“We’re about 5 days into the launch of BlogRush and its growth has been nothing short of EXPLOSIVE,” screams an e-mail from BlogRush. “We’ve served over 40 MILLION blog headlines…”
Zooooommm …
But all is not is not well in the land of social media for BlogRush. In some cases, it is losing subscribers because it took less than five days for programmers to game the system. From BlogRush …
• We are moving to a Manual Review; eliminating automation
• We are continuing to add security measures to ban cheaters
• We have added different colored widgets (called flavors)
This is not to say BlogRush will crash; I am still testing it. So far, there seem to be a few errors in their overall model. Much like Yuwie, they are attempting to overlay a multi-level marketing approach, where members who get members get credit (this model begs for cheaters). But more than that, one wonders how much gaming there really is — are people randomly clicking through just to drive up their credits? (I won’t know until I can measure “time on site” from BlogRush clickers to regular readers.)
BlogRush is not the only one experiencing growing pains. The New York Times announced that people would rather search for news than subscribe (really?). And CBS is speeding up its plans toward convergence. Everybody, it seems, is attempting to leap frog to the next level.
• Yahoo! just merged MyBlogLog accounts without any communication other than an opt in.
• Bloglines is beta testing a start page that looks a little like PageFlakes without the news and cool content.
• Digg is adding profiles along with 50 new features. It highlights a mere five promising features on its video; it says it will only take a minute but it really takes about two-and-half.
• BlogCatalog.com is in the process of launching Groups, which is expected to be moved out of beta in just a few days.
• Hey!Nielsen is only three days away from becoming a larger public beta, Nielsen’s effort to stay relevant in a changing world.
From a communication perspective, only Digg and BlogCatalog seem to be spot on with communicating change. They both have different approaches: Digg launched the changes but had an arsenal of communication vehicles waiting in the wings and BlogCalalog has been completely transparent every step of the way.
So if communicaton is any measure as it can be with traditional companies, those who communicate the best will likely thrive. Those who don't ...
Well, hold on tight. Really fast apps mean some people might crash and burn along the way (or maybe get acquired). As they do, you can expect some measures to crash right along with them. More about that on Monday.
