EntreBlast

Now with Entrecard under the new management of Ziprunner, there is hope that Ziprunner will bring about changes that Entrecard users have been asking for, but have been ignored. There are a lot of changes that are needed, and to make it easy for Ziprunner I am going to compile a list of the most suggested changes made by you guys and e-mail it to them. So, comment on this post and list suggestions you have for Entrecard. If the suggestion needs explaining, please be sure to do so.

Some suggestions I have:

1. Lift the EC trade limit.

2. Fix up the forum.

3. Do not impose Graham’s changes to the dropping policy.

Yesterday, Graham Langdon, former owner of Entrecard, announced that Entrecard is now under the ownership of Ziprunner Inc. Unfortunately, I was unable to find their website or any information about them. Goodbye to Graham, and hello to Ziprunner. Graham came up with an innovative idea that changed the blogosphere, but the change had to come. A one man show was just too much to run such a big and popular site. It is now in the hands of a company, who can hopefully bring about some much needed and asked for changes.

Ziprunner acquires Entrecard and a whole mess attached to it: discontent and angry members who have been urging for changes to be made. The new ownership will most likely bring back old members who left because of the previous poor management. Hopefully, we will be able to actually communicate with the staff and get some of our issues with Entrecard solved.

Though Graham will be around as an advisor, it is up to the new Ziprunner management to earn the respect and hearts of the Entrecard members. In order to do this they must:

1. Establish themselves, and fast. Right now, no one knows anything about this company or the people behind it. With Graham, it was just one guy who we could easily familiarize with. This made it feel like a community. With a company, it feels more business-like and distant and that’s not a good thing because Entrecard is based around a tight community. They should make a statement and give us some names.
2. State their intentions. What plans do they have for Entrecard?
3. Set up and handle customer support. Let’s face it- no issues were dealt with under Graham. If you had an issue or a complaint, you could fill out a ticket, yes, but it would never be answered. Let’s hope Ziprunner will be able to deal with complaints and suggestions better.
4. Make some changes. There are a lot of things that need to be fixed. Being under a company, there is more manpower that can create changes to improve Entrecard.

I am optimistic about Entrecard under Ziprunner Inc. I believe that they will be able to bring about some good changes and fix the slumping reputation Entrecard has. It’s a big task but it can be done. This is my farewell to Graham Langdon. I appreciate your hard work and dedication to this project. It was a wise decision to sell and put Entrecard in better hands to allow it to expand. Thanks again.

That’s right. Entrecard has been sold by Graham Langdon and acquired by ZipRunner Inc. This has been posted on the Entrecard blog and sent via e-mail to Entrecard users. The letter reads:

I’ll expand on this tomorrow.

Entrecard has been down for a few hours today with a server issue. The homepage is accessible as well as the blog and the forums, but the Dashboard and other parts of the site are currently down and not working. The Entrecard widgets are still working though. The error message reads:

We’ve got some unexpected database load problems. We’re working on it like crazy, things will be back to normal soon, it’s just that there’s a lot of data there and it takes time to get things sorted out. sorry!

Hopefully Entrecard will be back up sometime today so we can go about our daily dropping! I’ll update this post when it has been resolved.

Update 3:20 pm EST: Entrecard is now up and working.

This week while I was on vacation, EntreBlast has hit a HUGE milestone. EntreBlast’s Alexa ranking is under 100,000!  As of today, EntreBlast is ranked 94,159. It has been going down (which is a good thing) steadily ever since I revived EntreBlast just a few months ago. For those who have been around EntreBlast since the beginning, you probably remember when EntreBlast died for a couple of months without any new posts. The Alexa ranking slowly rose up in the 400,000’s. It’s really easy to hit under 100,000 when you are first starting a new website or blog. But, it is more difficult for an established site. EntreBlast is over a year old!

Many think that Alexa rankings don’t really mean anything and the system isn’t accurate. Well, it IS a ranking that bloggers go by to show the popularity of their blog, and it still works. The top 100,000 is a milestone that many look to reach, and I hope that you do! For me, this is also a personal milestone. I have a couple of blogs and have had a couple of active blogs that have made it very close to breaking the top 100k mark, but never made it. So, whether you approve of the ranking system or not, I personally find it as an accomplishment.

Thanks to all of my readers who return regularly and are subscribed to EntreBlast.

Alright, well now that my one month experiment with Adgitize is over, I have been looking into CMF Ads. I’m considering testing it out on EntreBlast. I’m hoping many of you found the experiment with Adgitize to be beneficial and helpful. Another popular ad platform out there is CMF Ads. I’ve seen it nearly as much as I’ve seen Adgitize ads on blogs, maybe even more.

Let me know your thoughts on CMF Ads, and on the experiment I did with Adgitize. When I return from vacation, I will implement CMF Ads onto EntreBlast and I will run a one month trial on it. Like always, I will post the results and draw a conclusion.

Stay tuned!

Wednesday I posted the news about Entrecard’s new dropping policy that will be in affect at precisely “soon”. They are updating their algorithm for dropping on Entrecard widgets so you have to somehow interact with every single blog you are dropping on in order to receive credit.

The intentions behind this idea is a good thing. The high bounce rate that comes with using Entrecard is a bad thing. People want more interaction from droppers with their blog.

However, I am against this new change for a number of reasons. I can think of a dozen problems that will result because of these changes. To name a few:

1. If Graham believes the algorithm for detecting who interacts with the blog is going to stay a mystery- then he’s most likely going to be wrong. Case study: Google. It just takes a couple of people and some guessing and testing to figure out how the algorithm works. Does Graham really want to get involved in an ongoing war, having to constantly tweak the algorithm?

2. As I said in the previous post, the bounce rate is one of the biggest complaints made about Entrecard. However, another huge complaint is, well, their inability to handle complaints. Their support system is very weak. I never received a reply from my rant against the Entrecard trade limits, and that was over a month ago! Entrecard will receive an enormous increase in the number of complaints with this new change- people claiming they interacted with a blog but didn’t receive credit. Well people, just don’t bother with that.

3. How do they expect us to interact on old blog posts?  This one I saw in comments made by users in the Entrecard blog. If a blog hasn’t updated since the last time we were forced to make a comment on their post, what are we supposed to do? Leave another one? That hardly makes any sense. Which ties into my next issue…

4. Spam comments. That is what we will see from Entrecard users. Just generic, superficial comments left so they can get credit for interaction. Don’t get me wrong, I am not blaming the users here. I personally don’t have time to read the newest post on every single blog I drop on and then write a comment (I’ll get to that next). But as a couple of users who commented on Entrecard’s blog post, I’d much rather have a high bounce rate than fake comments.

5. Expect users to do less dropping. This is a major backfire to this new policy. In the blog post about the new dropping policy, the first sentence under the headline “The Point of Entrecard” says:

The point of participating in Entrecard is to find new blogs you enjoy, and to interact with each other.

But this is completely cutting off the first half of the sentence, and enforcing the second. Interacting with every single blog is going to take a lot of time and personally, I don’t even know if I’ll have time anymore with this new rule to reciprocate all of the drops I receive now, let alone try and “find new blogs”.
My average bounce rate is around 89%. Sure, it’s high, and surely because of Entrecard. However, I receive a lot of interaction with my blog. I receive comments from returning readers and new ones. People sponsor my blog by purchasing ads, and people click on those ads to check out new blogs. What more interaction could I hope for? Sure, I’d like to receive more comments. But, I do not want fake comments. I want people to truly read my posts and have it effect them so they feel the need to comment and voice their opinion. That’s what I like.

With this new rule, I feel like I’m being babied by Mommy Entrecard. I’m going to receive in increase in comments because Entrecard is making people do so. It’s like all the droppers coming to my blog are little kids who were forced to apoligize for being mean to someone. The apology is fake, and only comes because their mom made them do it. To be honest, it’s also embarassing. The users who’ve complained about having a high bounce rate because of Entrecard (though I’m sure some had one before Entrecard as well), finally get what they want even though they know that most of the interaction will be fake.

Is it really that important to have a high bounce rate? There are other ways to improve interaction to your blog, and get REAL comments and results. I’ll provide some tips in another post. Please post your thoughts on this new change, and if you have any tips for improving bounce rate that you’d like to share, leave a comment.

Yes, another week without me being able to drop with Entrecard. This time however, I am in Canada visiting family. I’ll be online more than I was when I went on vacation last week to the beach, but still not often enough and I won’t be able to do any dropping. I’ll be back the 11th. This is the last vacation I am going on until November, so I’ll be around for a while without interruptions after this!

I would appreciate it if you continued to drop on me because top droppers receive a link to their blog at the end of the month!

Oh, and don’t worry – I have prepared in advance new posts for this week. Just because I’m gone doesn’t mean EntreBlast will be dead!

Thanks to our top droppers in June! You can make this list by dropping daily. Each month the top droppers are rewarded with a link to their blog!

Yesterday evening, Graham has posted on the Entrecard blog changes that will affect all of Entrecard’s members and how they go about dropping. The change is to “take action against the bounce rate”. Because, (one of) the biggest complaint Entrecard critics have against Entrecard, is the bounce rate.

So, what’s going to change? Apparently, they are working on a new algorithm used in the Entrecard widgets to detect whether the dropper has interacted with the blog they are dropping on. If you don’t interact with the blog (how involved you’ll have to be, Graham is leaving that as a mystery), you don’t receive credit for that drop.

This is the news, however, stay tuned for my follow up post about my opinion on the change that will be implemented “soon”.