What’s the rush?

Posted on September 16, 2007, 3:57 am, by ABaN, under Blogging.

What’s the rush?

It’s not often that I turn so quickly and move from an interested yet cautious opinion to one not nearly so favorable. Unfortunately that is the case with Blog Rush. Before I get into the reasons why I’m not impressed with the program at this point I just wanted to let you know that I really, really wanted to like Blog Rush. I still believe the concept is great, but over the past few hours as I’ve been testing it out I’ve come to realize that it probably won’t live up to it’s hype. As for the problems…

Many sites aren’t displaying the widget
The majority of blogs I reach from the widget aren’t displaying the widget so no one is benefiting from the traffic. If the blogs aren’t showing the widget why are they benefitting from the traffic?

Links are repeating
I’m seeing the exact same links over and over again and again and again. I could see this being the case if only 5 blogs had signed up for this thing, but there are certainly many, many, many more than that.

No reason to keep clicking on the links
Aside from the novelty of it I’m not sure there is any reason to keep clicking on it. I suppose great headlines would help out here, but even then what benefit do I get from clicking on a link in this thing? Nothing that I can see at this point.

Widget can’t be customized
Come on now, how silly is it that I have no control over the widget. At the very least I should be able to change the color scheme. More desirable would be able to change color, number of links displayed, and width of the gadget.

Lack of categories
There’s a severe lack of categories. Not everyone is a niche blogger so how about a “general” category? For those who are niche bloggers there’s not very many niches to choose from.

Widget blindness
I’m going “widget blind”. I’ve seen the thing displayed so many times in the past 3 hours I don’t even see it unless I’m looking specifically for it. This is actually kind of scary as only about 1/3 of the blogs I’ve visited are currently displaying the widget. Which means it won’t take long before everyone else goes “widget blind” as well.

Like always I encourage my readers to try this out for themselves and give it at least a week before you make any lasting decisions. I’m also following my own advise and will continue testing this widget to see if things get smoother over the next 2 or 3 weeks.

What is your opinion about Blog Rush? Is it going to be a huge hit, or will it burn away very quickly? Will people like Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net and his article about Blog Rush have any effect on its performance? What about other high profile bloggers like John Chow?

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  • Keith - Yeah I agree it would be nice if they'd make it more customizable. According to what I've read about phase 2 feedback they are running additional tests to see if it might be possible to do a CSS version of the widget.

    As far as flavors being customizable... I suppose technically they are...
  • Somewhat customizable now.

    Blogrush now has "Flavors" for their widgets. There are about 7 (?) different colors now available.

    This still doesnt count as "Customizable", but it's a start.

    Hopefully they will continue to work on a more "webmaster friendly" version.
  • I've had blog rush on my site to for a while now as a test and I have not received one incoming user. I believe that people just tend to ignore it.
    http://www.ouelletblog.com/2007/09/16/john-chow-and-blog-rush-its-good-to-be-at-the-top-of-the-pyramid/
  • Rob O - Yes the same repeated links over and over and over again is a real let down. I've changed categories several times and it seems to be true across all categories. Certain links dominate the widget.

    Bill Austin - I was thinking the same thing about the spam (and the lack of customization). I'm still hopeful they will come up with something to fix/improve on these issues.

    Hans - Agree 100%. This can all be improved with time. I suppose my main concern is that it was released before it was really ready. Kevin at Blogging Tips says it was rushed and I think he's right.

    Hopefully these problems will be sorted out in short order and this project will be able to move on.

    Blacksky - Like I said I think it was released before it was ready.
  • lack of customization is the main problem ... but those links too. Look like the first one who add this system was spammers....good idea but lack of structure maybe in the future the system will be better
  • I follow your post while on my quest to gather content for my blogrush lens at http://www.squidoo.com/blogrush

    Most of your points above could be improved over time, given that it's just on Beta now.

    - Many sites aren’t displaying the widget
    It's been clarified on John Reesh's blog that the initial posts are just fillers gathered from public blogs - so there are sufficient content to populate the widgets. Thus most of them do not have widget, and the links can be stale.

    One other possible scenario I noted in my squidoo lens is that you don't have to syndicate the same blog where you place the widget on. In other words, you can earn credits from a high-traffic blog but use the credits on another blog (which do not need to have that widget).

    - Links are repeating
    I cover that above. Well, I'm sure it'll only get better with time?

    - No reason to keep clicking on the links
    As a visitor to your site, the benefit for him/her is to reach another potentially interesting & related post. I agree that at this point, other than having your visitors sign-up BlogRush under you (and earning referral credits), any other benefit is unfound. If blogrush system works on an "impression" system for earning credits (instead of a "click-thru" system), then there's no incentive for you as the blog owner to send the visitor away - You still earn the same amount of amount of credit whether your reader click or not. (I may be wrong, which is why I'm still searching for answers)

    - Widget can’t be customized
    True. Which I've listed as one of the wish-list items in my lens. But again, this is just temporary.

    - Lack of categories
    Can't agree more! I suggested using "tagging" system instead of hard-coded categories.

    - Widget blindness
    True, but it may help when the customization features come about (sizes, colors, etc). Otherwise Adsense may not work long-term too.

    Thanks for your insights!
    Hans
  • The lack of customization hit me right away. The widget blew out my sidebar and had to be moved down the page to where it would fit without causing problems.

    I am also finding that it has been showing problogger and one other blog and most of the rest of the links look like spam to me.
  • I've jumped in on this too - tentatively - but I'm not displaying the widget on a live page yet because it doesn't fit my single-column blog design well at all. I'd like to see a horizontally-oriented version of the widget.

    But even beyond that, yeah, I've noticed a lot of stagnancy on the widget. That is, there are a dozen or so links that seem to populate the list on nearly every site that features the widget. Hopefully the author will work on improving the randomness.
  • Happily - Only time will tell, but that's exactly how I'm seeing things as well. Hype.
  • I know there have been at least 5 threads started on this topic at blogcatalog in the last 24 hours. Looks like a lot of hype to me.
  • Neal - Thanks for stopping by. Sounds like we are pretty much in complete agreement. I promised myself I'd give it at least a week to see how things are going before I trash the thing and move on to "bigger and better". So I'll still do that, but I'm just not holding out high hopes for this thing.
  • I agree, I got sold on the hype too. I posted the widget in a tumblr post, since it wouldn't post in the sidebar of the template I'm using. I notice your blog rush widget is only promoting advertisement for products. This is the second blog rush widget I've seen and it was doing the same thing. I don't believe anyone expected this to occur. Looks like they sold us on the sizzle and Blog Rush is a real Fizzle.
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