This article has been removed by the Newsvine community. -only clue from Newsvine that I had been kicked off Newsvine.
A few months ago I decided to get serious about blogging. Well, as serous as a person can be about telling the world how he feels about nude celebrities, movies and the like. One bit of advice that I found extremely helpful was to join all the social networks you can. So I joined about five or six of these places, Digg, Newsvine, StumbleUpon, Reddit, 9Rules, and in the past few weeks have found two more that I really like, Mixx and Blogcatalog. There are a couple of bookmarking places I use as well, but I have seen zero traffic from bookmarking sites like Blinklist, Magnolia, and Delicious.
Digg has been very good at sending traffic my way, so has FARK, and recently StumbleUpon has been gaining steam. 9Rules was too confusing and I stopped even trying to use it within days of signing up. Newsvine was as easy to post to as Digg or Reddit, so I made it one of my normal sites to ‘seed’ a story. I have gotten only small amounts of traffic from Newsvine, mainly when the word Nude appeared in the title. So having had some luck friending people on Digg and StumbleUpon, I thought I would try leaving a few comments and joining the discussion on Newsvine. Oops, bad idea.
Newsvine has it’s own Code of Harry, and as with Dexter, those who break the code meet with an untimely demise. I had about 116 posts on Newsvine as I recall, before all my stats were wiped away with bleach, but had very few comments or their version of Diggs. I don’t get too many diggs on Propeller either, but then I have not made any effort to get any and after the Newsvine experience, I doubt that I will. The nice thing about Digg and StumbleUpon is that they are big and you get a few hits from the mob of people that just sit around and watch the new stuff roll in.
Anyway, I was submitting my latest bit of opinion yesterday and found a couple of comments saying I should stop seeding links to Newsvine, as that is bad. These did not appear to be ‘Official’ Newsvine comments, just a couple of fellow travelers. Hmm, I thought that was the whole purpose of the site, so I asked about it. No, post a story here, but don’t seed a story here, what’s wrong with you? Ok, so what’s a seed and what’s a post? A seed takes you away from Newsvine and a post is a story on Newsvine. Hmm, so if you don’t people ‘seeding’ links then you need to remove that feature from the site. Nah, it’s so much easier to just remove the users.
I read a post on Newsvine that I thought was kind of interesting about people who use Newsvine to get attention and I thought I might join the discussion. But I had forgotten rule number 1 of Harry’s Code, Don’t Get Caught. I had let the people of Newsvine see me, and they didn’t like what they saw, and I am no longer on Newsvine and neither are any of my articles.
On the one hand, this is no great loss, I got very little traffic from Newsvine and only a few snide comments once in a while. It is funny that the day I decide to go ahead and spend some more time commenting and reading what others have to say, they booted me off the site. On the other hand, I was just starting to like the place.
So is it any wonder people don’t want to comment on your bleeding Newsvine posts? If they say something ‘the community’ doesn’t like, that’s it for them! Get the torches and pitchforks!
Blogcatalog has been the totally opposite experience. As soon as I signed up three people sent me notes that they wanted to friend me. I instantly found three groups I wanted to join and started commenting and using the site right off the bat. In the week or two that I have been using Blogcatalog I have ten friends and have joined six groups that I am very entertained by. I have never been one of those people that want a thousand friends on Facebook or Digg, and I don’t really need a thousand friends on Blogcatalog (but it would be cool if I had a thousand friends and they all Technorati Favorited my blog). Still it is nice to see a few people that share my interest in blogging and are trying to help other bloggers as well. I was never sure what the point of Newsvine was, but just when I was starting to get into it, I was cast out.
The Newsvine CoH starts off with Respect Others and works its way down to Keep the Site Tidy. All of these places have Terms of Service, and they are the usual long winded legalese that all of us agree to but never read. Which is fine, as long as you remember Rule #1 of Harry’s Code-Don’t Get Caught.
