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Back, and almost ready for action
On January 05, 2008 in Announcements
Hi all,
I am back. I am working on catching up on emails from readers and upcoming interviewees. I also have some comments to reply too. Once I get up to date with that I will be back to my regular posting schedule.
I apologise if I have not replied to you yet. I am getting there.
What have all of you been up to? Anything exciting going on that you want to tell me about? Be sure to leave me a comment!
Here is a neat video to hold you over until I can mix up your regular dose of Vitamin J!
I saw this video playing in a toy store over Christmas. It’s awesome. I was glued to it for half an hour while the staff were wrapping my presents. Thanks for digging it up on YouTube.
Can I make a suggestion? This blog desperately needs Bob’s Simplistic Navigation plugin and/or Recent Posts plugin. If you run a Wordpress blog, these two plugins will make navigation so much easier for your readers.
http://www.japansoc.com/
Check it out. It seems like a good idea.
2 concerns.
1. People flooding their old posts into the site and taking the front page.
2. The vote system is a good idea but there is no Q control. A poster and all his friends can just vote-up a friends post.
Hey Nick, How about an editors choice icon,star or something like download .com where there is a editors review and users review.
Gives it more balance and quality oversight.
And since Nick is the editor? He could create a “standard” of what is considered high quality.
Hi Chris, in theory, social bookmarking is managed by the users. If you think a post is good you vote it up, otherwise you can vote it down with the “Bury” button. The users determine the quality with votes so there is no need for an editor.
Yes, friends could get together and bulk-vote for posts. You get the same thing happening on other social bookmarking sites, but there’s more to JapanSoc (and other similar sites) than just getting votes.
From a bloggers point of view, you want to get as much traffic as possible. The best way to get traffic is through search engines, but it’s very difficult to get your own blog ranking high in Google’s search results because you’re competing with other, bigger sites for the same keywords.
The advantage of a site like JapanSoc is that as it grows and gets more users and incoming links, it will become one of those “big” sites, and rank higher for YOUR keywords than your own site. Hence it becomes a “bridge” between Google and your blog.
One important concept to remember is that when you submit one of your own posts, you should use a different title to the original, and give it a quality write-up, using keywords you want Google to find. If you just cut and paste the opening paragraph and use the same title as you did in the original post, it will be judged by Google as duplicate content and not rank so high, if at all.
Anyway, I hope you can see that it’s not about getting votes, it’s about getting visitors.
Point taken!!
I have a bad habit of finding “a contest” even when none exists! I think the site is great.
Wow! you guys are having a mini-conference without me
That’s awesome.
This is also exactly the type of discussion I am hoping to have on the guest blogging series I am doing throughout this month on RisingSunOfNihon
I hope you guys will join the discussion over there too.
@ Nick
!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I had been looking for better navigation plugins (but not looking hard enough).
I will be sharing these with as many people as I can
(actually I think that most probably have these, I am the one in the dark ages).
@ Nick again.
Actually, I think those are two very valid concerns Chris suggested.
They remind me of this post about Myths of starting a pligg site, that I mentioned before.
I understand that the users decide and regulate but I don’t think that the site can succeed without moderation. Not control, but at the same time not neglect. Maybe just a statement and constant reminding of what JapanSoc is all about (so users will behave fairly)
You are going to have:
1. Spam
2. cliques that try to manipulate the site
While these things are manageable (and the users can bury them out of existence) couldn’t they hurt the morale of the community?
I’m sure you have been thinking about this, so I might be “preaching to the choir.”
Anyway, when Chris writes I always take note. He has some good ideas
[...] more savvy bloggers have been kind enough to share with me. I will be posting one about navigation (courtesy of Nick) and another about IntenseDebate (Thank Chris for this [...]
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