BloggingZoom Burning Bloggers
- 13 Comment
Blogging Zoom has definitely evolved into it’s own mini social media site. Many bloggers I know use it or have in the past. Getting to the front page is easy, everyone can always use a few extra visitors per day. However, has that gone to their heads?
Blogging Zoom Copy and Paste
Blogging Zooms submission process for new articles has always been a bit annoying. To submit every post you must write 350 characters of text. To get an idea how much that is, it would be almost two times bigger than the first paragraph of this article.
When I submit to social media websites I usually do so 2-5 at a time. That would be stumbleupon, sphinn, mixx, (sometimes digg), and blogging zoom. With submissions and writing my next article, I don’t have time to write 350 characters uniquely for blogging zoom.
The result, Blog about your Blog has been officially been banned by Dictator Vic. I’ve taken a lot of crap just for my submissions at Blogging Zoom. Our latest submission received two comments from Vic scolding me for “copy and pasting”. I noticed my article was the only one receiving attention for “violating the rules”. Then I was told to quite whining by a very nice user. After I told them to stfu, BAYB was banned.
Ooopps…
Double Content and Banning
I only have to assume that Blogging Zoom wasn’t ranking as well for terms or being penalized. Not only is their search system terrible, but they don’t show often in google either. I find it hard to believe it’s “for the blogger”. If it is for the blogger, how would you be helping them by banning them from Blogging Zoom. Sounds like someone is on a power trip.
By duplicating a few sentences of a post, I have never felt any penalties. By making it 350 characters long I suppose it could be a penalty due to it being so long. Blogging Zoom isn’t looking out for their bloggers, it sounds like they are looking out more so for themselves. It’s funny how this rule isn’t in place for any other social media site…
“Two main reasons why we do not allow copy paste. First reason is for the benefit of both Blogging Zoom and you as the blogger. Every time you copy and paste your content in a submission let it be here at Blogging Zoom or any other social voting site you are giving yourself and Blogging Zoom a duplicate content filter penalty with Google.
We ask you to please follow this rules. Not only are you hurting yourself with the copy paste but also fellow bloggers that do follow the rules but are also penalized with a site wide duplicate content penalty.”
After issuing the “no copy and paste” policy I know several of my own contacts have stopped using the service. Honestly for me I have a lot less of a desire to publish articles. Either the comments are rude and nasty, or I’m not writing my description long enough…
Comparison to Digg
I love that Blogging Zoom has compared themselves to digg.
“Blogging Zoom is heading toward one day being a much stronger site then Digg and any other social site. If you need proof of this look at our Alexa vs Digg we are month ahead in traffic for the same time of Digg. If you want to be a Power Zoomer and grow with Blogging Zoom please help the community.”
It’s nice to have a nice high goal set, but being bigger than digg? Get real. First off as a blogger, Vic you know Alexa is worthless. Secondly you guys are no where near digg. Possibly in volume of rude users. How are you helping the community by banning members who aren’t commenting on every post being an idiot?
I’m not one to be negative towards anyone, but like he’s done to many others, Vic (and Blogging Zoom), has just rubbed me the wrong way.
Can Blogging Zoom ever be the next Digg?
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13 Comments on this post
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Rhys said:
I submitted one of my articles today. It got 10 Zooms. So far, I’ve had one click through, and 3 comments.
I saw the 350 character limit, and gave a summary of the article, and so far, people have been reading it on the site, rather than clicking through.
Really worth it.
January 29th, 2008 at 3:40 pm -
Matthew Henrickson said:
Well, some articles do better than others, but I could see the problem with that. If you have the gist of the article, not a lot of reason to clicktrough
January 29th, 2008 at 6:32 pm -
Mark said:
Matthew, I had a rather unexpected yet interesting response to this same topic on my blog.
January 29th, 2008 at 8:03 pm -
Matthew Henrickson said:
thanks for commenting and posting your article
great comments, and I zoomed and left a comment there.
January 29th, 2008 at 9:50 pm -
Tay - Super Blogging said:
Blogging Zoom is a nice site and I do think it has a lot of potential. It would have much more potential if Vic could learn to handle things more professionally though. By insulting everyone who disagrees with him and using the language he uses, he is really limiting himself by pushing a lot of people back.
Vic would be great for someone who is a persuasive or debate blogger, or political. But as for internet marketing and running businesses, that’s not his area. You always need to be polite and have self control, even if you normally wouldn’t. He doesn’t possess that quality.
Either way, I do like Blogging Zoom because it’s very unique. I just think some improvements could be made, and behavior changed. We’ll see.
January 29th, 2008 at 10:25 pm -
K-IntheHouse said:
This would be the second blog I read everyday getting penalized or fall for Vic’s vendetta in 2 days! As Tay said, BZ looks like a cool tool to get some traffic to your blog but their PR really sucks. May be this is their tactic to get more publicity. In the blogging world, some people go for any kind of traffic.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:37 am -
Matthew Henrickson said:
Tay, thanks for the great comment. I thought they had a lot of potential as well, but I think we can all agree Vic seems to be holding them back. Not only does he insult the members, but apparently banning. Now both our url and my user account is banned.
He just has to be more professional. If John Chow reacted that way with all the people who disagreed with him, he’d be not making as much money as he does.
Good luck with BZ, we are calling it quits. Hopefully not mentioning it after this article.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:32 pm -
Matthew Henrickson said:
Who knows K, it definitely doesnt send enough traffic to be worth it
January 30th, 2008 at 12:33 pm -
Marisa said:
I’ve used BZ only a few times, hated the 350 character requirement and just stopped using it. Besides, I don’t stay logged in there and it’s a pain to log in over and over. This is just one more reason to not use bloggingzoom.
I like sphinn and sk*rt, liked Digg better when it was strictly tech. Love Stumble for traffic. Trying Mixx now.
January 30th, 2008 at 2:18 pm -
1 Million in 365 Day said:
I haven’t used BZ yet and I don’t know if I will. After all I don’t want to be banned for doing what I believe is right for me and my blog.
January 31st, 2008 at 3:06 am -
Jylan Wynne said:
I think BloggingZoom is very much a sort of closed community.
I don’t know about Vic, he offers very good advice but he is very blunt and if you don’t like swearing, he will defineately offend you.
February 9th, 2008 at 7:12 pm -
Amanda Fazani said:
It’s great how social networking sites seem to lead me on to one another… I only actually “discovered” Blogging Zoom today!
In a way I’m glad that you can’t copy and paste an article, and also that the article will not be reproduced on the site (which would be great for the blog leechers, of course!).
Until reading this post, I barely know anything about the site, or how it may be biased in favor of the few power users there. If it does work out for my blogs, then great! But if not, it won’t be earth shattering for me. I have many other social media outlets which I have been spending time developing, which I know are already good sources of traffic for me.
February 12th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
[…] Zoom is the most popular of the three. I’ve actually already written about Blogging Zoom: BloggingZoom Burning Bloggers. Yes, it was a bit negative. A while after this post, Vic actually apologized, unbanned us, […]