The Sphinn Controversy- The Digg of Online Marketing Died
September 2, 2010 by Pablo Palatnik
If there was a place us online marketers could vote and discuss stories, it was Sphinn. All us in the industry know and visit Sphinn. Most of us use it. I have to admit, before continuing to explaining this, I visit the website a few days a week but I am not active as I once was. I always appreciated the community and the site itself. As Danny Sullivan points out in his post explaining the end of voting on the site, he talks about how Sphinn was our Digg (for online marketers) because we were looked down upon in Digg for submitting ANY stories having to do with SEO, online marketing, etc.
So…What happened? Sphinn has decided its current process of a user submitting a story (in the online marketing space) and its community deciding what makes the front page will come to an end because of its decline in user activity when it comes to voting and how the site is currently being used.
Danny Sullivan explains, “…How will we find stories going forward? For one, our editors will continue to look for good stories to feature. In addition, we’ll still be accepting news ideas from others.
Our submission form will continue working. But those ideas will go in front of the editors to decide, not to a page where people will vote. If a submission is selected this way, the individual who submitted it will be credited.
Part of me is sad to see the voting system go. But the reality is that stories have been getting fewer and fewer votes, while the site’s traffic hasn’t changed much since our Sphinn 2.0 rollout. That tells us people are interested in a collection of good stories, not in actually voting for them.”
When any community is shaken by change, there will be revolt. This community of online marketers is no different. In the sphinn story, controversy is hot and people are mad.
I can see both sides of the argument but at the end of the day, as much as it is a community and we all really do have to respect that aspect of it, I’m 100% Danny does, you have to move forward with choices that may not be so easy. On the other hand, I’m not sure this may be the right decision moving forward as this is currently the ONLY website where online marketers can go and vote for stories and decide what makes a story ‘hot.’
Opinion?
Comments (1)
[...] Read this article: The Sphinn Controversy- The Digg of Online Marketing Died … [...]