The current 28 blogging partners (increasing daily) have been provided with a list of categories to accept nominations for, and it is down to each blog to decide how to proceed with collecting nominations, whether to make individual posts for each category, or to handle things from a single post.

Voting will take place in a much more refined manner.

1. Mainstream and Large Scale Networks
2. Applications and Widgets
3. Social News and Social Bookmarking
4. Social Search
5. Sports and Fitness
6. Photo Sharing
7. Video Sharing
8. Start Pages
9. Places and Events
10. Music
11. Social Shopping
12. Mobile
13. Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks

As I loosely focus on niche marketing, with an emphasis on WordPress, Blogging and SEO I am hoping that we can get some nominations for some of the more niche players.

Blog widgets for instance unfortunately haven’t got their own category, and the same is true of more niche services for blogging such as for comment presentation and monitoring.

It has been suggested to me that those services will most likely fit under widgets or the niche services.
Widgets is likely to be dominated by Facebook applications from many of the mainstream blogs, so this is really your chance to help some of more blogging related widgets gain some exposure.

I am not sure where monetization widgets fit in, probably in the same categories, even though some social shopping widgets allow you to add an Amazon or Commisson Junction ID.

How To Nominate

We are going to make this easy to avoid multiple comments

I am going to allow up to 3 nominations for each category, just add an additional line with a nomination if you want to nominate say more that one widget or niche social network.

Just because someone else has already nominated a site doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also nominate it. If they end up with nominations for 100s of different widgets, I am sure there will have to be some filtering, so your additional votes will be important.

<b>My Nominations</b>
Name of Service - URL - (Applications and Widgets)
Name of Service - URL - (Applications and Widgets)
Name of Service - URL - (Social News and Social Bookmarking)
Name of Service - URL - (Social Search)
Name of Service - URL - (Sports and Fitness)
Name of Service - URL - (Photo Sharing)
Name of Service - URL - (Video Sharing)
Name of Service - URL - (Start Pages)
Name of Service - URL - (Places and Events)
Name of Service - URL - (Music)
Name of Service - URL - (Social Shopping)
Name of Service - URL - (Mobile)
Name of Service - URL - (Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks)
Name of Service - URL - (Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks)

I have made it easy to copy and paste the code, and even included an extra line for both widgets and the niche social networks.

If you don’t want to nominate a service for a particular category, then just delete the line.

We will also be looking for nominations over on Collective Thoughts soon, and I expect my colleagues will say a few words to slant voting in different directions.

Update 5th December

Comments Are Now Closed so I can send nominations through to the guys at Mashable

It is good to see it appearing as a seed story on Techmeme.

Ben wrote a related article “Are You Sabotaging Your Social Stories?” explaining why you could be wasting your efforts with Social Media Marketing.

Shana is delving into Social Media Marketing for Small Business. You don’t have to be running a blog to use social media to promote your website.

Tamar just keeps on hitting home runs, but it hasn’t always been that way.

If you thought social media was a quick fix for easy exposure, consider the stats I presented last month at SMX: I’ve Dugg over 18,000 stories (that number now exceeds 22,000), and I added that each individual social network takes hours of study to get even the slightest inkling about. If you are under the impression that you can wake up one day, submit all your stuff to Reddit, and become an instant hero, unfortunately, there’s a lot more that you are not understanding: the bottom line is that an army of your peers is watching.

Maki’s new series on Social Media Marketing has so far covered an initial introduction and the benefits.

Social Media Conduits

Yesterday when on Collective Thoughts I wrote about how Social Media Marketing Sucks, I mentioned how you can link to people strategically in various ways.

Mu’s story is already hot on Digg, but no one has yet linked to it in Techmeme. Ben’s story is likely to to go popular very soon, and is a very good article. Shana’s article could use some additional attention, and I just love Tamar’s viewpoint to round things off.

In this particular case I wouldn’t class this as becoming a “hub” of the conversation, more like a conduit. You are helping attention flow from one related story to another.

I haven’t actually had to say too much about the articles themselves, in fact in this particular case it would be hard to add any value, other than adding value by linking them together

Seth Godin Speaks to Google

In this video Seth Godin is insightful, and explains to a bunch of Googlers all about Purple Cows and Flipping the Funnel on its side and embracing buzz marketing.

The concepts are sage advice, however there is one major pitfall.

If the perfect way to market a product is to flip the funnel on its side to become a megaphone, as Seth describes “The fashion permission complex”, then Google is in trouble, because they can’t currently charge for it, and they are constantly denouncing companies like PayPerPost who can make money from buzz marketing.
Google attacks PayPerPost mainly because PayPerPost potentially has the ability to disturb the link balance their algorithms place on the fabric of the internet.

The same is true for PR firms and almost all marketing, PayPerPost however in many cases is cheaper.

Matt Cutts thinks it is good value to do viral marketing, so you pay a specialist $5000 for a few hours work, and you might be lucky to get 100 links. It is not guaranteed.

With PayPerPost you pay $5000, and in general you will only get writers who have some genuine interest in your product writing about it, just like a PR firm isn’t going to persuade a blog on parenthood to write about the latest database system from Oracle. That might be a bad example, I actually know a few blogs that could do such a review justice, who occasionally talk about parenting as well.
PayPerPost delivers 200-300 people writing about your product, sometimes positive, sometimes negative, but you are guaranteed the buzz.

The biggest problem? This presentation is from February 2006 – PayPerPost didn’t even exist when this presentation was made, and Google didn’t adapt and fill the void that Seth Godin spotted, because it doesn’t fit with Google’s primary source of revenue.

Thanks for posting the timely video Jack, I had seen it before, but things didn’t connect as well as they do now in hindsight.

Robert Scoble Reinvents PageRank?

Robert Scoble posted 3 videos yesterday along with a short blog post he hopes won’t be noticed on Techmeme, so of course it will ;)

Social Graph Based Search Parts 1, 2 and 3

I couldn’t work out a way to embed each individual video, so I embedded the full channel and provided links to individual parts.

What Robert is saying is that social networks help create a web of trust in the content people refer to, and thus that will eventually play a pivotal role in how searching for content will work in the future.

He didn’t reference Del.icio.us or StumbleUpon, but those services also in some situations can provide better search results than Google.

Robert seems to be fixated by the idea that Mahalo provides a list of HDTV manufacturers on their search page, and Google doesn’t.

That fact is based upon SEO, and he seems to think the review sites and trusted vendors such as Amazon are bad results.

Robert blames this on SEOs, when in fact it is the fault quite often of the manufacturers having very hard to navigate, poorly optimized sites, that don’t attract natural linkage.

I think it is testament to Google’s algorithms that some review sites do appear above Amazon.

I disagree with Robert that the Mahalo results page is better, what is missing from the Google search is just a suggested search term “HDTV manufacturers” along with the other suggestions.
Most of the Maholo results were taken straight from the top of Google, and many of the remainder are shopping comparison sites and coupon sites = yes it is those dirty SEOs and affiliates at play again.

You still have to count how many clicks you have to perform until you get the information you are looking for, and for all but general browsing, Mahalo doesn’t offer any advantages.

There isn’t even a decent link to something explaining the difference between the various formats and technology, no links to specific self help forums etc.

The Mahalo page is so good that Yahoo doesn’t even pick up any links to it yet.

Networks of Contacts = PageRank

Networks of friends, contacts and who links to and trusts each other is effectively the same as PageRank, and that is proving to be broken and easy to manipulate.

One of the biggest problems is that “Robert Scoble” as an example might have a lot of credibility when talking about mobile phones, or camcorders, but using one of Robert’s examples a while back, he knows nothing about lawnmowers.

Techmeme overcome this by having separate indices for different topical authority, but that only works partially.
Techmeme certainly doesn’t pick up every important technology story, as an example I don’t think the SES discussion on paid links appeared on Techmeme.

Google Has It’s Failing

Google does have it’s failing, but currently Mahalo and various meme and social networks are only offering a subset of the data Google is dealing with, and Google is slowly making changes to the way it’s algorithms work.
Google does take into consideration topical authority to a certain extent – PageRank is only part of the equation, whereas that is effectively all Techmeme and Facebook could offer as an alternative to improve search.

One of the big reasons Facebook doesn’t open up is monetary, they wouldn’t be able to control search, and the income that can produce.

Rand has already responded, Duncan has already responded on Techcrunch, I am sure others will, and this is already on Techmeme.

Muhammad also has some interesting coverage, from a social network point of view, Google still has a number of its own services yet to be integrated.

David Utter on WebProNews also offers some insight into the TV factor – using Facebook takes some effort to get any kind of quality results.

It also seems that Techmeme seems to have developed some very selective results and doesn’t like me any more, or maybe I have to use specific titles for Techmeme to work correctly, something Robert in his video was suggesting isn’t the case.

Dave Winer has also rumbled and thinks Google is on the top rung and will be hard to shift.
Over a 4 year span I don’t think it would be impossible to take a chunk out of Google, as things are moving faster, but Facebook, Techmeme and certainly Mahalo are not the platforms that will do it.

I got to skim through this a couple of days ago and need to read it again in more depth and do a lot of planning.

It is free, and well worth downloading.

It is totally different to Stampede Secrets which I reviewed a few months back, or the Authority Black Book which I haven’t reviewed, but I am sure many people have read anyway.

How can 3 ebooks from highly experienced internet marketers on Web 2.0 marketing and traffic generation be totally different, worthy of your time, and in the case of Stampede Traffic, worthy of some cash?

I would look on Authority Black book as a guide to building an authority site with wordpress and promoting it, which is effectively what Jack’s Authority Site Centre is all about, but they build the WordPress sites for you, and trick them out and host them.

Michelle’s Web2.0 Traffic Generation Blueprint is a step by step list of every way she promotes a website. It doesn’t get into possibly complicated decisions about deciding which site might be most appropriate, you end up generating traffic from so many different sources the odds are in your favour that you hit a good source. It should be noted that Michelle works a lot with out-sourcing, and this would be a perfect guide to give to a link builder and say “do this”, and also assign an outsourced writer to work with them.
I suppose rather than creating a mininet, it is more like a “social net” of 100s of interlinked pages on web 2.0 sites & profiles, social bookmarks and news items that eventually lead back to your money sites.

Stampede Traffic is a little more selective – you target the social networks you believe will give you the most traffic and best links, build up credible profiles, and develop “meaningful” communication with other social network users.
In some ways it is also more of an executive “Why are we doing this?” and “How are we doing this?” approach, and gives you some great basics. It is for niche marketers also looking to refine their approach.

All good reads, if you value your time I would read all of them, though I am not sure in which order, probably go for ABB, then Web 2.0 Blueprint, and if you find you need more of the executive overview, in a Marketing Sherpa style report, Stampede Traffic is ideal and extremely well researched.

Update:

Lots of well deserved positive feedback on Michelle’s Web2.0 traffic blog

Some things Blogcatalog currently do different to MBL

1. The front page heavily promotes and rotates bloggers, though one small section is for their supporters, most of it is free
2. They introduced tags before I had even spoken to them, though they were somewhat limited.
3. They were pulling in content snippets from blogs rather than just 3 titles before MBL
4. Blog Reviews and voting widgets that control listings, in addition to how active you are control your rating and thus your placement
5. Listings By Category
6. Listings by Country
7. Listings by User
8. Shout-to-Shout
9. OPML for Communities you join
10. Links to related blogs
11. Links to related bloggers
12. Ability to manually change the display order of your communities and friends (to show your best friends)
13. Ability to report something as spam without using email
14. Real tagging based on content linking to content (not fully implemented yet)
15. The forums…
16. The forum widgets
17. Auto thumbnail refreshes
18. XML-RPC
19. Full contact details including a toll free phone number
20. Tag based feeds
21. Related tags
22. Manual Inclusion (moderation by hand)

That doesn’t cover what Rose feels is copied, the main social features that are similar to many social networks with friends and communities, and the widgets… that is what I was referring to as being cloned in my original review of Blogcatalog.

MBL has a lot of unique features as well

1. Tracking (huge)
2. Auto join of sites you visit
3. Most popular links in your communities
4. Automatic display of your most frequently visited blogs
5. A lot more additional social networks and more control over who sees them
6. When they were just doing tracking, they used to have an affiliate program
7. Until recently having a company blog was a unique feature
8. As you have pointed out, legal documents, but so many sites don’t have it, though that isn’t an excuse – ask Techcrunch where their’s is?
9. Tell A Friend
10. New neighbors
11. Thumbnail editing (when you first subscribe)
12. Coauthors
13. WordPress.com support
14. Myspace Support
15. Owned by Yahoo and running on shiny new servers
16. User generated tagging
17. Suggestion Board
18. Yahoo Groups Mailing List
19. No advertising
20. Avatars By Comments
21. Click counters (really part of tracking)

Most of the above were present in Blogcatalog before I was giving them any help, and most of the advise was just re-emphasising things I had suggested to MBL and Bumpzee previously.

Don’t look at the number of points, as many of the MBL features are quite major differences, such as tracking, and some of the Blogcatalog features are interconnected.

Mass Broadcast

As announced a few days ago, MyBlogLog have modified their mass broadcast feature so it is possible to opt out of email messages. Previously there was almost universal concern over abuse.

There are still some differences in execution – MBL broadcasts can be public or private. BC broadcasts are all private.
BC broadcasts include a group discussion thread for the broadcast message.

Eric

Eric is off to take a well deserved rest and spend some quality time with family.

Over the last 7 or 8 months I have had some fairly intense discussions with Eric, in both good times and a few stormy interludes, including one 2 hour chat on Skype once things had calmed down a little.

I sincerely wish him all the best for the future.

My Integrity Under Question?

Rose seems to think somehow I am being in some way biased towards Blogcatalog, or looking at them with… hmm… “rose tinted glasses” seems to be a suitable expression.

This is partially to do with my open disclosure that Blogcatalog have offered to give me some financial compensation for all the ideas I have been offering them for free, most of which I had also given to the MyBlogLog team in the past.

As examples of the free information that both have had the benefit of, here is my original MyBlogLog wishlist and my forward thinking ideas of what should be possible with the MyBlogLog API.

Tim Nash a while back at Hackday in London had a chance to actually get hands on with the MBL API and it will be interesting what people create with it.

Having an API is a logical progression for Blogcatalog as well.

It is actually quite strange that my integrity is somewhat under attack at the same time as Eric, probably the person I have interacted with the most at MBL is departing.
I know that Tod, John and Steve have also spent time reading my suggestions in the past, but most of my interaction was with Eric and Rafer in the early days.

I still have some historical connection with Robyn, as I was reading her blog well before she joined the MyBlogLog team, and she was reading mine.

The fact that I have some minor financial interest with Blogcatalog has in some ways prevented being able to help MyBlogLog more interactively which is a shame as lots of things had been discussed although they may not have come to fruition.

At the same time the long term success of Blogcatalog is heavily linked to that of MyBlogLog, to the extent that if MyBlogLog is highly successful, Blogcatalog will also have more success.

If anything I am inclined to promote all 3 competing services, MyBlogLog, Bumpzee, and Blogcatalog a lot more, and in equal amounts.

Just because one service has decided to give me some financial compensation doesn’t mean I am handcuffed from helping the others, and all email correspondence I have had with each site developer has remained strictly confidential.

I have deliberately not included Bumpzee in this comparison because it would just confuse things. In many ways Bumpzee is offering very similar features, but the implementation is very different.

“An incoming tide raises all ships”

Update

As is always the case, things can still be overlooked even if you try to be as comprehensive as possible. I am adding things in bold to the bottom of the lists as I spot them.

If you can think of some things that I have missed that should be included, and aren’t covered by a more global point raised, please mention it in the comments and I will be glad to add it, and give you some link credit within the post.

Specific Disclosure: I have been providing a lot of free ideas and feedback both publicly and in private to the 3 main (imho) competitors in this niche, MyBlogLog, Bumpzee, and Blogcatalog, and all 3 would probably look on me as one of their largest supporters, in spirit if not in traffic (I can’t compete with Techcrunch).
With Blogcatalog I have to note that the arrangements are now slightly more formal in a consultancy capacity from which I may receive financial compensation

SEM Isn’t a Neglected Niche

PlugIM has been going reasonably well for quite a while
Bumpzee has lots of communities that are SEO / SEM / Marketing related

There are also a number of other marketing and blogging bookmarking and news sites that I have seen though didn’t seem to have quite as much traction.

Sure, SEO, SEM etc isn’t very popular on sites like Digg unless you have a very cultivated audience, and even then you have to have an insane amount of credibility in the the eyes of the general Digg population to stand a chance of not being buried.

So if it is not availability of suitable social networks for the topic maybe it is…

Sphinn is a Better Technology Platform?

Sphinn is running on Pligg

Well at least Sphinn is sometimes running on Pligg…

PlugIM is also running on Pligg, but from what I can see, other than cosmetic differences such as adding all your other social networks, and possibly “stalking” (I haven’t looked at that closely), the version of Pligg used by PlugIM is much more heavily customised.

This includes:-

• Autosubmission of content
• Tagging (though this isn’t collected from the content)

Categorization of content just doesn’t work – there is a big difference in SMO with the purpose of gaining links, and SMO with the aim to gather email or RSS subscribers for Direct Marketing.

Bumpzee on the other hand is a custom platform – it still has a few bugs, and quite a few features missing. If it received a similar amount of attention as Sphinn seems to be getting, I am sure the guys at Bumpzee would spend a huge amount more time on it rounding off the features.

Ultimately Bumpzee currently blows Pligg out of the water for features unless Pligg is heavily customised.

• Autosubmission of content
• Tagging (picked up automatically)
• Lots of Widgets
• Multiple interlinked communities

Sphinn has no technological advantage, in fact it might be looked on as inferior

Attention Wars

Lots of people in the SEM community have attacked Jason Calacanis for Mahalo his (in his own words) “viable Google co-exister”, and Guy Kawasaki for Truemors.

Danny Sullivan was one of the heavy detractors.

The only reason Sphinn might be successful is Danny Sullivan & Attention

Deja Vu anyone?

Hardly anyone in the SEM community would give a damn about Sphinn if it wasn’t launched by Danny. I have seen Pligg sites heavily criticised by many SEO/SEM specialists.

When Danny Sullivan announced Sphinn, he stated:-

By no means do we envision Sphinn as replacing general news sites like Digg. We just think the story submission model can work and be powerful in a specialized area such as search, as well.

By the way, we’re not the first to try this for search. In February 2006, The Search Engine Press was launched, then John Battelle kicked off SearchMob in September of that year. Since then, we’ve had others appear, including BUMPzee and ISEdb Scoop. We’re happy to join them!

That was actually only the second time Bumpzee had been mentioned on Search Engine Land.

I can only assume that Bumpzee wasn’t gaining exposure on influential SEO / SEM blogs because of some kind of disclosure problem, or not wanting to promote a future competitor, or a future competitor owned by a strategic business partner.

PlugIM has never been mentioned, though it does pick up Danny’s content from Search Engine Land.

At least Sphinn can’t be accused of copying some of the better features on PlugIM.

Critical Mass

Sphinn now exists, and will likely capture the attention of a large proportion of the SEM / SEO community, because ultimately most people involved in SEO / SEM in one way or another are attention and link whores.
Danny certainly has a fair amount of attention, and a lot of other people in the industry with attention are also promoting the site, at least a little.

It will continue to grow as long as Danny keeps driving traffic to it, but he is not even doing a very good job of that.
Guy Kawasaki leverages his own traffic to drive people to Truemors with an RSS feed above the fold on the front page.
Search Engine Land currently only has a link in the top right corner, and no voting buttons as standard.

I also noted that SEL has MyBlogLog removed. Does this mean they are going to try to make Sphinn more “social” with widgets as well?

Unfortunately Sphinn is a very category centric niche voting site – I don’t see it’s population growing beyond the aggregate subscriber base of Search Engine Land and SEOmoz.

Market Segmentation

With Sphinn, the guys from Search Engine Land are effectively claiming their own little kingdom in social news, unfortunately whilst it might be good for Danny to enhance his own attention, and maybe drive traffic to a number of sites that deserve some limelight (I have noticed Meg, Lyndon & Maki doing well), I am not sure this is such an ideal situation.

There are various groups of people involved in SEO / SEM who don’t even acknowledge that the others exist. The same is true of internet marketing and affiliate marketing.

Building Bridges

What was really needed was for existing services to be given some attention, which would have the effect of building bridges between communities.
A service promoted significantly by the SEO / SEM and affiliate / internet marketing community could gain critical mass for a news network that allowed content that was more commercially flavoured, and such a community would also attract casual users, linkerati, press and ultimately drive more traffic to good content.

The best option possible would have been to adopt something that already existed.

Not the Same As Blog Social Networks

In my opinion this is not the same as blog social networks, within which Bumpzee also fall, competing against Mybloglog and Blogcatalog.
In theory there are 75M bloggers, and I doubt there are many more than 200K actively interested in SEO / SEM enough to be involved with a social news site on the topics. It is only when you start merging with internet marketing, affiliate marketing and “make money online” that you start hitting the 1M+ audience that is easily possible.

Spinn Exists – Have to Use It

I am already giving Spinn as much promotion as Danny is himself, with a voting link on every page. I want the attention, but hopefully I can also divert some of that attention towards other services that are equally deserving.

The Alexa data is more for future reference as Sphinn has just plummeted after its launch and will take a while to gain traction.

Including 4 voting buttons on a page is dividing attention, although I have removed StumbleUpon because providing a button was reducing any “thumbs up” I might receive.
Ultimately, if I was to remove one of the 4, it would currently be Sphinn.

Giving Attention

It is honestly a shame that Danny and Search Engine Land took this direction. It would have been much better to promote the existing services extensively 4 months ago. By this time they would be booming, and drawing a much wider audience – such strategies have much stronger long term effects.

Of course it is not just Danny – Rand for instance didn’t even mention competing services in his post, and the first mention of the fact that it was running on Pligg rather than “the site itself has some fairly exceptional functionality” was by Carsten in the comments

When you share your audience with others, quite often you get it back in spades. Two posts in a row touching on reciprocity.

I would honestly much rather be bumping or plugging everyone’s posts than using Sphinn, because that would suggest growing cohesion within the industry, and not more splintering.

With that said, everyone interested in SEO and SEM should sign up with Sphinn, and also grab Michelle’s Sphinn plugin

Some of the things being added are almost invisible, others are much more visible and hint at how a site can leverage partnerships with other communities to broaden their reach, and provide simple feature additions that just make a site more sticky.

I just saw the strangest search query “cancel blogcatalog account”, in my stats.

If you really want to delete a listing, you can use the contact form though why would any sane person want to instruct a PR7 site to delete their links? There are options in the profile to switch off things like email notifications and return your use of Blogcatalog to being purely a directory.

XML-RPC Ping Server

A couple of weeks ago BlogCatalog added a XML-RPC server, allowing you to ping your content updates, in the same way you might ping Technorati.
Whilst it still needs a little work to cover all blog configurations, Blogcatalog also have various forms of search and tagging mechanisms.

You can just add http://rpc.blogcatalog.com/ to your ping list

Blogcatalog Community

The BlogCatalog discussion boards are thriving, with many of the threads exceeding 500 individual entries.

I have no idea how many new threads are being started daily, but it could well be 100+ and it is rare for a new thread to have less than 20 comments.

It is quite overwhelming, I am amazed so many people manage to keep up with the conversations and still have time for some blogging.

Social Network Integration

Not so long ago BlogCatalog added the ability to include links to your profiles on other social networks, social news site, and bookmarking sites.

I am aware that lots of other sites include similar features, including MyBlogLog who has had this for a very long time, but it is still a useful service that helps people build up a meaningful profile on other sites.

You might notice that there is a Mybloglog logo among the many others – they are not scared of their largest competitor which is an admirable trait.

Continuing on the theme…

Bloggers Choice Award’s Integration

With the date moved for the Blogger’s Choice Awards to November, there is a lot more time for newer bloggers to establish an audience and to gain a few votes and Blogcatalog has proven to be a great source of exposure.

They have just added integration with the Blogger’s choice awards. A link is created to the voting page, and you can choose which category that voting page is in.

The voting button is featured quite prominently on the main blog profile.

The announcement in the forums was:-

Starting today you can now add your Blogger’s Choice Awards voting badge to your Blog Listing page. BlogCatalog and Blogger’s Choice Awards have teamed up to give your blogs the attention that they deserve. So if you have been nominated for a Bloggers Choice Award add your badge now and watch the votes roll in!

Blogcatalog and the Bloggers Choice Awards run by PayPerPost is a very good match for some co-marketing. I am glad something came of it after some of the nudging I gave Tony from Blogcatalog, though I have no idea of the details.

Traffic

I am constantly being asked which of the 3 services brings me most traffic, and it largely depends on participation.

• I have a large Mybloglog community, and they generally have more (in total) active members – when I spend time reading new blogs, I tend to get more traffic – the same is true if you get rotated into the hot communities for 24 hours – I am constantly hovering on the edge of the top50 communities, in fact a few times I have seen that I have more community members than blogs in the top50 – maybe the top50 is only refreshed occasionally and filtered
• On Bumpzee I manage one of the largest communities, my No Nofollow / Dofollow Community and I have one of the highest traffic blogs with active “bumpers”, which certainly has a high influence on traffic.
• Blogcatalog I was previously one of the highest rated blogs, if not the highest, though that has certainly dropped off a little in recent weeks – I haven’t spent a lot of time “friending” and joining communities so it was bound to happen

Referrals in the last 30 days

316 Mybloglog Referrals
134 Blogcatalog Referrals (220+ previous month)
623 Bumpzee Referrals
503 Google Reader Referrals (and I have 472 subscribers using Google Reader)

I know those figures don’t compare to social media traffic, but those are readers who visit your blog to read your content. Stumbleupon sent me 1000 visitors yesterday, but only a small percentage became subscribers, or even stayed beyond the 2 second or 10 second barrier.

If I spent more time on the Blogcatalog forum, or in discussions on Bumpzee, I am sure my referrals would be much higher, and the same would probably be true of MyBlogLog if it had something more than a messaging system.

Live Alexa Stats

I thought it would be interesting to show MyBlogLog, Bumpzee and Blogcatalog side-by-side on Alexa. They all have similar users, so in this case it is probably quite accurate.

For some reason I couldn’t get a live Alexa chart to work, not sure if that is a WordPress security fix

Differentiation

I think the differences in each site are quite complex, and in many ways each is favoured by a different kind of blogger and bloggers in different niches. One thing that is certain, based upon the Alexa charts is that MyBlogLog growth has slowed.

Neither Bumpzee nor Blogcatalog have had a huge amount of big media coverage.

I did see one mention of Blogcatalog on Mashable, and Andy Beal picked up one of my posts a while back.
Shoemoney has covered Bumpzee a couple of times and has the voting widget.

For viral marketing, both sites are doing extremely well.

Specific Disclosure: I have been providing a lot of free ideas and feedback both publicly and in private to the 3 main (imho) competitors in this niche, MyBlogLog, Bumpzee, and Blogcatalog, and all 3 would probably look on me as one of their largest supporters, in spirit if not in traffic (I can’t compete with Techcrunch).
With Blogcatalog I have to note that the arrangements are now slightly more formal in a consultancy capacity from which I may receive financial compensation

Unfortunately some people decided to abuse things a little using Iframes and the join link, thus MBL were forced to switch the links off.

Things have now been fixed to require confirmation.

URL Changed

For those using existing buttons, you will need to change the URL because the join URL has changed.
You can pick up the new URL at the bottom of the widget page.

Honestly which Yahoo property would be exciting enough to work for to pack up your bags and travel across a continent just to work there.

Eric broke the official news, and Robyn seems to already be knuckling down. Robyn also mentioned it on her blog that I have subscribed to for a while.

MyBlogLog is running on Yahoo servers now, so we can expect the widgets to load much faster, although I am sure there will be additional tweaking over time.

The new message quota on MyBlogLog is proving to be unpopular.

In addition Scott Rafer is leaving MyBlogLog with mission accomplished. Scott put in an insane amount of hours in the Blogosphere, and definitely deserves a long break until his next opportunity emerges. Thanks Scott for all your effort working with the community.

With Scott leaving, in many ways MyBlogLog is again understaffed. Robyn is a great communicator, and highly efficient, but I have honestly been amazed at how much territory Scott managed to cover, and the hours he put in.

If spending $97 on an ebook is a major financial commitment, don’t read any further

Ok, for the rest of you lets get on with the review…

• There is no hype in the sales letter
• There is no hype in the ebook
• There is no hype in this review

Another Web 2.0 Social Media Ebook?

After you read the sales letter that is probably the impression you will have, and in fact you will still have that impression shortly after you start reading the ebook.

Here are some interesting facts for you

Pages 56 (+bonus guide on video, crib sheets and tables)

In fact those few references that were included were mainly in facts and figures like usage data.

So What is this Ebook Talking About?

Traffic Secrets

Whilst many people don’t appreciate the value of ebooks, claiming that the information is out there if you look for it, or join and participate in various forums, that isn’t strictly true.
We live in an age of information overload. Quite often different ideas and new ideas take a long time to rise to the surface, or never make it, not because the ideas are not valuable, or supported by hard evidence.

I often see “specialists” in SMO (Social Media Optimization) and SMM (Social Media Marketing) claim that their methods and expensive services can work in virtually any market place.
I am not going to dispute those claims, but that very statement tends to drown out other methods that could be equally effective for traffic generation that might be equally, or potentially more suitable for certain markets.

Traffic Strategy

The fundamental value from this ebook is that it challenges you to examine your social media marketing strategy, and optimize it for best effect.
This is nothing to do with writing better headlines, or coercing top users at Digg, Reddit or Netscape to add you as a friend and to plug your content.

Whilst Laura’s intention was to target the ebook to beginners in social media marketing, in many ways consultants in social media marketing should read it because it will place a new perspective on information and strategies you think you already know.

Professional Writing

Laura has written a lot of ebooks as a ghost writer, and this isn’t her first outing in publishing an ebook in her own name. This ebook oozes quality production with footnotes on almost every page and links to resources that back up the data and strategies she proposes.

The professional tone may also be one of its shortcomings – The Stampede Secret isn’t a light refreshing read, or suitable for people who prefer information in short 400 word chunks.

To get the most benefit you really will have to read through the ebook a couple of times taking notes – in some ways it reminds me of some of the more serious marketing reports you might receive from Marketing Sherpa.

Recommended Audience

Ideal

You are already making money, and probably think you know everything there is about SMM. You might even skim read the ebook once and think there is nothing new, but if you take the time to sit down and read it slowly a couple of times, you will pick up a new perspective.

• Marketing consultants
• Blogging consultants
• Business owners in niche markets
• Owners of Virtual Real Estate in Niche markets including blogging networks
• VCs and Angel Investors
• Researchers
• Journalists

Possible

Beginners who have tried SMM for their niche websites and blogs with little success, and who have money to invest to accelerate their learning process.

Don’t Buy It

This isn’t an ebook showing you the secret route to success and instant wealth. This isn’t something you should spend your last meal ticket on for that one chance of financial independence.

If the price of the ebook is more than you would spend on a night out, think again.

It will probably take you 3 hours to read this ebook unless you have been studying various fast reading techniques – if 3 hours of your time is worth less than $97, this ebook probably isn’t ideal.

You Can Find This Information Elsewhere

I honestly haven’t gone searching for all this information elsewhere, but I am sure somewhere among the millions of pages of content that are created on the internet every day, you would find at least 90% of this information. The value is in the way it is collated and presented.

Just as an example some of what is discussed in the ebook you could find on my blog, and potentially in more depth, especially in regards to things like tagging. Laura even quoted from one of my articles and linked through, highlighting that people should read the article, and the valuable discussion afterwards.

Unique Information

Analysis of one of Laura’s niche sites in a very competitive market (Acne Treatment) with real proof of traffic numbers from Quantcast – not just screenshots.
This isn’t a high traffic site, it is very much a simple niche website, running on WordPress that anyone could create and generate some income – I wouldn’t expect Laura to expose her most profitable sites.

Discussion of traffic strategy – some social media consultants charge $5000 per day to help you formulate a social media marketing action plan. Most of the consultants concentrate on the search engine optimization benefits, and not how to participate in social networks to find real customers.

How to Write an Ebook – whilst this isn’t one of the lessons taught, the production quality and style is something to learn from.

I am going to finish off with a few select quotes from the ebook that don’t give too much away, but at the same time highlight how much different the overall perspective of the information is.

If anything is going to hold you back in being a fore-runner in the new web, the need to measure and record every click or movement to and on your site would be the culprit. The internet is changing at such a rapid rate that controlling and metering every change you make has the potential to stall your success.

Uptight control and playing it safe is seldom the stance of a pioneer. It is the pioneer who wins in profits, fame and visitor traffic – not the followers and whiners. I am not guaranteeing success by any means, nor am I advising you to risk your life savings on some promising new start up, but I am saying that the occasional ‘play your cards or go home’ attitude is one of the keys to success.

Web 2.0 is a very creative, innovative and fluid environment. Most Web 2.0 sites cannot be put in a box and measured in any consistent and reliable fashion – they are simply too young. There is a level of intuition at launch, an element of change and growth throughout the life of the web property, and yet another level of intuition used for assessment when determining a reasonable sale value.

Conclusion

No hype, no bonus, though if I do see enough interest and sales I might write up a supplement to the ebook going into some of the topics in more depth, especially on the benefits of tagging.
I would probably make that available free to all Laura’s customers.
I may even go into some of the topics that Laura has missed – Web 2.0 grows at an alarming rate, and there is a limit to how fast you can research strategies enough to be able to offer conclusive proof.

Disclaimers are unheard of in most ebooks, but Laura takes this to a new professional level, this is just part of it.

Information within this report may be speculation and are therefore within the meaning of the securities litigation reform act of 1995 and contain verbiage such as ‘expected’, ‘anticipated’, ‘estimated’, projected’, ‘believed’ or variations of those.

I have actually been chucking a few emails backwards and forwards to Laura over the last couple of days, and I thought I would include one small excerpt.

You know you really rock! You don’t even ‘know’ me and you’ve given me so
much of your time. It’s a dying art in our world.

I am not going to include my exact reply, because it mentioned names of people that if internet marketers were actively using LinkedIn, would certainly appear between myself and Laura as shared contacts, and over the last 2 years I have certainly dropped by her blog a number of times.

This comment also shows the benefit of “paying it forward” and the value of providing information for free to eventually reach your goals.

There are quite a few expert marketers who normally charge their clients a great deal of money who I correspond with on a regular basis, simply because they have gained value from what I have offered for free.

One of the bonuses that Laura provides is some very specific email support – she states that she will answer 2 emails from her customers, and highlights the importance formulating those questions to receive maximum benefit. She is not going to exclude pleas for help, and win / win relationships can develop to extend the level of help provided.

I have always been happy to answer emails regarding the products I review both before someone makes a buying decision and afterwards, or you can just ask here in the comments.

I gained a great deal of value from Stampede Secrets. I might not realise that value immediately because I already employ many of the strategies and techniques discussed, and it is hard to quantify the effect any changes might have on my income.
Reading the ebook has certainly helped me highlight the action I should be taking to revitalise some of the niche websites I have had for a long time and hardly ever modify, because each is bringing in a small trickle of income.
Laura has helped me realise that it is possible to employ a few extra traffic strategies for these niche websites that could turn the flow of traffic into a gushing fountain.

Disclaimer:- I am one of the few people who received a free review copy of this ebook, possibly because I offered to take a look before publishing, that Laura reads my blog, and because she quoted me in the ebook. To be honest I might not have purchased the ebook just based upon the sales page. That is the value of affiliate marketing in pre-selling, or explaining the benefits of a product in an ethical manner