I have heard both 50 and 150, I don’t know which is which. I have also read that 350 is the max credits now… is that true?
I guess no matter what there will always be differences on this subject. I feel that a 3.6 is high because I look at a 3 being good, whereas someone else might look at a 3 and just think it means ‘OK’ or ‘meh, I’ll leave the comment, but it doesn’t mean much’. And then they would five star a ‘good’ comment.
I would say perhaps give a guideline on what each star means, but I don’t think that is ‘fair’ by any means and there are many out there who don’t bother reading the EC blog (the horror! really, they are missing great stuff) who would miss out on the explanation anyway.
I guess what I am trying to say is that you can’t please everyone, and I don’t expect to be pleased all the time either. I really like the SezWho partnership, but wish they had more features like I have suggested before (top posts of the day, etc.)
Perhaps if you left the comment algorithm alone and focused on posts we would be happier? I don’t care too much about getting credits for it right now, but I would L.O.V.E. if there was a system in place that would show ‘top posts of the day’ or some such using the SezWho stars.
July 21st, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Busy bees indeed over in EC. Great job Graham and team. Though it seems I hear a lot of complaints about the SezWho partnership, I’m sure there are others out there who have seen good things come to their site because of it. You can’t please everyone, and that is true of any endeavour!
As for encouraging quality comments, unfortunately there isn’t going to be a clear cut answer for that either. If I do think of anything though, I’ll be sure to let you know!
July 22nd, 2008 at 12:50 am
It certainly was quite a busy week. Graham you have got a stellar team to keep up with all of the newest features.
Great choice for the comment rush this past Sunday. I wonder who it will be next Sunday? Who ever gets the comment rush I’m sure the post will be excellent like all of the previous posts.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:45 am
hmm… lot of work in a week… but great work man… alot more surprising stuff to come this week!!! whats this? I will wait for this… maybe a new contest or a partnership or sumthng…!!!
August 5th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
The free credits with sezwho are nice, it’s a pity that it doesn’t work properly with Blogspot.