Spotplex came into the picture just a few days ago and has a good chance of becoming a Digg competitor. We decided to hold off writing about it so we could test it out, and get a taste of how it works. Just like Digg, they promote content from around the web. Instead of relying on user submitted content like Digg, Spotplex has bloggers enter code into their blog, and then they use that code to determine how many people are reading each article. The more views an article receives, the higher it will appear on Spotplex.
We decided that we wanted to get in on this beta, so we signed up and received the code to insert into our blog. Inserting the code was extremely easy, and the image below shows what it’s like to sign up.
Normally the site is pretty fast, but today everything seemed to load really slow. I imagine they’re probably under heavy load right now as they adjust to the increase in traffic as more blogs are added, and more people come to check out the top stories.
Assuming they do things right, they may be able to catch up to Digg sooner rather than later. Looking at Digg’s recent statistics, it looks like they’re on a slow downward trend. While Alexa isn’t always the most accurate source out there (so take it for what it’s worth), they’re showing that Digg ranked 104 on the web yesterday. While this is still an impressive number, just 173 days ago Digg was ranked 23.
I like Spotplex because it gives you a real-time idea of what’s popular around the web. They divide the content into categories like technology, business, sports, and science. By clicking on “Blog Standing,” you’ll get a list of the most “popular” blogs based upon traffic that have the code for Spotplex inserted into their sites.
Their real-time approach is interesting and could prove to be superior to Digg’s voting system that’s often times filled with fraudulent votes. Another interesting feature is that they currently don’t have a commenting system. This could be both good and bad because it forces people to visit the blog where the article originated to comment.
While it will probably take a while for Spotplex to build a strong user-base, they’re off to a good start. But where will it go from here? Your guess is as good as mine.
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The gaming section needs work but the site is still new.
I think once more sites get involved, it’ll be a better source for news… but until then.. especially for certain categories, there won’t be much.
Assuming this really takes off it could be a strong competitor because of the automation involved in collecting blog posts. It’s actually something I noticed that could be of great success for social news sites. I saw that Digg’s podcast section was the most tolerable section b/c it was subscription based..and automatically pulled podcasts from around the web…rather than having users submit individual podcasts which can be slow in comparison.
While I don’t know the site well at all, as I don’t have much time to spare anymore, I would hope they include major media sites…a particular favorite of mine is CNET’s News.com.
On your note of the digg traffic drop, it’s been something i’ve been following for some time now on alexa…and a friend of mine was looking into it more deeply and suggested that it may be a general trend..as he was also seeing it on other prominent website (i think he said techcrunch was receiving the same downward trend)…and that it may be due to an upgrade or change in the alexa toolbar versions…or a difference caused maybe by the upgrade to IE7…having lost some alexa toolbar users. Can’t be sure, but it’s definitely a possibility that would account for drops in traffic that are seen similarly on multiple sites.
Thanks for the insight Curtiss! It very well could be a general trend. Just like last year around April, a lot of the tech sites saw huge jumps.
After you said that I felt the need to go check other sites like Slashdot. I think Slashdot’s trend is far worse than Digg as far as a decline goes which is disappointing to see. Of course, I don’t know exactly how accurate Alexa’s stats are either…I have heard they are pretty bad.
I just don’t see how it’s going to be popular. All it will tell you who are the biggest sites on the net. The little guys like us will never get a look in.
It’s script isn’t accurate. The stats it’s picking up on my site are way out.
I also noticed our stats were off as well, but I just keep in mind the fact that it’s brand spankin’ new, and in beta. I’ll give it a chance and see what will happen with it. In the mean time, it sends a few extra visitors our way per day, so I can’t complain
You definitely have to give it them a chance to develop the site a little more. I have already pondered how they could do an algorithm that would work, and I have come up with several ideas how they can make sure to keep a variety of sites on the front page.