The time has come, I’ve decided to leave Amatomu and I’m going to make it my mission to get as many other bloggers as possible to join me on this and leave Amatomu.
Towards to the end of last year I blogged about Amatomu needing to pull finger and start sorting things out on their side, to which I received a number of comments from Jason, one of the guys in charge, saying that we could expect changes by the end of Feb. Now, I’m not the only blogger to have agreed on this nor am I the only one to push Jason on this, so I am not standing alone here and I need your support.
I still visit Amatomu from time to time and the ONLY thing I can see on the site is the addition badly placed, shockingly horrible, blue Adsense block on the right, which probably has a CTR of 0.00001% – what a waste of space.
Right, so here’s the deal:
1. I’ve removed the Amatomu ribbon
2. I’m removing the Amatomu tracking code
I need your support (blog it friend!) to join me on this venture – If we all stand together and leave, hopefully they’ll fix things and add new things, then I’d be more than happy to join again.
Support AfriGator people, they’re actively working at keeping it as the best aggregator in Africa!
Oh, and seriously, do yourself a favour, go look at your Analytics and see how many hits you’re getting from Amatomu – I bet you don’t get many!
Umshiniwam!
I did this months ago already. I gave up on amatomu when I stopped getting traffic from them
Thats a bold move Chris. Amatomu have really lost the plot. Even forums are listed on the rankings these day(WP Rugby Forum wtf?)
It’s like nobody monitors the site anymore. I wont remove my code YET though, will have to think about it a bit.
I have also boycotted them.
I’ve written a little post, expressing my concernes. The system is flawed, totally.
Ash, it’s not all that bold. In fact, I reckon the bandwidth I’m saving from their little flash banner is saving me money compared to the traffic that I was getting from it!!
I’m with SaulK on this.
http://www.globalexchange.org/images/dancingtoitoi5.jpg
I tossed amatomu from all my blogs a long while back
Yup, done a while back. The amatomu tracking code, even if placed in the footer…slows site loading times down each time the amatomu site goes down. The site goes down far too frequently for moral fibre to bother with its service – it used to give moral fibre a solid idea if we were heading in the right direction with regards to our content and then it just became a pain in the ass.
Well Chris, I guess we’ve all tried to warn them via our sites, tweets and emails but to no avail.
Moral Fibre prefers its new home afrigator..
I wonder if Google will follow suit with Amatomu..
Afrigator..we shall see :)
I hardly ever get traffic from Amatomu anymore. Think I’ll follow the trend and remove it too. What Vince has said about the speed is concerning.
Of coarse it slows down your site. Not only is there speed reduction on reloads, but also BW on the flashbanner..
Boycott = save-save.
You have my support. Even their little wordpress badge proves to be a download error. At least Jason did reply. ama-ama-Good-bye
I am with this on you bud! You got my full support. Afrigator have a surprise coming anyway!
Wow, thanks for all the support everyone. This is so important, being a proud supporter of South African startups, I think it’s essential that they maintain their level of progressions and innovation as it’s companies like this that represent us all on the web.
They have plenty of staff and the premise, logic and algorithms behind the system are harder that complex, finding someone to add some ideas, fix a few things and get the ball rolling again wouldn’t be difficult.
I think it’s also important for Amatomu to push hard, this will encourage the AfriGator gents as well, competition isn’t always a bad thing.
Agree?
I’ve joined your cause, Chris.
I must agree Amatomu has been very slow and most times that I visit the site has been down. The first couple of times I thought it was just a huge update only to find they had installed those ugly Adwords along the site. Surely they can get revenue from somewhere else… disappointed
I have also noticed that my amatomu rating varies greatly per day, regardless of traffic. Somewhere, something is flawed. And yeah, the corner banner does slow down my site.
I support this.
Thanks you all so much for your support, it’s fantastic to know that I’m not standing here alone!
Please do blog about it though, if you have a chance, it’s the best way to get this known by everyone :)
I like Amatomu because I can see where carblog.co.za ranks by daily reads against all the other top blogs in SA (currently it ranks 3rd). I rank no where on Afrigator rankings because I don’t have back links from African blogs (amongst other Afrigator ranking algorithm metrics I dont know about) – Advertisers don’t care about how many African blog back links I have to carblog – they wanna know my visitor stats. Amatomu proves carblog’s huge readership – I’m sticking with both for now.
Besides neither Afrigator or Amatomu sends me much traffic anyway. Nor do I visit them to find news? Have you heard of Google reader?
http://www.wasa.co.za/sites/p/v/car-blog/149
@Charl – Dare I answer that by asking you if you’ve heard of Google Analytics? ;)
If you ranked about 25 on Amatomu, would you have the same opinion?
Chris, why? Can you explain the unhappiness in laymen’s terms? Maybe that will help me to jump ship too!
Maybe I should keep the tracking code and lose the Amatomu badge? They have a PR6 homepage with no-follows everywhere. Definitely not sharing the link love back.
Ranking 2nd on Afrigator is massive, I would focus on that. Afrigator rocks dont get me wrong, they have international acclaim.
Carblog just doesn’t feature in their charts – I’m gonna double check the Afrigator tracking code that might be the issue
Amatomu was always going to have a tough time after Matt and Vince left.
I dont disagree with your post
(Besides this is likely link bait SEOGURU-WP in action)
@Charl – Absolutely, I do see a point in your sticking on there, 100% mate. My main concern here is getting bloggers to leave so they can fix things up and really make it better. AfriGator could do with a good competitor so we can push things to the limits, which is what I would like to see. I will, hopefully, relist myself on Amatomu in the near future, provided they step things up. CarBlog rocks, I’m first to say that, fantastic model, great intentions, but if a blog like that is removed from Amatomu, they’ll listen quickly, that’s all :)
Ye, no argument here at all, just opinion :) Oh, no link bait here at all, if I wanted link bait, believe me, you’d know ;)
@Emil – Amatomu started out at the same time as AfriGator or around about there. Both systems were awesome. However, over time, AfriGator has grown more and more and Amatomu has been neglected. Being run by M&G, it puts them at the forefront of South Africa’s online initiatives and I feel that they need to step up to the plate and represent, because it’s these “systems” which represent us all as South Africans bloggers. If we’re all putting so much effort in, it would be fair for them to step up and do the same. As I said to Charl, I plan on returning, but I want to see them committing, fulfilling promises and doing amazing things, before I do – And, if it’s a movement like this which makes them pull thumb, then so be it, at the end of the day, they’ll appreciate this.
We are their audience, they aren’t listening :(
Dumbstruck, I am. Thanks for the Afrigator support chaps!
Chris, I do agree with competition is good. It’s sad that things went pear-shaped with Amatomu, since it always kept our senses honed as we didn’t want to clone them, but beat them and vice versa (I think?).
Mail & Guardian should not have let this happen!
They should have been willing to spend the money to hire talented developers and a driven IT manager to keep it going. This is a management failure and there is NO excuse for it!
They just threw money into the gutter by neglecting their valuable AMATOMU brand.
Heads need to roll at Amatomu. Get rid of the incompetent managers who let this happen and hire someone with a fire under his seat to turn this around.
They can still do it.
I’m not going to pull the amatomu tracking code from my blog just yet.
If M&G has no stomach for doing the necessary to sort this out, then they must sell it to someone who will take it and make it realise its potential.
I would fix it myself, but I won’t move to JHB. :)
At the end of the day, the idea was good.. like most online ventures, bigger and better things came along for the Developers/Owners. It happens.
What is the point of pumping hundreds of man-hours into a project that is not showing financial returns?
I’m sure that they have their reasons, but for now, I’ll save on load-time and BW by removing them :)
Here in the U.S. my newsblog isn’t eligible for listing on Amatomu (which is how it should be since it’s a South African blog index!) but I used to check them regularly looking for SA newsblogs. Much of what I found are syndicated columns masquerading as blogs – professional journalists writing for major newspapers who really shouldn’t be included in Amatomu’s listings. I also tend to drift towards Afrigator for news.
Did it a long time ago, not getting any traffic from them, their tracking code occasionally causes my blog to not load and the banner is not good for anything other than getting traffic to bounce to their site and disappearing.
Following suit … Amatomu out … Afrigator FTW – and just so you know, Afrigator is one hell of a team of professionals. It’s true that they’re constantly striving to improve their product and I am impressed to see that they still manage their start-up like in the old days and haven’t lost any of their fighting spirit post buy-out.
That’s the thing, Afrigator have a team, which is dedicated to their project and their followers. We don’t want Amatomu dead, but we want them to step up to the plate and give Afrigator a good run for their money..
No … not saying Amatomu should fade completely – just joining in the initiative in the hope that things improve. Good on you for starting an official, focused effort … and with your readership, I’m sure this will have exactly the type of outcome that we hope for.
Ye absolutely, I know what you meant :)
Provided other bloggers blog about it, it’ll spread and then we’ll get what we’re looking for!
Add one more too the cause.
Fantastic!
I understand the frustration. I have it too. But I am wondering if just leaving is the only option available.
I have always thought of setting up an alternative aggregator. But do not have the resources to do so.
Afrigator is great. But the still lack a few features that Amatomu have. New competition might just be the way to go.
What do you think?
@Robert – It’s about everyone leaving at this point, hopefully that’ll be a big enough wake up call to them, because everything else we try doesn’t work. Believe me, I’ve emailed, got responses, tried literally everything and nothing gets done.
Hmm…well now that you mention it, I mailed them once about a broken account and never heard of them again. I mailed Stii and the Afrigator guys numerous times in the past and they always reply.
Yeah, I must admit that the guys at Afrigator are on the ball, more so than the M&G Amatomu.
Amatomu do have their very slow days, when nothings seems to work, what’s that all about
Even so, I still think we can use another Aggregator. What do you guys think?
Ye, Amatomu would appear to have no staff assigned to dealing with it – because nothing changes and when problems occur, it takes the amount of time, it would take for an operations manager to assign someone the last..
They do suck! I mean you can’t even get a password reminder and why isn’t there a clickable e-mail addy on “report a bug?”
They’ve slacked and they don’t seem too worried about it unfortunately :/
After a few months now. I would tend to agree with you now. I gave them a the benefit of the doubt, but they continue to disappoint. Check out my latest post, about Amatomu demise.
http://www.integralwebsolutions.co.za/Blog/EntryId/314/Amatomu-has-fallen-off-a-cliff-and-hurtling-towards-its-untimely-death.aspx
That’s why I raised this and continue to go on about it, because it’s really sad at the end of the day. None of us want it to go, we just want it to be raised up to the bar, which they started on..
Hi Chris, I have recently launched myScoop, bearing in mind that A LOT of work still needs to be done on this site to compare to the other social bookmarking tools out there. any support and/or feedback would be greatly appreciated. I hope to have this site running as an aggregator in due time. Right now it relies on user input to gather its links and information, though on submitting a link, it automatically picks up the title and attempts to pick up the first paragraph of your post to fill the description field.
Upcoming features include:
- Live stats per link
- Live editing
- Aggregation
- User preferences
- Advanced search
- etc etc etc
One suggestion would be to host it locally, cos damn does that site take a long time to load and if it’s a proudly South African initiative, then it makes sense to get it hosted locally.
What you think?
Thanks for the quick response. I’ve already got the ball rolling on that. Should be on a SA server next week
No problem – The site still hasn’t loaded :/
hmmm weird. everything is working fine on this side and with my vodacom ip
ill look into this
Ye, pop me a message if anything changes :)
Nick, myScoop loads very quickly on my side.
That’s good to hear Bryan.
It’s still not loading my side :( SEOcowboy loads quickly my side though – I’m off on holiday now, but I’ll be checking out your SEO skills when I return ;)
@Nick Duncan: I’m done registering yet another third party account. I suggest you use the RPXnow.com service to allow people to login via a third party OpenID enabled account.
That’s right, no more account creation for me. OpenID or bust. There’s just no longer any excuse, except laziness and inertia, that prevents web developers from implementing an OpenID login solution.
@Richard I never even thought of that! Thats a very good idea. Thanks, I am going to implement that today as well as an open platform for suggestions, comments and/or complaints on the site. I believe user input is one of the biggest criteria to develop a well balanced, easy to use site.
Ill let you know when this is up and running and once again, thanks for the input!
@Nick: If you need sample code (php) to get this working, I can help you out.
I’m using rpxnow on my own project – ctnlist.co.za – to allow people to log in. The Sign in procedure on ctnlist is being tested – currently it displays what info is passed when you login.
It’s a simple matter of creating the profile and setting the auth cookies, and checking them on each page, and you have a fully functional login system.
@Richard I think I’ve done it!? All seems to be working 100% for now… No need to register anymore! Once again, thanks a mil. This was a brilliant idea.
I am now busy working on the user feedback section. Will post the link once I am done so we can move this convo there and stop irritating everyone else with our comments ;)
Ok, here is the feedback link for myScoop:
http://myscoop.co.za/blog/?p=3
Or simply click on the Feedback link in the site.
Website finally loaded for me :)
I think the site is going to need a fair amount of work to gain that confidence which is so important for getitng people involved, but nice start and I’ll keep an eye on things :)
That was a very short holiday…
Ye, Fri->Sun, back in work tomorrow :)
You see the photographs? – http://imod.co.za/index.php/2009/10/25/photos-of-the-weekend-away-at-button-quail-nature-reserve/
it’s a real pity, when amotomu worked it was a very useful tool, now i’m just over them. will give them one more week then i’m outta there too. afrigator has been good, but i feel i’m still missing something. maybe it’s friends. lol. thanks for the post. nice to know i’m not alone in my disappointment.
Ye, it’s a great shame. I’ve actually heard a few things about a change of management for Amatomu, but unfortunately it’s all off the record, so I can’t say anything else, but let’s hold thumbs! Afrigator is great, but both systems had their own unique highlights..