When SplashPress Media announced their launching of their Social Site, Blogosphere News, I was of high hope that this Social site will take off into the fast track due to the reputation of it’s owners. I was among the first batch to register this blog, hoping it will do some good for Blog Gigs.
Hot on the heels of their launch, a second identical social site came into the fray. Called Blogging Zoom, it uses the identical platform used by Blogospere News. Not wanting to be left out, I too immediately registered with this site. About 3 weeks have passed since the launch of both this Sites, and the results I see was out of my expectation.
I had expected Blogosphere News to really bloom given that it is owned by Splashpress media, a known name for those who are accustomed with the Blog Herald and Performancing. Given their high powered background, there was not a chance that this site will not do well. However, after this initial 3 weeks, they are performing miserably as compared to BloggingZoom.
Blogosphere News could not attract as many participants as Blogging Zoom because they have limitations. Only blogs that are like mine, that talks about blogging are welcomed. I don’t know the rationale behind this decision but it really limits the number of blogs wanting to participate. BloggingZoom on the other hand has a long list of categories and blogs of every niche is welcomed.
As a comparison, my submissions to Blogoshere News brings almost zero hits while Blogging Zoom delivers about 6 hits for my every submission. Some gets about 15 if the title is catchy enough. Looking at the number of hits both these sites brings is laughable, but it serves as a good exposure even if people don’t click on my submissions.
The problem with BloggingZoom’s dismal performance in delivering hits is partly due to it’s increasing popularity. Submissions are going in too fast to let those who has their submissions published to realize it’s full potential before being pushed into the second or third page. Like all social sites, a blogger who submits a posts, be it from his favorite blogger or one of his own, will only do 3 things. First he submits, then he checks if the submission is indeed being accepted and lastly he will browse all those submissions that has been published or about to be publish. When a submitter browse, he almost never go beyond the second or third page unless he is really dead bored that day and has nothing better to do.
The longest one’s submission can be expected to stay in the front page where it is the most visible is maybe one day and the time lapse is getting shorter and shorter with he increased submission. Before the 20th visitor has a chance to catch your blog on the first page, you have been bumped into the second or third. Rest assured then, that your submissions will never see the lights of the day ever again after that.
I think that BZ will come up with a solution eventually and improve.
Hi I would like to clarify a couple of things and say the comparison just makes BZ more powerful than ever.
First according to Alexa they have been live since August but there domain was registered 12 Dec 2004 this basically stands for the fact since they are an aged domain they do not get placed in Google Sandbox. So since August they have an Alexa 3 month avg Rank of 390,714 and at there peak they have never been under 100k.
Now lets look at Blogging Zoom Created on: 20-Oct-07 and we went live Nov 1. Today makes day 19 and yet we have a current Alexa 3 month avg of 55,161 and a week avg of 8,989 and right now we are sitting at over 65% organic traffic. Think about that for one moment in 19 days we already at 65% organic traffic.
There are many factors that determine the success of a submission at BZ and as we have stated before and what makes us different is not only do we intent to provide burst traffic but also long term residual traffic.
Now you mention that “The problem with BloggingZoom’s dismal performance in delivering hits is partly due to it’s increasing popularity.” Please do not judge a whole service based on your results. Remember that you are participant in your results. But let me show you why you are part blame for such results.
One of the things we explained multiple times is how to make proper submission. Part of that process is to write original! content and to make it keyword focus. In your case with the submission of this article you went the lazy easy way and copied and pasted part of your article in your submission. Well guess what not only did you hurt your own site but you hurt Blogging Zoom since we both are not being hit with Google’s duplicate content.
Now your mention of the submissions not having enough time on the front page to gain traffic. Once again you seem to not understand Google’s algorithms, the quicker we provide content to google even if your submission was only in the front page for seconds you might miss te sudden burst of traffic but the more content BZ has and the more keywords we have the more the older post will get authority and the more each ORIGINAL submission will now receive organic traffic.
To prove my point go to Google and use this two search strings.
site:blogospherenews.com
site:bloggingzoom.com
Third we might have both started with the same code base but I guarantee you our code base is nothing like theres. I have personally with the help of other devs heavily modified our code base. Trying to improve reliability, speed and also search engine friendliness.
I recommend you read my article on BZ where I discuss my views http://bu.bulicio.us/blogging/blogging-zoom-bringing-the-man-down/
Also if you want to have a small glimpse of where BZ is heading I recommend you go to Alexa and look up Digg.com for there first 9 months you will notice that we have already surpassed there traffic in 19 days.
Thank you for the review and the comparison but in my opinion there really is no comparison.
I’m quite happy with BloggingZoom and the amount of traffic I’m receiving. I said somewhere else today that two different zoomers (my term, I think :)) Stumbled two of my posts. So because of those two posts being submitted to BZ and subsequently stumbled I’ve got about 500% more traffic. Of course, my Simply Stating… blog is new, so 500% probably isn’t a lot compared to other blogs, but hey, it’s certainly a start!
I’ve also been practicing my excerpts and I’m getting pretty good, I think. (I kid! I’m trying to make them a lot more interesting, so I’m kind of tooting my own horn there.)
Plus the community at BZ is tremendous. I’ve really met some nice and interesting bloggers. Folks like you, Costa, whom I would never have come across otherwise. I think that’s a HUGE positive for BZ.