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Xomba Blog - Here Comes The Sun

posted March 23, 2009 - 8:15am
Xomba Blog - Here Comes The Sun

Hey Guys,

We wanted to take a few minutes today and explain the new features coming to the new Xomba website. We've been playing with a few this morning and wanted to share them with you.

Lets talk about the user profiles.

You will be able to view everyone's stats on their profile. These include the following:

Number of

Xombytes:
Xomblurbs:
Comments:
Points:
Favorited by Others:

You will be able to leave comments on your buddies' profile.

You will be able to view a user's posted content by sorting through their

* Most Recent
* Most Popular (reads)
* Most Votes
* Most Discussed (comments)

Those are just some of the changes coming to the user profile page.

We're changing the instant message feature as well. You will only be able to instant message your buddies. So no more IM spam.

Category pages will now display the most read posts along with recent, highest rated and most comments.

You'll be able to Favorite other people's posts. These will be viewable from your profile. Think of it like bookmarking your favorite bytes and blurbs.

We're also going to be awarding badges that display on profile pages. You will earn badges by doing certain things. For instance, receiving a special badge for getting a certain number of your posts favorited by others. Or getting a badge for voting the most.

The site is coming together nicely. We hope to be in testing next week. Let's hope we don't hit anymore snags.

Monday we'll unveil some more new features.

Have a great weekend,

Xomba Staff


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Comments

Working for the Money @veghead-alethea

The # of readers is more-important, as that # is actually a factor of AdSense earnings (not an objective, measurable factor, but there it is!) What starts the money rolling in though is ... well, I might go back through my new articles and start a) describing things as 'free,' 'live,' 'online' etc., and b) mentioning things people want for free (world peace, pictures, BRAINZZZ) ---Give Your Opinion Too!, & Google MIGHT find some extra money for you like they do for My Latest Work!

---when You Join Xomba, you can join this- and MythMan's other-hot discussions!

Grandfatherhood? This Calls for MUsic! @AndAnotherThing2-jdubh.-

---Give Your Opinion Too!, & Google MIGHT find some extra money for you like they do for My Latest Work!

---when You Join Xomba, you can join this- and MythMan's other-hot discussions!

Reward

We're trying to reward quality content and hide the "poor" quality. This kind of filter is a more reliable. I think we need to do a better job encouraging voting. As Xomba grows so will voting. We have other ideas on some new things that are down the pipeline. This change is more like a foundation for what's to come. I do agree with your point about the black hole. I'll be interested in everyone's feedback once we get the new site up. Everyday, we get closer and closer. I feel confident we'll have something soon. Maybe a screenshot next week once we move into testing.

You're the boss, Nick, you're allowed to say what quality is

Your changes sound fine. I'm just giving you some input, as I thought you wanted, and you can reject or adopt it as you wish. About spam: No, there's not a ton of spam at Xomba (I get way more sent to my Yahoo email address). I've sent you spam PMs that actually have a message, but it's hard to send you a PM that doesn't exist (i.e., I get an email that there's a PM for me and when I click on the link to check, I find that it's not there). Then there was that other recent practice that you seem to have nipped in the bud where people were leaving spam in the comments to xombytes. About quality: Like a lot of readers who don't want to waste time, I tend to check out the top voted articles first on the theory that those are the most interesting and/or the best written. But all too often it's a mystery to me as to why particular xombytes are highly rated, and others that, IMO, deserve more votes fall into a black hole. I suspect (and this happens a lot on the Internet and is probably unavoidable) that some writers just have more buddies who automatically vote for them no matter what they write. There's also the "you kiss my butt and I'll kiss yours" phenomenon. And this is not sour grapes. Actually, I've had a respectable number of xombytes end up in the top ten, but I hope that people don't give me votes for any other reason than my xombyte resonates with them in some way, and not for political reasons.

veghead's Xombytes

Xomba Is What You Want It To Be

Xomba will never be exclusive. Other sites that have tried that have failed miserably. Others who communities have become exclusive are failing. Who am I to say what is quality? Jeremy and I leave our opinions off the site. We believe in rewarding quality content through voting. Another reason we are adding the "favorite this" feature. Now we do set fundamental rules for what is acceptable on Xomba. Word length and such. As far as money vs. readers go. Well, that's up to you. Do you write to be read or do you write to make money. Veg's blogs were a big success as far as readership goes. PM spam. We are making it to where IMs are going to be friends only. So you can send an instant message only to friends. (We almost canned the feature altogether.) Private messages (the inbox on the left) will still be open to whoever can send you a message. The amount of spam isn't that much. Do you know how much spam I get in my email box everyday? Even 1 private message spam isn't that big of deal. Just delete it and contact us with the username. Now we have done a couple of things. The who's online block will only be found on one page. The recent bytes and blurbs are only going to be found on the front page. Article pages will contain related articles, recent articles from the category the current article is in and recent articles from the author. We designed the article pages from the readers priorities. Example: Reader comes to site to read article about vacationing at the beach. They will see related articles (which we currently do now) They will see recent articles from the Travel category (or which ever category the article is in) They will see recent articles from the author. And of course the comments on the article. That's all. They will not see who's online, recent comments on other articles, highest rated, recent bytes and blurbs. However, we have created a top menu for recent xombytes/blurbs and comments. And a member page that shows members online and a member directory.

Health topic..

Forgot to mention it was a health related topic...

alethea000's Xombyte

Squidoo..

Gosh you are so right,... I picked up on an article that I transferred to a Squidoo lens. To be honest, it wasn't an article that left me dribbling once submitted but's it's received consistent readership from the start...not any money but lots of readers. I don't lie awake at night with ideas on how to improve it but it's does seem to work, albeit readerwise anyway! I'm not a lover of Squidoo as I think the whole thing just invites a whole load of spam and quality content is not even a consideration, but the whole concept is most interesting!

alethea000's Xombyte

# of readers versus adsense earnings: what's more important?

This is a conundrum to me, alethea, because I've submitted xombytes that have attracted a lot of readers and a respectable number of comments but zero to little adsense money, and conversely, xombytes that consistently generate money for me but have had relatively few readers and often no comments. For example, my experiment with vegblogs was fairly successful as far as readership went, but in terms of adsense profits, it was pretty much a bust. But on the other hand, a number of my little-read-and-commented-upon xombytes generally on pet and human health topics that have been up for a long time still produce some income. Go figure! So how should "strongest and weakest submissions" even be determined?

veghead's Xombytes

Xomba shouldn't be excruciatingly exclusive, either

By making it so hard for writers to join up that they go elsewhere (taking potential income with them), but basic quality control is not a bad thing, in my view. As for those who have good content but are not grammarians (or vice versa), that would be up to the judges.

veghead's Xombytes

Yes you are right, ..

I was just thinking that if you write articles about, "gadgets for the 22nd Century" for example then there may be a shortage of interested followers..or not, who knows? That is a good point though Veghead, do we know the reader stats for each category? ie what are the strongest and weakest submissions? To be honest, I love the idea of Xomba being a "freestyle" site with good honest content and assigned "moderators" but I'm not sure what the overall objective is?

alethea000's Xombyte

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