30/07: Bumpzee Sphinn and Kontrib

I've had an interesting few days familiarizing myself with three new (to me) places on the web. Everyone is familiar with social news and networking sites and there are plenty of them out there. If you have never had any success with Digg for example, but can appreciate the concept, these sites might well be worth visiting. 

I've never been a fan of Digg, and in view of what I write about on this blog, it's not a suitable place for my scribblings. As a result I've never really attempted to make much use of it, and, when I did, the results were particularly unspectacular. Along with the rise of Digg have come the gamers and elitist attitudes and it strikes me that "social" aspect of Digg is certainly not part of its appeal. Of course, I'm far from the first to come to this realization and Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land recently launched a new site called Sphinn which I mentioned a couple of days ago.

I joined Sphinn and so far I like what I've seen there. It is primarily aimed at SEO and marketing types and the initial range of articles have made for some interesting reading. Hopefully as it develops and grows it won't go the same way as Digg, where users seem to have a propensity to flame far too easily, making it a bit intimidating for newer users. At least with Sphinn, the topics for discussion are better defined and if you dabble in internet marketing or SEO, you will find it a far better and hopefully more productive place to spend your time. You can Sphinn your own blog posts and, they will sink or swim based on how interesting the community finds them. Prognosis for Sphinn's success? I really don't know, but I'm hoping it will do well, and so far it's looking good.

My next port of call was Bumpzee.com and I think this is a place I'm going to enjoy. I'd seen a lot of posts about Bumpzee but never really paid it much mind until recently when I got interested in the whole dofollow/no nofollow debate. This in turn led me to Andy Beard's posts on the subject and ultimately to Bumpzee itself. What I like about Bumpzee as a social news/networking site is that it's divided into communities catering to a specific subject or niche, so, whatever you blog about you can find a relevant place to talk, comment and read about topics that interest you. The result is hopefully a lot more freedom to join in and less chance of being shot down in flames for posting something innappropriate. I've already seen some familiar blogs and participation by some great bloggers, and the folks I've encountered so far have been more than willing to exchange information. Recommended for bloggers of all shapes and sizes.

(I have to thank Andy, should he ever read my backwoods site, for helping me out with a problem on this blog that I didn't even realize I had. I installed a plugin on Nucleus when I was still very new to the platform and it was using 302 redirects on my comments pages!!! Fortunately, when he vetted my blog for inclusion in the DoFollow community he spotted it straight away. Was I embarrassed? You bet, and I felt like a techie virgin, but Mr Beard's sharp moderating put me on the right track and the issue was soon resolved by removing the offending plugin). 

The third in the Trinity is Kontrib.com which is another social news site and still in Beta. The thrust of the idea behind Kontrib is to enable users to post stories in their own language which readers can then easily view in another tongue. Some of these translations are a little sketchy as many machine translations are, but, as I mentioned in my earlier post about translating your English site, it's nice to know you are making an effort to attract speakers of other languages - there are, after all, millions of them out there.

There are a reasonable number of categories so finding a relevant section for your posts is not too difficult and as another social news offering it's worth looking into. As it's still in its early days, it's not yet overcrowded with foolishness and I've seen some interesting and amusing stories so far. Worth a look? We think so, if you feel you can cope with another social news site on your list, pay Kontrib.com a visit.

TCH

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