I hate to make another post about Entrecard, but enough is happening there that I feel it justified. While browsing around recently I came across an article by impNERD about the problems with Entrecard. He has another post on the subject which describes many of the problems facing the community. In my opinion he is spot on with some of the problems identified, although I do not visit the Entrecard forums frequently enough to understand all the dissent that it sounds like there must be. Some of my suggestions are below.

Read the rest of this entry »

I haven’t been blogging about Entrecard or blogging because it really isn’t the type of thing I want my blog to be about, however I do use Entrecard to help bring in readers with the hope that some of them will stick around. Recently the owner decided to try to get VC money, then decided to sell it, and now has decided not to sell it again. This brings up several concerns for me and for many of my fellow bloggers. Mainly that whoever might end up with Entrecard would change it for the worse. I do think some changes need to be made though. Entrecard is unique in that it is both a traffic generator and an advertising mechanism. The traffic generation part, so far, has slid under the radar of Adsense et al. I imagine that it could eventually get noticed enough to kill adsense accounts if nothing changes in the way the traffic generation side works. The flip side of that is that many people who do hit my site also read and comment. I know that I comment on a good percentage of the sites that I read, and I have subscribed to several of them in a reader because their content is interesting. There are sites that I don’t comment on are because they haven’t updated their content since the last time I visited, which sometimes could be weeks or months.

Herein lies a problem for Entrecard and brings to my mind a good feature I think should be implemented. Advertisers should refund or discount the advertising rate based on when the site was last updated. Recently I felt bad for one of my advertisers when I didn’t update my blog in a 24-hour period. That person should have had his advertising bill discounted. In addition, after a set period of a week or two of no updates, blogs should no longer be listed in the campaign tab, nor should people be allowed to drop on them to earn credits. The whole point of visiting every day is to read fresh content, and the whole point of advertising is to help bring more readers to your own blog. If I advertise on a site for 5 days in the future and there are no posts between now and then, then it is a waste of advertising credits.

Here’s an analysis of the current (as of right now) top 5 blogs in the Technology section. I hope I don’t offend any of them, but you can visit them and see for yourself that I’m not saying anything that isn’t true.

1. What a bald guy told me about technology! That’s a great name for a site, by the way. Its last post was September 13 (16 days ago) about Photosynth. It looks like a cool tool, but that’s a long time to not say anything and still be considered the most popular blog in the Technology section.
2. verITableLIFE Another cool name for a site. Its last post was on September 18 (11 days ago) about “Be Nice to the IT Department.” Something I totally agree with, by the way. We don’t get the credit we deserve in many organizations.
3. Technically Easy. This site by another guy named Paul. Good concept for a blog – helping the less computer literate understand computers down to the technical level, not just surface information. This one is regularly updated and should be above the other two in my opinion. Last post was September 26 (3 days ago) about “What is a hard drive.” This reads like a “how stuff works” guide and is very comprehensive on the subject. A well done site with plenty of thought going into the posts.
4. Gadget Space. This one annoys me every time it shows up because it has never been updated since I’ve been a member of Entrecard. The last post was August 28 (32 days ago) on an expensive cell phone. How this one made it to number 4 makes no sense. I perpetuate the problem by dropping on it every day. At least the site isn’t filled with more advertisements than content. Still, looks like someone invested 20 days in a blog and it’s the 4th most popular technology blog on Entrecard. Not saying a whole lot.
5. LiNTEK. Life is Naturally TE(K)hnical. This is my favorite site of the top 5. It is updated multiple times per day recently and I have seen content there that I haven’t seen elsewhere. It looks like he took the weekend off. The last post was September 25 (4 days ago) about Skype for Asterisk but I suspect we’ll get a post today or soon.

So you see, if a limit was set to a week for posts, Technically Easy would be number 1 and then LiNTEK. The other three wouldn’t even display and they would start losing traffic and popularity which in turn should encourage them to post again. Sites that haven’t posted in that set amount of time should also be prevented from dropping on other sites or from being dropped upon.

I don’t know if every category is quite as bad as this one, but I think setting a limit of 2 weeks is probably a good compromise solution that would allow people that are blogging because they like to blog, not because they like to advertise, to get more exposure. Anyway, I hope I haven’t offended anyone, but what I’ve said is the truth, and people who are blogging in a serious way shouldn’t have to sit behind sites that are more there to generate cash than anything else. I know that many, if not all of these sites have other blogs that they write, some of which are updated much more frequently. I’m not doubting that they can blog or write about interesting things, I’m doubting that Entrecard has the best method for determining popularity.