So I read with great interest a new news aggregating service called Spotplex, featured on TechCrunch. Mike Arrington wonders if its “better” than Digg as it is fundamentally different, and hopefully, therefore, will avoid Digg’s issues with bias and gaming: basically they use an index of blogs to generate news, and the way stories are promoted is through the popularity of the posts on that blog. The more a post is read, the higher it will rise on their index.
While Spotplex is still admittedly in beta, its ironic that they didn’t quite prepare for the “Crunch effect” — which is probably somewhere between the Digg effect and the DJI effect (probably far closer to the Digg effect). That is, the site is currently down, and likely because it has been featured on TechCrunch [but also Mashable]. Its ironic because they likely pitched Mike Arrington for the exclusive, but didn’t prepare for the traffic load, and doubly so because a future Digg will likely be dishing out server-crippling levels of traffic, not succumbing to it.
At any rate, without actually seeing it its hard to really evaluate it. But in as it uses the analysis of blogs for news and buzz, it seems to be following the pattern of Techmeme, Tailrank, Megite and their ilk rather than Digg.
March 1st, 2007 at 8:07 am | Permalink
It honestly didn’t look all that great to me. I think part of what made it unappealing was that they only had like 2-3 blogs in their system so the frontpage just looked like spam from the same few blogs. I know they’re in BETA, but getting on TC is a big deal, and I would have thought they’d have a more presentable product.
In any case I sort of like this idea, but I sort of don’t. Digg is great for rewarding good content - albeit it’s possible to game as well, but for the most part it does reward good (or Diggish) content. By showing the “most viewed” blog posts I think you miss out on a ton of good information from small blogs.
A new site similar to this that I really like and is slowly growing is CrispyBlogPosts (http://www.crispyblogposts.com - I’m not affiliated with it other than being an active user) - I think this one has a lot of promise. Unfortunately it hasn’t gotten much press.
March 1st, 2007 at 8:19 am | Permalink
It’s up now. It’s nothing like Digg. Mike is dead wrong about this one. It’s already coming into a very crowded space, where sites that you’ve mentioned are already far ahead - and it requires more involvement from the site owners to work than these services. I don’t see it going very far.
March 1st, 2007 at 10:30 am | Permalink
[…] There are many examples of popular websites where the reputation of a participant is playing an important role, often even representing a real commercial value. Think eBay, Amazon and Digg. It’s no news either that there are people trying to abuse existing reputation management systems and they often succeed. They are the crowdhackers. Current reputation management systems are not (yet) good enough, but they are increasingly important. A scientist quoted in this Wired article expects the ‘good guys’ to win over the ‘bad guys’ as long as they keep on developing the algorithms that determine the reputation of a person or item. Personally I would expect the trend to document our social network online to play an important role here as well (as long as these services open up), certainly combined with the continous monitoring of actual behavior of both people and websites, of which the just launched Spotflex is a great example. […]
March 1st, 2007 at 10:31 am | Permalink
[…] Er zijn vele voorbeelden van populaire websites waarbij de reputatie van een participant een belangrijke rol speelt die commercieel gezien zelfs veel waarde heeft. Denk aan eBay, Amazon en Digg. Het is ook geen nieuws dat er velen zijn die proberen misbruik te maken van dergelijke systemen en vaak lukt dat ook. Crowdhackers worden die mensen ook wel genoemd. De huidige reputatiemanagementsystemen werken dus (nog) niet goed genoeg, maar ze worden wel steeds belangrijker. Een wetenschapper zegt in dit Wired artikel dat hij verwacht dat de ‘goeden’ het altijd wel zullen winnen van de ‘kwaden’ door het blijven doorontwikkelen van de algoritmes die de reputatie van een persoon of item bepalen. Zelf verwacht ik dat daarnaast de trend om ons sociale netwerk online vast te leggen nog wel eens een belangrijke rol kan gaan spelen in dit verhaal (maar dan moeten ze er wel voor open staan), zeker in combinatie met het langdurig volgen van daadwerkelijk gedrag van mensen en websites, waarvan het net gelanceerde Spotflex weer een mooi voorbeeld is. […]
March 1st, 2007 at 10:43 am | Permalink
Having been through the positive crunch review with a former employer I have to note that you don’t get any warning that they are going to post- it just happens. Since this usually triggers a bunch of related sites (we hit number one on Digg shortly after the techcrunch post), if you don’t have the bandwidth you’re going to go down. It wasn’t an issue in our case as the company had its own large scale datacenter.
I’ve seen sites recommended by Seth Godin go offline multiple times. The influencers really do have a rapid effect- but it is short-lived and the value is questionable. Everyone wants a crunch review but, to be honest, it has fleeting value. They (and their readers) are on to the next thing very quickly.
March 1st, 2007 at 11:18 pm | Permalink
Thanks for your thoughts Matt — http://www.crispyblogposts.com looks interesting, and certainly no worse that Spotplex.
Cheers
t
March 1st, 2007 at 11:19 pm | Permalink
frantic,
its up right now … I am leaning towards thoroughly unimpressed as well.
As always, thanks for stopping by. ;)
Cheers
t
March 1st, 2007 at 11:21 pm | Permalink
Martin — thanks for your first hand account; the long lasting value of some pimp action from some heavy hitters might lie within the creation of a relatively high volume of in-bound links that they might not already get.
Cheers
t
March 2nd, 2007 at 2:21 am | Permalink
[…] Spotplex, “The Better Digg”, Falls to Crunch Effect At any rate, without actually seeing it its hard to really evaluate it. But in as it uses the analysis of blogs for news and buzz, it seems to be following the pattern of Techmeme, Tailrank, Megite and their ilk rather than Digg. (tags: interesting news collective_intelligence aggregation publishing) […]
March 7th, 2007 at 6:12 pm | Permalink
[…] Case in point: Spotplex, which went down faster than wunderbed in a fistfight after it got some TechCrunch love. […]
April 12th, 2007 at 5:31 pm | Permalink
[…] complaints arose about Spotplex when Tony at Deep Jive Interests noted that it had crashed under the weight of traffic it received after being featured on TechCrunch. For a service that was supposed to rival Digg, […]