5 Reasons Why I Don’t Like Sphinn

by Kenny on December 9, 2008

Since it’s incep­tion, I’ve thought that Sphinn was kind of ridi­cu­lous. Almost like it was crea­ted so inter­net mar­ke­ters could have a place to pro­mote them­sel­ves without worr­ying about the unfriendly crowds that exist on digg. This is totally unne­ces­sary. Just because SEO news doesn’t do well on digg.com doesn’t mean there needs to be another social media site dedi­ca­ted to seo and inter­net mar­ke­ting! If you’re in inter­net mar­ke­ting, it means that you’re at least a little bit nar­cis­sis­tic, and you don’t need a SM site to pro­mote your artic­les on. If they’re good, they get read, and if they’re not good, and your name is big enough, they get read any­way. But alas, these are the top 5 rea­sons why I don’t like Sphinn: 

  1. Inter­net mar­ke­ters don’t need a cen­tral place for inter­net mar­ke­ting news — Thats why we’re the mar­ke­ters! Peo­ple hire us because we are up to date on what’s new, and what’s not. (and because we’re good at what we do) It’s not like we’re not all rea­ding each other’s blogs and obses­sed with what Google’s doing anyway!
  2.  

  3. Search Engine Land needs to open up com­ments — I can unders­tand if Seth Godin wants to close com­ments on his blog, wha­te­ver dude, thats cool. But I just find it anno­ying that SEL has com­ments clo­sed and they want everything to go through Sphinn. I don’t know how many times I would have com­men­ted on a post but then didn’t because I’m sup­po­sed to go to Sphinn. Open up com­ments already!
  4.  

  5. Mul­ti­ple sub­mis­sions to the same article — I’ve had this hap­pen to me a cou­ple times, where other users sub­mit my post to sphinn at the same time, and it gets pos­ted twice. Then you get 2 lis­tings, and it never goes anywhere because the ‘sphinns’ are divi­ded. This is a basic func­tio­na­lity that needs addressing.
  6.  

  7. Don’t send me sphinn links! — I hate it when im on twit­ter and someone posts a link to a new post or article, and I think I’m clic­king a zi.ma or tin­yurl link to the post, and i get taken to sphinn. We’re all mar­ke­ters here, if you want a sphinn, put a sphinn link at the bot­tom of the post. I’m not gonna sphinn, or digg, or stum­ble anything until I actually see it!
  8.  

  9. Lack of con­tent — Besi­des the fact that anything that hits Sphinn is something that we have all already seen, or com­men­ted on, the front page keeps ‘hot’ con­tent up for a week! There are plenty of things being pos­ted daily to have fresh con­tent on the home­page daily. Maybe a new algo needs to be wor­ked out to figure out what makes it hot so that old artic­les don’t sit on the front page for days on end.

EDIT: Disc­lai­mer: I must say that I do love the con­tent that searchengineland.com puts out, and I think the peo­ple that run Sphinn are great. I’ve had the plea­sure of mee­ting seve­ral of them. 

http://twitter.com/GregBoser/status/1048080262

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{ 5 comments }

Austin January 22, 2009 at 10:42 am

I would disa­gree with #1. Why? Because there are a lot of mar­ke­ters that mar­ket to mar­ke­ters as their main tar­get, and they need an out­let for their artic­les, tools, and ideas. Lots of mar­ke­ters want to be known in the industry — so they sub­mit stuff to Sphinn. Every­body else wants to know who and what is worth kno­wing — so to me, the idea of Sphinn isn’t so bad.

What I hate is the name, logo, and gear wheel icon…

But that is all coming from a desig­ner — what do I know? Ballsy article man. I swear I com­men­ted on it when you first wrote it… Guess not.

Reply

Kevin Alvarez February 6, 2009 at 1:19 pm

Amen. I don’t need to sat much more than that.

Reply

Radomir March 12, 2009 at 9:32 am

Appre­ciate the info guys, thanks

Reply

Chase March 31, 2009 at 3:26 pm

Sphinn: a place where inter­net mar­ke­ters who can’t be found online can be found by other inter­net mar­ke­ters that can’t be found to the end that more inter­net mar­ke­ters don’t get found because they’re in-breeding Sphinn.

Reply

Raven Tools Matt July 9, 2009 at 7:21 am

Sphinn is a big SEO and inter­net mar­ke­ting circle jerk.

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