Who should be listed on Amatomu?
Ok, so at this moment in time I’m starting to get rather annoyed with some of the bigger media houses in the local blogsphere. I’ve watched social media in South Africa grow in leaps and bounds since the beginning of this year and have felt so damn proud of all of us, however, I feel that all this hard foundation work is now starting to take a turn for the worse. I’m not going to go into a whole lot of detail as to which media houses I think are making a mess, as this one is about Amatomu specifically.
I drafted up a list of the top 25 blogs listed on Amatomu and then took some time to go through each and everyone to determine what the site is about as well as investigate the Amatomu tracking code placement. Once I had completed the analysis, I contacted 8 people who I feel are the top people in the local scene. After some discussion, I can say that each of these people agreed with my analysis. Charl Norman stands by me strongly on this subject and agrees with the results I’ve deduced.
Please click to enlarge.
As you can see, each blog has been categorized as 1 of 3 types. The first type being blogs which we feel should be allowed to appear on Amatomu, these appear in green. The second group, highlighted in red, are sites we feel should not be listed on Amatomu and lastly, the random yellow site, which I cannot quite determine whether it should be or shouldn’t be listed.
I really think that the powers in control of Amatomu should take the time to review things and get the motions back on track. We’re all bloggers, we all love social media and the majority of us are proudly South African, let’s stay proud, listen to us Amatomu!
Christopher is the founder of iMod - Most of his time is spent building websites and pushing the limits with Search Engine Optimization. You can follow him on Twitter @ChristopherM
Chris M has written: 4145 posts.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 8:33 am
Agreed.
I might as well go add the page to my online retail site because ‘I have customer reviews’.
Pffttt….this should be for blogs only.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 9:37 am
That’s the thing Justin, if half of these people can do it, why can’t you?
Thanks for your agreement!
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 9:51 am
Well, if there’s any hope of actually getting ahold of someone on Amatomu’s end that cares, then I’m all for it. But honestly – look at the service, the uptimes, the relevance, the quality. Aren’t we beating a dead horse here?
Maybe a team will get assigned to Amatomu to really revamp it, in which case I’ll push as hard as anyone to maintain standards of quality. But right now, it’s sort of in a freefall.
Just FYI: Check Alexa, afrigator.com vs amatomu.com. In the last month, Afrigator has surpassed amatomu in reach, and it just keeps climbing. Amatomu’s been holding steady, which in the face of a growing blogosphere, isn’t a good sign.
~ Wogan
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 9:51 am
Thanks for the efforts in your research Chris – I agree totally!
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 9:53 am
@Wogan – I refuse to just give up and not give them a chance, although it’s not the first time. I think that this matter could easily be resolved, so let’s wait and see.
@Jamaal – Thanks Jamaal, I appreciate your agreement.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 9:58 am
The tracking code must be just on a single blog not the entire site or all multi author blogs.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 10:01 am
This is a tricky subject, we had a short discussion before we added the Big Brother Africa blog to Amatomu.
We came to the conclusion that if Keo for example is written by South African’s about Rugby locally and internationally and the BBA blog is written by South African’s about an international reality show, which includes a South African contestant – why the hell not list it, and let the Amatomu crew to decide. It took them a week to de-list the site, a colleague felt strongly about it and emailed them explaining why we had listed it and a few hours later Amatomu was tracking it again.
Personally, if I had it my way I would only allow personal blogs to be tracked.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 10:24 am
Hi Chris,
Good post. Just a bit of background regarding the BBA listing. We listed Big Brother Africa as we developed the site blog style, and got all our editors to create profiles on our social network and post ‘in-profile’. You mentioned that it should not be listed on Amatomu as it was an “African” as opposed to “South African” website. This is true, but in reality, more than half of all our traffic originated in South Africa – making it very relevant to the South African audience.
In defence of Amatomu, they did de-list BBA for the reasons that you highlight – but after a motivation as to why we should be listed (relevance, audience etc), they added the BBA site back into the listings.
Having said all this, we will remove the Amatomu tracking code from BBA in the spirit of agreeing with your argument (the show is over I know, but at least we will free up a spot in the rankings for an active blog).
It makes an interesting argument for some of the other projects that we have lined up though – although these should fall more in line with the “green” status listings above.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 11:01 am
Why not open it up and have the community decide, Wikipedia style.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 11:09 am
@Wezz – I thought about putting together a voting poll basically, I just haven’t had the time to do it, but it’s the best idea. I will see what the response is like from this thread and act on that :)
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 11:17 am
A voting poll would work great for the short term, what about the long term? I’m thinking more along the lines of the ability to flag a blog, like Muti’s moderation feature for instance.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 11:44 am
i’ve been trying to add my (m)other blog to amatomu for months, with no success.
i agree – amatomu should be for BLOGS. not websites/online stores.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 11:49 am
You have confirmed a suspicion I have had for a loooong time. I was just – for a while – (and to a degree still am) blogospherically challenged and had no idea how to investigate how that Keohagan guy kept up coming in tops when his blog is updated once in a blue moon.
Thanx Chris.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Hi Chris
I am interested to understand why Thought Leader as a blog portal for a variety of bloggers (who each have their own blog) is considered “for debate” while Times Planet blog, which is essentially the same thing, should be disregarded automatically. The two are compared like for like on Nielsens so should be the same here – and possibly both disregarded in this instance.
I do agree stats should compare like for like, we also implement individual code on our individual blogs for this purpose too. As an example Minor Matters is a single blog and therefore should be “allowed” go see for yourself: http://blogs.thetimes.co.za/minor/
Thanks
Helen
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Well said Chris. I’ve been annoyed by the rankings for a long time now. I just fail to see the point of iBlog and MyDL counting as a single “blog”. At one point we toyed with tagging the whole of 24.com blogs like that – but decided against it because it’s actually just silly and not really useful to anyone. I think Thought Leader (as much as I love it) doesn’t deserve to be there either – but many will disagree. Heck, I even think Keo.co.za is a little suspect. It’s a SITE with multiple authors that just happens to use a blog platform – to me that’s not really Amatomu material, but maybe I’m splitting hairs. No offence to Keo – it’s an awesome affair and deserves much respect – I just think Amatomu and Afrigator need to be about getting the little guy out there – not allowing the big boys with permanent staff and budgets to dominate the top 10. And I include 24.com in that category, of course.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 12:29 pm
@Helen – you make a good point.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Very very interesting debate guys. I guess, running Afrigator, we are faced with similar decisions as Amatomu in who should be ranked etc.
While the jury is still out on this I have to say that if both Afrigator and Amatomu discounted the “red” sites then are either services really a true reflection of blogging in SA and Africa?
For us, our solution to the problem was to not only use traffic as a ranking mechanism. What this has done is allowed for smaller traffic sites with higher linking ratios to appear in our ranking and so far it has worked to a large extent.
It’s not 100% fool-proof, I admit, but it does give the individuals a better chance to feature in the top blogs.
Maybe a similar ranking algorithm on Amatomu would help solve this problem?
What do you guys think?
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 12:55 pm
@Justin – Big up bud, Afrigator rocks. I was far more an Amatomu fan for a long time, I must admit, but since Afrigator was acquired, I’ve seen more and more interesting things occur. Taking on Lester has been great, having a face for the public was a smashing idea and in my opinion, he’s rocking the job.
The way Afrigator is ranking is great, ok, I might be a bit bias here, but it still does make a big difference compared to Amatomu.
The real thing here is that us true bloggers, charl, coda, tertia and the likes are what bloggers are, the collective blogging platforms are wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but they should be seperated somehow. Spreading tracking code across multiple bloggers websites is not how it should be done, each one should be ranked seperately in my opinion.
@Helen – You are correct, it’s a really tricky one, I have to admit and yes, I do feel that Thought Leader should be moved into the red zone now that I’ve had a chance to think about it.
See, the thing is, my aim is not to remove these multi author blogs, because that would be silly, but perhaps some form of extra category or seperation would be good.
@Alistair – Thanks for the agreement and good on you for not ranking all the 24 blogs under one umbrella, I respect you and Justin (wantitall) or not doing so.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Excellent suggestions guys. At first I disagreed with Chris – group blogs should still be counted, and it’s not always fair – or in some cases technically possible – to count individual bloggers. But having thought about it a bit, I think maybe we should split the listings for group and individual bloggers. What do you guys think of that suggestion?
Our biggest problem is finding the commercial blogs and killing them – that’s just a lot of leg-work. Every month I spend about two hours going through the blogs and deleting chancers. Big Brother got caught up in one of my sessions, but motivated well to get back in. It’s about that time of the month…
I’ll be giving Amatomu a good going-over in the new year. Any suggestions, comments, complaints etc, mail jasonn@mg.co.za.
Jason
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 2:06 pm
@Jason – Thanks for stopping by and I’m glad to hear that you’ve agreed with me and others on this matter. We don’t want them removed, but let’s split them at least. Between Amatomu and Afrigator, we have two of the coolest aggregators around, let’s keep it like that :)
So, ETA?
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Arg! Trying to pin me down. I’d say end of Feb – there are some bugs in Amatomu that’ll probably take preference. If it’s not done end-Feb, kick me in the pants and I’ll get a move-on.
J
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Right, so there we have it, end of February, that should give you enough time to moderate a list ;)
Just jokes, I look forward to it!
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Hey nitpicker ( ;-) ),
this is quite an interesting debate. As Justin said, we at Afrigator have debated this in the past. You’ll notice that when you sign up a new blog or when you edit your blog, one of the options you have to select is whether your blog are a Male, Female or Group blog. I seriously think that even the group blogs would like to know where they stand against their peers, and not necessarily against other individual blogs only.
That being said, we have not yet driven people to go change it, but we will. Its just that we’ve got so much to deal with at the moment that we don’t know if we’re coming or going! Soon, though. Promise!
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Pixel perfection my friend, pixel perfection.
I noticed the whole male, female, group option the other day and smiled to myself when I did – nice going.
Quick question, seems like the Afrigator guys are all over this topic, you worry that it’s your turn to be broken next? ;) Then again, you’re already ready for that considering the latest blog post *giggle*
Stii.. how you doing man? Where’s my Afrigator tee? *hahahhahaha*
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Hey mate,
We’re not that much worried as we are pro-active! Thing is, it is dreadfully hard to keep up with you lot and we wouldn’t exist without you, so do the math! ;-)
By the way, dunno if you noticed, but…
http://blog.afrigator.com/2008/12/03/afrigreater-december-tough-question-time/
Other than that, I’m doing good! Your tshirt is right here on my desk man! Just waiting to be collected with a cup of coffee!
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Absolutely, I know how it goes! Well, you guys are doing a smashing job thus far.
Haha, did you read the comment I posted above, that’s what I referred to :P
Hehehhehe, damn tee, I need to pull finger and come through!
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Excellent. A pro-active promise!
Let’s hope that Jason pulls through for us.
@Stii – I want one too homie! I’m a XL ;)
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Ye, it’s awesome :)
I won the tee about 2 years ago, so if you place the order now, you might have changed size by 2011!
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 5:34 pm
@Jason Norwood-Young: don’t forget to give the individual bloggers on the ‘Leader platforms separate RSS feeds, please. I know that TL is punted as a political blog but some of the bloggers don’t write about politics and they should be able to have their separate feeds appear in the relevant streams on Amatomu/Afrigator or wherever else.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 8:09 pm
@Chris: good analysis. I’m with Helen on this, if the Times goes, so does ThoughtLeader. I think multi blogs should be listed individually.
All the foreign blogs should be purged.
Auslanders, raus!
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Great post. I too have some issues with the amatomu rankings.
I have a sport blog and i think its unfair that we have to compete against keo. We basicaly have no chance of overtaking that “blog” because they have a full time team of writers. Theres also a Spanish blog(dont know what its about as evrything is written in spanish) and a paintball and bike shop “blog”, thus a feature to flag blogs would be an excellent idea as one of the guys above suggested.
Dec 3rd, 2008 at 11:24 pm
@Richard – Thanks, I think both need to go, unless we sort out the splitting of groups, which would make most sense.
@Ash – Keo does have multiple authors, you’re right about that, I guess it would have to go into the multi author section :)
Dec 4th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Rather use Afrigator. Amatomu kicks off blogs. Those are the top blogs according to MG not according to real statistics.
Dec 4th, 2008 at 11:14 am
@fromtheold: Did they kick you off amatomu? What reason?
Dec 4th, 2008 at 11:19 am
@ Richard
Yeah they did. They gave no reason. Probably something i blogged about.
Dec 4th, 2008 at 11:20 am
I wondered where your blog went!
Jan 29th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
@Jason – February is here, I guess we should start looking out for things?
Jan 29th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
@Chris M indeed – have started the process and I’ve been doing a lot of late-night work on Amatomu, but mostly around performance rather than new features. The tables are astoundingly large on Amatomu – most with over a million records, and one over 20 million. I’m proceeding tentatively ;)
I said end-Feb so I’ve still got a while before the deadline shoots past.
Jan 29th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
This is good news, I’m really happy to hear this mate :)