EntreBlast

Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Entrecard will be down starting from 10 PM EST tonight. (in 15 minutes) Entrecard is going to be implementing a huge upgrade- a new pricing system for ads!

How long it’ll be down and how slow the site will be running for is uncertain, but it’s expected to be a major update to the system.

I hope the update doesn’t take too long- I can’t wait to see how the pricing system works out! I know it’s going to be hectic and I’ll explain the new system plus how it works out in it’s first 24 hours of action tomorrow!

Developer Day yesterday had a decent turnout! Some nice little features were added and we discussed important topics and solutions to complicated problems with the Entrecard ECs system. Here’s what was covered and what was added yesterday:

Things Talked About:

-The Entrecredits system: This was talked about at all the sessions and still no perfect solution has been posed. Spammers and people abusing the EC system have to be taken care of, as well as preventing black market selling of Entrecredits.

-Flags: Phirate seemed to like this idea and it was brought up a few times. A flagging system would allow EC users to flag a blog if it was inappropriate or spam. After a certain amount of flags, the profile would be suspended until a staff member reviewed it and deemed it as appropriate or most likely, inappropriate and would ban it.

-Spicing up the profile page: Though not brought into deep detail, there were some ideas about making user profiles a little nicer. Displaying and having badges was one idea.

-Monetizing Entrecard: It’s great that other Entrecarders are concerned about Entrecard’s monetization. We want Graham to earn money to continue supporting and improving Entrecard! Displaying optional ads on user profiles was discussed, where you could opt-in to show ads on your profile. With that, ad revenue sharing was brought up where if a user opted-in to show ads, they would earn a share of the revenue. I surely don’t mind displaying non-intriguing ads to support Entrecard!

New Features Added:

-Recent Posts in profile: Your 5 most recent posts are now displayed on your Entrecard profile and you can see what other Entrecarders have written about too in their profiles!

-New drop messages: Every 50 drops made gives you a new drop message after you drop your card on someone’s blog. Go Go! Wicked! Awesome! are some examples. You’ll have to drop to find the rest.

-600 drop limit per IP: A limit has been placed only allowing a maximum of 600 drops per IP address. This does not remove the 300 drop limit per EC account but is in addition to it to help cut down on spammers. It’s not permanently established and could change later.

-The News Feed in the Inbox links directly to the blog: Now you can go straight to the blog when you click on an item in the News Feed!

-Modified Drops Inbox: There are now multiple pages in the Drops Inbox. Plus, you can choose to see all cards dropped on you, only ones you haven’t dropped on, or only the ones you have dropped on.

Phirate was pleased with the results, saying it was exactly what he was looking for- small features to add in order to please the members and improve Entrecard. Most likely there will be more in the future!

Entrecard is holding it’s first ever Developer Day today! There are four one hour sessions  all day today in where you can talk to some Entrecard staff members and other Entrecarders about ideas you have for Entrecard, stuff thats bugging you, and anything of that sort!

Here are the times for Developer Day in EST time:

12am,
8am,
3pm,
9pm

So, two sessions have already passed but you can still catch the later ones and get your voice heard!

The Chatroom

The chatroom will be open all day for those wanting to chat and hang in between sessions. Just enter your username and there you are with other Entrecarders! It’s really simple to use, if you haven’t ever been in a chatroom.

I plan on attending at least one of the sessions and I’ll share what’s covered at the session(s)! Hope to see you there!

Alert! Alert!

Special thanks to Scott and the weekly forum roundup for this week for pointing out a thread in the Entrecard forums about “Extreme Dropping”.

The only site I know have that has this “Extreme Dropping” scheme is, well, ExtremeDropping.com. What this evil site provides is a link to a blank page displaying only a user’s Entrecard widget.

This pretty much defeats the whole purpose of Entrecard. It’s about getting your blog noticed. How is anyone going to get noticed if the Entrecard widget isn’t shown on blogs, instead they are being shown on crappy hidden pages?

Two things you can do to better Entrecard:

1. Don’t use ExtremeDropping.com or any similar site. We need to discourage using this sneaky technique.

2. Don’t create a “split-out widget page”, or a page that just has your Entrecard widget on it. You’ll actually get banned for this now!