Firstly, I’d like to make the point that without Entrecards and the Inbox feature, I’d never have known about Turnip of Power. K?
I was dropping Entrecards and visited Turnip of Power. It’s an OK blog– but it’s about making money online and etc (zzzzzz). Yet, there have been some good tech articles and I like the writing style. So I visit. It’s also nice that TOP recipro-drops. However, Turnip’s latest post, Turnip Saves Entrecard!, goes awry, IMHO. I’ll show you how.
Turnip says:
The problem facing Entrecard is that it has become little more than a link exchange, with the entire advertising system worthless.
As I understood it, EC was intended to be a place where bloggers could discover others’ blogs, and drop cards on each other so that others could find your blog. This was how the system was promoted in the beginning, before becoming another money-making scheme and then not again. Did this change? By it’s very nature, EC is a blogger’s network. This is why I LIKE Entrecard. Without EC, I never would have found 100% of the blogs I now love, nor the bloggers who have become new and very dear friends.
And I do have to dispute the term “link exchange.” Although we bloggers “advertise” other’s blogs via the widget, I am not linking to others’ blogs– I am linking to the EC site that links to the others’ blogs. I get, for example, no PageRank juice when blogs host my widget. I think the term “link exchange” is debatable and not completely accurate, not when you are talking about blog to blog.
Turnip says:
The writing on the wall was there when people started asking about importing the entire RSS inbox instead of the 20 most recent… Why did it ever become so imperative to drop on a spammer simply because they dropped on us? Because we want to max out our 300 card limit, but there aren’t 300 easily found quality blogs in the system. Sure we all have different values. But I had a hard time finding 20 really good blogs, let alone 300. So everyone takes the easy way out, dropping their 300 cards as quickly as possible just to get it over with.
Firstly, there are WAAAAAAY more than 20 “quality” blogs on EC. I have probably seen 20,000 of the EC blogs. I’d estimate that of those 20,000 that I have seen, 750 to 1,000 of them are TERRIFIC blogs that I like. I suppose “quality” is very subjective. Maybe my tastes are wider or my standards are lower, but there are WAAAY more than just 20 good blogs in EC. Turnip, where have you been visiting?!
I haven’t been with EC since it’s inception, but I have been with them since before the credits became king. I will say that it is a leap to judge that the request for entire RSS feeds proves that EC is a link exchange. I find the Inbox a valuable resource. With it, I can see the widgets of the people who have dropped on me. I can discover new blogs this way. Spammers will be in the Inbox, too– but spammers visit my blog all the time, anyway! It is a leap to say that we all will click on the ads of spammers and therefore the Inbox should be removed. What’s going to happen if more and more control measures are applied is that there will be so many, many control measures that you will force out just about everyone! There has to be some kind of freedom here. No, we don’t *want* spam blogs, but we all know that there WILL be spam blogs that get in. Leaving it up to the blogger is best. Let US decided if we want to continue to drop on crap blogs. I agree that there should definitely be a moderation panel that approves blogs, but eliminating the Inbox for fear of spam blogs slipping in is nonsensical. It is important that EC has quality control measures, but if it becomes too stringent, it will wind up choking everyone out. The beauty of EC is that we can EXPLORE and discover new blogs. Isn’t that enough?? Everything else is extra.
Turnip says:
There lies the success and failure of Entrecard in one simple sentence. “We all want people to visit our blog, but we don’t want to visit other people’s blogs”. Now if we have to live with that necessary evil, let’s make it as quick and painless as possible. Entrecard can deliver the traffic, and you learn quickly what it takes to get that traffic. Unfortunately that has nothing to do with credits or advertising anymore. At this point, people are thinking “keep your credits, I just want the 300 people I drop on to drop on me”.
Um, I think the first sentence is complete error. Sorry, Turnip. I admit, I LOVE it when people visit my blogs. But I also LOVE visiting others’ blogs. I love discovering new sites, new people, new places, etc. EC has opened up a whole new world of Egyptian cats that move to Germany, of stuffed cow mascots, of strawbale homes, of new WordPress tips, of Thailand smiles, of Georgian car lovers, of Filipino recipes… I LOVE what Entrecards has done. And I think it is a great discipline, dropping 300 cards. It’s not like anyone HAS to drop cards to be in EC. No one is being forced to drop 300 cards, so why is it so reproachable that some do, even if some do it just because we like to visit blogs and couldn’t care less about credits?
I care not about the money-making credit-scheme end of it. I am coming from the pure blogging for pleasure and the joy of making friends. That’s all I get from EC and that’s enough for me. I love the Inbox and seeing whose been visiting me, I love the freedom of mingling with the John Chows and Posh Mamas of the group free of charge, and I love the traffic.
Please, don’t turn Entrecards into another World Trade Center for bloggers. Once the “fun” and “free” elements disappear and hierarchical classes of bloggers are established, you’ve lost the touch and become just another machine among all the other machines out there.
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