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Hey Soul Cast!.....I'm calling you out!

D6fer posted on Sep 13, 2008 | views: 551 | Tags: blogging, popularity, soulcast, bias, a dieing website, lists, bluff
ok, ok, ok.....I know this is going to sound whiny......I know it will sound petty.....maybe a bit....I don't know....self centered?.....but I have to know.....when I joined soulcast, I was intrigued.....I did a few posts....got into a few good debates....did a few more posts.....my popularity began to grow a bit.....then I became curiousas to how far I could go up the ladder so to speak.....I wanted to have fun and enjoy my time here, but still was curious how far I could take it.
I began to realize that the Soul Cast world was not as vast as I once believed.......I doubt there are more than 100 bloggers on here that post or comment on a somewhat daily basis.
And less than 1000 even exist here anymore.
But my self centered beef with soulcast is this......I watch the popularity scale on the left there each day......sometimes I will make the feaure posts......sometimes with more than one.....but I have yet to make that collumn.....wtf?.....how does that thing work?......sometimes I can have a post that has more views, and comments than half of the featured posts, and still not even make that page........So I gathered some statistics.........my last 10 posts......1177 views.....196 comments......39 different commentors.......then I looked at the guy at the top of the daily popularity list, his last 10...........757 views......89 comments......11 different commentors....wtf?....ok.......so then i checked to see how a political counterpart of mine here has done with his last 10........452 views......39 comments......10 commentors.....(hmmmm...at least I feel better now ;p)......then I checked numero uno's numbers (sorry ed....everyone knows who you are! ) 1197 views......135 comments.....43 commentors.

This makes no sense.....the only thing I can gather from all this are these few gut feelings.....soulcast is dying......the opperators of it are also bloggers on here, are liberals and don't like me or my politics.

Maybe I'm losing it....hell, I don't know.....do your own stats on your last 10....post em here.....lets see if there is any life left on this planet

oh yeah.....calling out Soul Cast admin......what is up with this s*** anyway? Got any stats that might be interesting to share with the few bloggers left here?.....hello?
Soul Cast?.....Anybody?


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Comments

  • Lucytorial said on Sep 13, 2008....
    Honey, they sacel that shit weirdly, its like comments rule, so get your posts commented on, comment more on others I don't freaking know......
     
    In my eyes your are popular with me... if that helps.
  • quietone said on Sep 13, 2008....
    I don't know about the popularity list, but I do know it has been very very quiet.  When the featured post only has 4 comments on it sometimes, then something is missing....... or a lot of some ones!  I think we are mostly all here, just all blogged out maybe??  I don't know either D6.  I don't read much politics myself, but even so, other categories here are just as dead.  Don't feel alone!!   :(
  • CayenneMan said on Sep 13, 2008....
      D6fer, all kidding aside, if your an heterosexual male you ain't going nowhere. That's the way I see it.  
  • beyondtheveil said on Sep 13, 2008....
    d6- I just did some calculations and I can tell that the last ten posts don't mean anything. There are people down on the list showing (at this time) who have five to seven times as many views and comments than ones farther up the list.

    I'm going to guess that SC has a formula in the computer that decides this list and the point is to get many different people on it rather than have a list that would show mostly the same people. It even gives new people a chance to be on it and could serve to introduce them, not to mention feeling good about being here.

    I don't think its a popularity list as much as a 'whose here' list. The computer hasn't gotten to you yet.
  • Twylarants said on Sep 13, 2008....
    I don't know what kind of calculations are used, either, but who is Lady Willow? She's at the bottom of the list, but has no posts yet. She's probably someone who is here under another name, because she's already got subscribers, but she not the first name to appear on the list without having any posts up.
    ssmithford was on the list last week and she hasn't written in quite a while.
    My name even showed up for about an hour one morning, and I have nothing posted.
    I think it was right above Maxwell777. Great. I'd rather be left off.
  • evil_twin said on Sep 13, 2008....
    Honestly, I have no idea what the new 'popularity' list entails. Most of the time, the people on the list are people I've never even seen before. And I've never once made it to the list! There are times when I'm really active, commenting a lot and posting a lot, and my posts get a ton of hits and comments. But I don't make it to the list. *shrugs* I'm clueless.

    People used to complain before that the list wasn't fair because some of the people didn't post anymore. But I personally think it made a lot more sense than what they've got going on now. Because at least before the majority of the people on the list were actually well known and quite active. And now it's sort of a grab bag without much sense.

    -evil_twin LA
  • Eilan said on Sep 13, 2008....
    This place blows chunks lately.  I've been finding excuses to stay away.
  • Expendable said on Sep 13, 2008....

    Guys, this place always dies in the summer.

  • ALIENated said on Sep 13, 2008.... 
    
If you click on that little ,,,see all under the Popular Members list,
you will see the real order of popularity, as it used to appear on the main page.
I am my usual number 13 on the list. (Fitting, I suppose.) I am pretty sure that
the popularity order was once determined by the number of people subscribed to
you (which makes sense), but I really think it is no longer calculated at all and 
the list is just sitting there in limbo. Otherwise, SilverWhisper and hunter boyce
chandler would probably no longer be in the top 20.

The list on the main page is just some random list of bloggers that started
to appear that way a couple of months ago and has little or no meaning.
  • pusscat said on Sep 13, 2008....
    btv - I think you may have hit on something there when you said a list "of who is here".  I was on that column once and didn't know why but I had been on SC a heck of a lot that weekend looking at and commenting on so many posts.  I wonder if it is more of how many times you log into SC at any given time rather than the posts you put up?. . .
  • dailyachesandpains said on Sep 13, 2008....
    Ummm...I'm not sure what happened, but it's not listed like it used to be.  I don't think I've ever been "featured" and my posts are not worthy of being "featured" since they're much about nothing. 
     
    I personally feel that we'll all come here one day and the site will be expired.  I don't think there's a SC admin.  They [Soul Cast ]haven't written an update/post in a LONG time and it's users helping users under their "Help" bloggy.
     
    I'm just enjoying it until it dies...
     
    Daily
  • FutureGoddess said on Sep 13, 2008....
    It also seems that this "topic" comes up every 3-6 months or so....
  • travelr712 said on Sep 13, 2008....
    soulcast changed the way the popularity list was calculated at the beginning of the summer because hottips bitched about it so long and so loud, threating one of her famous lawsuits if they didn't, and a few others got on board, so now it's not just based on how many posts, views and comments you have on your blog, but also on how many comments you place on other people's blogs, how often and how long you spend here, and how many subscribers you have.
  • sheltercrow said on Sep 13, 2008....
    When you makes a mistake getting onto soulcast sometimes you get an error message that comes from AWeber Communications, Inc

    Email Marketing Made Easy

    Over 43,000 businesses use AWeber to build relationships with website visitors and turn them into loyal customers.

    That may explain all the commercial advertising here abouts. It seems that soulcast was created for the most part to turn "anonymous website visitors into prospects."

    And build "lasting relationships with an automated sequence of personalized messages."

    The only article that I found that seems to concern soulcast, outside a couple of fake promotional spots, is The Hidden World of Click Fraud by Akinola Akintomide
  • day2day said on Sep 13, 2008....
    I thought that was kinda strange too.  I was very
    surprised to see my name there.   I haven't even blogged that
    long.  And i don't have many comments and i don't comment that much either.   All i could say to myself was, "what the hell".
    I am not popular. Why did they say that.   Who runs this site?
    day
  • silver_phoenix said on Sep 13, 2008....
    hey- i just saw my name appear on the list so i'm thinking it has to do with the number of times a day you sign on (maybe!) i'm just stoked that i got on the list and was here to see it :-D
  • D6fer said on Sep 13, 2008....
    hmmmmmm.....interesting......16 responses.....top of the feature page......this is pathetic......anyone know of any similar sites that are actually thriving?
  • silver_phoenix said on Sep 13, 2008....
    ummmm....no!!! i've looked for sites like this and there really aren't any that compare.
  • ALIENated said on Sep 14, 2008.... 
    
Here is an old post I did about all this ...
    http://www.soulcast.com/post/show/117733/Popular-Members----The-Numbers-Do-Not-Lie# 
    
However, I do not think all that applies anymore since they went to the 
random list on the mian page. And, as I said, I think the follow up list is
not longer updated and is little more than a random list of bloggers that
are here or were once here.
  • travelr712 said on Sep 14, 2008....
    imo, and not to sound like a jerk, but this post is the reason the phrase 'you can't please everyone' was coined.
  • day2day said on Sep 14, 2008....

    I know you can't please everyone. I was just wondering who upkeeps this site and   since i don't see any ad's, then how does it survive?   It can't survive indefinately.  What if they hang a 'closed' sign on the door. Then, where would i go to let the world know about my annonymous life?    day

  • travelr712 said on Sep 14, 2008....
    LOL day. sc isn't the only enterprise that the owner runs. and they get some from adsense clicks, they just don't advertise this as payed blogging anymore, because so many people bitched for so long that they don't make any money, and of course, hottips threatened yet ANOTHER of her law suits, so they stopped doing it.
  • mOOn_platOOn said on Sep 15, 2008....

     

    Has Hottips ever actually done anything? She's a bigger windbag than FILL IN YOUR MOST HATED POLITICIAN HERE.

  • travelr712 said on Sep 15, 2008....
    no moon, never. and i was told by a few that have been here longer than me that she's had these 'lawsuits' for over 2 years now. but you see, i also have a post from hottips4u confirming that it is a made up persona. it's just somebody trying to rile people on sc for their own amusement.
  • mOOn_platOOn said on Sep 15, 2008....
     
    Thankyou camdaman20. The ghost of copsunited.
     
  • travelr712 said on Sep 15, 2008....
    um, ya moon.
  • hotaka said on Sep 16, 2008....
    The popularity list gets updated every two years. It was just done last spring. Check back again in spring 2010. I am sure you will be there. So don't throw in the towel just because your name isn't in lights. The important thing is that you have people reading you and commenting. I have to use titles like "Look at My Genitals" in order to get attention. ;)
  • hotaka said on Sep 16, 2008....
    I just read through all the comments and I gotta say two things: at the end of the summer of 2006 I made a comment something like, "Let's see how many of us are still here by Christmas." I said so because I noticed that basically all original SC members from the time of Ceation had gone and because the number of people posting and commenting was definitely going down. Also, there are many new names I see here but still there's a small core group of maybe 100 that participate at least weekly and I have a hard enough time reading more than a dozen people a week, so I am OK with a small crowd. If you go to the home page and check out the last page of Recent Posts you may find a lot of weird stuff about roll playing Net games in broken English and it's really hard to join any conversation about that.
  • Twylarants said on Sep 16, 2008....
    Well, someone's found a foolproof way to get their post on the featured post page:
    http://www.soulcast.com/post/show/153904/WHAT-ARE-THE-BEST-PICK-UP-LINES%3F
    Create yet another alt for yourself, tag your post with words like "HOTsex, sex, Female",  to guarantee views from real readers, and augment those views with hits from your many alts. Comment under your alt's names, and voila!
    You have 430+ views and 28 comments!
     Where you goin, now, catch22?
    "I'M gOInG TO the FEaTurE pAGe!" 
  • travelr712 said on Sep 16, 2008....
    wow, good catch twirley! something tugged at me about that screen name, but i wasn't interested enough to find out what.
     
    just goes to show that no matter how you build the system, somebody can always find a way to fuck with it.
  • sheltercrow said on Sep 21, 2008....
    I was just fooling around the other day and searched "soulcast spam" and got this odd site...

    We want free content

    The philosophy of SoulCast is realized:

    As with any idea that’s new, it takes explanation and some getting used to. When we launched SoulCast, we had some specific goals in mind. We wanted to create a forum where people could share their raw thoughts and opinions without having them watered down by self-promoting images or gimmicky blog pages. We got excited as our membership began to grow and people were starting to have conversations with each other. But are our members really seeing the reason for SoulCast? Apparently, they are. Check out some great snippets from our very own members who get our philosophy. Feel free to comment with your own testimonial about your positive SoulCast experience!

    Reading between the lines you get this:

    As with any new business, it takes some time to become profitable. When we launched SlaveCast, we had some specific goals in mind. We wanted to create a website where suckers created content for us for free, without any self promoting images or gimmicky blog pages distracting them from our AdSense ads. We got excited as our free content grew from nothing and our AdSense income increased. But are our members really seeing the reason for SlaveCast? Apparently, they are NOT. Check out some great snippets from our very own slaves who make us a shitload of money. Feel free to comment with your own testimonial about your positive SlaveCast experience!

    The adsense integration is nice, but they could improve on it. Especially if they manage to become a premium publisher. Take notice people, this is blackhat seo done right.
  • sheltercrow said on Sep 21, 2008....
    Then a search of "blackhat seo"

    SEO Black Hat: SEO Blog and Private Forum

    Tired of useless Top 10 Lists for ranking in Google? Looking for effective and insightful info? SEO Black Hat Blog offers articles on Blackhat SEO, Linkbait & Link Spamming. And if you need to escape White Hat SEO Whiners, check out The Private Black Hat Search Engine Optimization Forum.
  • sheltercrow said on Sep 21, 2008....
    For a primer on black hat.

    White hat versus black hat

    SEO techniques can be classified into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques that search engines do not approve of. The search engines attempt to minimize the effect of the latter, among them spamdexing. Industry commentators have classified these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black hat SEO. White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.

    An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.

    White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility, although the two are not identical.

    Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.

    Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review.

    One infamous example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices. Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's list.
  • sheltercrow said on Sep 21, 2008....
    then a search of "soulcast blackhat" got this.

    Another parasitic website ‘helping’ you to make money

    by Roger Kondraton July 23, 2006

    I love this, everyone couple weeks I accidentally stumble across a website thats revenue model is absolutely parasitic. Take SoulCast for example.

    Their model is to help you make money by hosting your blog for you. Hmmm. Yup, thats what they do. Although they do dress it up much more than that. See below excerpt (my comments will be included in brackets like this).

    [...]

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