Category Archives: blogging

Twitter is just Twitter

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The web is amazing. Every once in a while a new service appears that brings together so many people and gets so much popularity that everyone starts to look at it as the solution to everything.

Twitter is one good example of such beast. Started as a microblogging tool, made popular by high profile bloggers like Robert Scooble, seen as the hidden treasure of branding and marketing, twitter currently has about 5 mil users and growing rapidly. ( you know it's growing when you see spam growing 🙂 )

One of the greatest things about twitter ( from a developer's point of view ) is that it allows developers access to it's data through a simple API. This allowed a lot of companies and individual developers to write a large variety of web based services and applications from simple clients to power monitoring , pregnancy monitoring and alarm monitoring applications .

All these new apps being created everyday make people think what more can we do with twitter ? How can we make it solve all of our problems? ( can it bail out the banks ? 🙂 ) .

A few weeks ago this post on Marketing Pilgrim blog suggests twitter could become a payment gateway, three days ago someone wrote a post suggesting twitter search could be a threat to google , I still see tweets about that post.

I see the value in each of those apps, in some there is more in others less, I can see how twitter search can be very useful for certain things, but it could never replace a search engine in the way google, yahoo, live work.

I'm not saying people shouldn't look for innovative ways to use a service, but headlines like "twitter threatens google" seem more like link bait.

I actually think something like friendfeed.com would be more efficient as a search engine then twitter is but would still not match google's power.

Sure people based search is cool but what about most of the people who don't  live in twitter, what about the forums, the mailing lists, the blog comments, the pdfs, .doc?

Getting Social: Google Friend Connect

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Lately I have become more involved into social media/networking. I'm far from a social media expert, and I think too many people declare themselves social media gurus. If everybody's a guru no one's a guru anymore :).

Anyway as part of my social networking involvement I try to experiment with new things as time permits. One of these things is Google Friend Connect.

What is Google Friend Connect?

In a few words it's a service that allows a site's visitors to connect with their friends that might also use the same site.

Google provides a few gadgets, one for showing members, another one for allowing members to post on your site's wall, a Review/Rate gadget and some others supporting the OpenSocial platform but developers can build their own gadgets too.

It allows you to see who else is using the same site as you are and what other sites are your friends using. You can connect with your friends on twitter, plaxo, google ( gmail) and orkut but other networks may be available in the future. So if you're visiting my blog and using one of those services you might want to become a member of this site and see what you're friends are doing.

How to implement on your blog?

If you want to implement Google Friend Connect on your blog, the process is pretty simple just go to http://www.google.com/friendconnect/ , click the "Setup a new site" button and follow the simple instructions.

It will ask you to provide the site name and home page url and then will provide 2 html files for download that you have to upload to your site.

I had troubles downloading the html files because they didn't actually contain any html but just javascript and firefox would interpret them and save them as empty files. If you have the same problem, get Firebug and look into the Net tab after you download the files. You should see the html response for each of those files and just copy paste into the files and upload that to your site.

Then pick one of more gadgets, customize them to match the look of your site and google will generate some html code that you can copy and put where ever you want on your site.

Let's connect!

You can see the google friend connect members gadget on the right sidebar after the "Recent comments" widget. Just click the "Join" button.

Other places where we can connect:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/mihaisecasiu

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Mihai-Secasiu/566029300

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mihaisecasiu

FriendFeed: https://friendfeed.com/mihaisecasiu

Stubleupon: http://symx.stumbleupon.com/

Digg: http://digg.com/users/symx

How to buy blogrush credits

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I seems some bloggers trust blogrush so much that they bet their money on it.

Yesterday I was looking over my blog and I noticed this ad showing in one of the adsense boxes: "Get Awesome Traffic Results with new Blog Rush. Free...Fast"

It seems someone registered the domain blog-rush.ws and placed a 302 redirect to blogrush.com/rxxxxxx .

This guy is hoping to get enough subscriptions from some high traffic sites. If he's lucky this might even work.Blogrush adwords add

Since I made my first post about blog rush I only got one blog that subscribed from my referral code. But that blog is giving me almost 7000 credits / day.

If I could get a few more like that and blogrush would do something about their CTR I could increase my traffic significantly.

Of course I would have to also start writing some good stuff or else it would be just a waste of clicks.

I wonder how much he's paying for a click, and his returns are...

BlogRUSH statistics Working!

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I just went to check my blogRush account and after login I was presented with a nice looking dashboard showing the number credits I have earned, the number of members I have referred, and how many credits I got from them. It shows how many of those credits were consumed and they even have a nice graph with those numbers.

It's good to see they finally got their statistics working. The reports section still looks looks like under construction.

It would be good if they would also show the number of visitors you got from the widget.

At first I thought I should post some screen shots but you would get a better idea by just logging in to your account.

Oh what is that ? you don't have an account ? Get one now! and drive some traffic to your blog.

 Update: They do show the number of visitors you gor from the widget. I just missed it when I look the first time.

More on BlogRush

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I got an email early in the morning ( 8:28 GMT+2 ) from John Reese, founder of BlogRush . The message was sent to all blogrush members and it explains some of the problems with the system and it also tries to explain other things like why there are no reports yet ( under development ) , why filters don't work and some other stuff.

Here's the message in case you haven't sign up up yet, if you got it too then just skip to the rest of the post:

Hi,

I am sending you this urgent message to give you a special news
"update" about several things happening with BlogRush.

Firstly, I want to sincerely thank you for joining BlogRush and for
your interest in our service.  Please know that our primary focus is
to continually improve the service to help you generate more targeted
traffic.

The first 60 hours since we launched the BlogRush public beta has been
nothing short of EXPLOSIVE.  We knew that we were developing an
exciting tool that many bloggers could benefit from, but we had no
idea how fast the 'word' would spread across the Web.

With this explosive growth has come some challenges, and our entire
team is working very hard to solve any potential bug and issue that
we've been alerted to.  We're improving things at a very rapid pace
and we hope to have the entire network completely stabilized very
soon.

I would like to ask that you are patient with us during this time and
know that we are doing our best to help YOU drive more traffic to your
blog and we will soon have things running smoothly.

I would like to address some of the questions and concerns that we
have received:

1.  "When Will My Dashboard Statistics Be Available?"

We encountered some minor issues with the batch processing of our
first cycle of member statistics (it's a lot of data to crunch) and we
just about have it fixed.  We hope to have your statistics up and
running very soon as we know they are very important to you.  We just
need a little bit more time.  Please know that we're working as fast
as we can and the moment we can start displaying them you will see
them.  (Thanks in advance for your patience.)

2.  "I Don't Understand The Syndication Credit System Formula"

In our video we mentioned that you earn a 1:1 ratio of syndication
credits on your own traffic, and any direct referral's traffic (such
as "Bob" in the example video) and any direct referral's referral
traffic (yes, that sounds confusing!) such as "Jen" in our example.
We also mentioned that you'd also earn credits based on activity
through 10 generation levels.  Here's the breakdown of our formula:

Your Traffic = 1:1
1st Generation Of Referrals (Directly From You) = 1:1
2nd Generation Of Referrals (i.e. Jen in the video) = 1:1
3rd - 6th Generation Of Referrals = 1:4
7th - 10th Generation Of Referrals = 1:8

1:1 means you earn 1 syndication credit for every 1 impression of the
widget by your own traffic or by any users located on the 1st (direct)
or 2nd generations.
1:4 means you earn 1 syndication credit for every 4 impressions of the
widget by any user located on the 3rd to 6th generations.
1:8 means you earn 1 syndication credit for every 8 impressions of the
widget by any user located on the 7th to 10th generations.

When all of this math is added up, it leaves 1 headline space
available out of every 10 that are served.  This means that BlogRush
uses 10% of the headline spots (5 headlines in each widget load) to
monetize the service.  We currently have plans to sell these extra
credits to any user that would like to purchase additional credits --
this is one of the ways we will pay for the service.

3.  "What happened To The FAQ?"

We were trying to wait until we received more feedback from our users
(actual questions).  We'll be posting the FAQ very soon - many of the
biggest concerns are being addressed in this message.

4.  "I Didn't See Any Help Section Tutorials"

It took us longer than expected to have the tutorials ready.  You can
view them now and see step-by-step how to install the BlogRush code on
the following:  WordPress, MovableType, TypePad, Blogger.  They are
available in the "Help" section that is accessible from the "Help"
link at the bottom of our web site when not logged in, or the "Help"
tab when you're logged in.

5.  "I Keep Seeing The Same Blogs Appear In The Widget"

While we've been busy optimizing our network, we were using some
public RSS feeds to balance out activity so no widget would have any
empty space.  This will soon be completely replaced with our member
feeds full-time; our member feeds were only being distributed part of
the time as we were optimizing things.

6.  "Some Of The Blog Titles I've Seen In The Widget Don't Appear Relevant"

This will continue to improve as we work to optimize the network.

7.  "I Noticed A Blog Was Using Two Widgets On The Same Page, Is This Allowed?"

No.  You can only have ONE widget per page.  If you made a blog post
about BlogRush and used the widget inside that post as an example, you
will need to immediately remove it and replace it with a static
screenshot of the widget.  If it is not removed, we will have no
choice but to terminate any account that fails to do so.

8.  "How Will BlogRush Stop People From Abusing The Network?"

We are putting many things in place (in addition to what we already
have.) We are also in the process of activating a full "Review"
process for all member blogs; using some automation and HUMAN REVIEW.
Please know that BlogRush will do everything necessary to stop all
fraud and abuse of our system.  We have no choice but to protect the
integrity of our network.

BONUS CREDITS ON THE WAY!

We have decided to take our entire surplus of syndication credits and
give them to YOU the user.  We will be randomly distributing all extra
credits amongst our entire network for awhile to reward our early
adopters.

Many of you have asked for a copy of our video to post on your own
blog.  We are working on this and hope to have it for you -- it will
be a version without the "click on the button below" ending since it
will be on your blog.

A sincere THANK YOU for your support of BlogRush and for your patience
and understanding.  Please know that we are in this for the LONG-TERM
and this isn't just some FAD for generating a short burst of traffic.
We will be continuously improving BlogRush for a very long time to
come.

Best Regards,

John Reese

It seems they underestimated the buzz generated and they were hoping they would have time to fix them. It's good to know they are aware of the problems and are working to fix them. I see the system has a great potential if those problems get fixed and some other features will be added.

Immediate problems that need to be fixed:

I think it is very important that the widget would contain only highly targeted/relevant posts. The filter system didn't seem to be working when I first installed the widget on my blog and the posts seemed like spam mostly but today they seem to look more like blog posts.

The filter section in your blogrush account doesn't let you add a single keyword, you have to add a coma or a space after it.

Suggested Features:

It would be nice if the filter system would also allow you to specify which keywords to allow instead of just keywords to block. For example on my blog I would like to show only posts about Linux, Unix, web development and other related to open source software . It's hard to do this if I can only block keywords.

Another one would be to create something like communities ( like mybloglog ) or a way for you to add friends and have the option to display only feeds from your friends or community.

What do others think about it?

Some of the most well known bloggers think it can be a great way of driving traffic to your blog.
John chow seems to like the idea and has already started using it on his blog.
Andy Beal of marketing pilgrim thinks blogrush is something worth testing and has installed it on his blog.

Dosh dosh can't recommend it for lack of more data ( no stats about the traffic yet ) but says it deserves experimentation and he installed it on the blog, he also says that because of the referral system the early adopters will benefit more from this, so why be amoung the early adopters and sign up for it.

John Reese also promised to give bonus credits to early adopters ( see his email message above ) so there will be a lot more traffic for those that sign up now.

Darren Rowse of problogger thinks it has potential to help bloggers find new traffic and wrote a post with some tips using blogRush to generate more traffic. What's interesting is that Darren has not installed it on his blog but he has a widget somehow similar to this with links ( and small snapshots ) of other blogs in the b5media network ( see my suggested feature about communities and friends ).

What do you think about blog rush?

The rush for traffic

blogging,

There's a new service out there that aims to get bloggers more traffic. The service is BlogRush
and the concept is that you get traffic by displaying your posts in a widget on other blogs in your category.

Basically you just install a widget on your site where you display feeds from other blogs in your category and for each page view you get a credits for displaying your own posts in the widget on other similar blogs.

Exponential traffic growth from referrals

Now here's the nice part, you also get credits for the members you refer to BlogRush and for the members they refer and so on. There are 10 levels of referrals so you can see how this could make your traffic explode.

Watch this video for more details:
Are you convinced ?

Problems

Everything looks so good, in the video... so I went to sign up and I posted the widget in my sidebar.   The signup process is really easy, but then when I looked at the widget I see a lot of content that is unrelated to my blog content. A lot of apple, iphone, ringtones and other stuff that have nothing to do with what I write about. So I remembered that you can add filters, great ... only that they don't work or maybe I just don't know how to use them. It should be as simple as adding the keywords you want to bock and I did but they just don't work.

Another problem is that the help section on the site doesn't really explain how to add filters or anything else. It just contains a few videos about how to set this up on wordpress and some other blogging platforms.

No reports, yeah they are under development.

The idea is great but I think they rushed to release it 🙂 . I'll leave this up in my sidebar for a few days to see if I get other feeds in there or if I get some traffic from this and maybe they'll solve some of those problems.

About me update

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The first thing I did when I started this blog was to look for plugins to give wordpress more functionality and then I started writing posts.

I'm still looking for cool plugins and sometimes write my owns and from time to time I still write on the blog ( not as much as I would like to  because I don't have the time ).

Since  January when I started the blog I have written 73 posts ( this one included ), an average of about 2 posts per week.  Many of this blog's visitors (more then 50% ) come from search engines, looking for a solution to some problem they have, others come from blogs that have linked to me or where I have commented .  The blog gets about 100 visits/day. That's not much comparing to other blogs that get thousands but I thought some of those visitors might want to know who I am so I thought I should write something about that on my "About page"

I didn't  put anything on that page when I started the blog , I just left the default text that came with wordpress.  Many high profile bloggers say it is important for people to know you ( this is a blog after all, and the blog should have something to do with it's author ) and an "about page" is a good way to start.

I didn't think that it was that important because at the beginning I didn't think the blog will have many visitors and I'm not even sure it's purpose was to get visitors or that they would want to know who writes the blog.

Anyway, now it's there so you can take a look if you are interested, there's not much about me, but I will be updating it with more details when I (or you the reader ) think it is necessary.

What do you think about it ? Do you have an "about me" page ?

Blog action day for environment

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Let's see what happens if a lot of bloggers write about the same thing in one day? Would it matter ? Would you make a difference. Blog action day, on October 15'th will be the day when thousands of blogs will write about the one thing.

One day per year, one topic, thousands of bloggers contributing to making a better world. This year's topic is "Environment".

I have signed up my blog and hopefully I'll post something related to Unix, Linux, Patches and Hacks to help create a better environment.

Sidebar decluttering

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A few days ago I came across a post at Problogger.net where Darren Rowse suggested bloggers should de clutter the sidebar of their blogs.

I looked at my sidebar and I saw what he meant by clutter. Darren could have used my sidebar as an example of a cluttered sidebar.

The sidebar was full of widgets that were not really useful to me or to my visitors. Here is what I had and removed:

  • Most popular Posts: I removed this because I didn't think it was really useful for my visitors. A lot of them come from a search engine and look for something specific. I don't think they are interested in what's popular on my blog, but I might be wrong about it and I might add it back in the future, maybe on the footer.
  • Tag cloud: this one was getting too big. I occupied too much space and the most popular tags were already the words in categories to it was kind of redundant. I might add this on a page of it's own
  • Top commentators: I removed this because it looks bad to see a list of top commentators where #1 has only 3 comments.
  • Technorati fave this blog: removed because I already have a technorati button at the bottom of each post
  • Google Referrals banners: The banners increased the load times and were not making money. I may add them back as links like this :
    because I see some potential in this but I'll have to get more traffic before I start using it again
  • Text link adds affiliate banner: In two months of using this I got about 80 clicks on it and no conversions. But the text link ads is reported to be one of the best affiliate program. They give you $25 for signing up an active publisher or advertiser
  • Reviewme banner: removed because I received no offer for a review since I started using it a few months ago. I guess no one wants me to review a patch 🙂
  • WordPress meta: does anyone care about this ?
  • DoFollow: This doesn't really have anything to do with the sidebar but I removed this plugin because it was pretty much useless. I don't think anyone that commented on my posts did it because of the dofollow plugin. The only ones that commented because of dofollow were those that commented on the post about dofollow. The idea to reward your commentators is good but if there isn't anyone ( or very few ) to reward the plugin is useless. Also I think the Top commentators plugin might be better for this.

Some thoughts about what I should do, but I'm not sure about this yet:

  • move archives and maybe categories in the footer
  • add most popular posts in the footer
  • remove google ads, I this I can afford losing about $2/month 🙂
  • remove kontera
  • create a top navigation bar and move the links to pages on that bar

What do you think I should do about the blog ? Any suggestions are welcome in the comments.