Share Blog Traffic Via CLIQ

CLIQin.com Logo

Background Info:

Just the other day, I noticed this service come across my FeedReader. It’s called CLIQ but the domain is actually CLIQin.com CLIQ is a service that allows bloggers to work together in order to share their collective readership as well as audience engagement. Members who are part of the same CLIQ share links to featured, popular and related posts on their own site through the CLIQ Widget. Users can manage which posts are featured on the widget as well as see reports about which blogs and posts are getting the most views and driving the most referrals around the CLIQ. By the end of this review, your going to be sick and tired of seeing the word CLIQ.

First Things First:

When you register an account with CLIQ, you’ll be presented with two options. Starting your own CLIQ or joining a pre-existing CLIQ. For the purpose of this review, I have created my own called Jeffro2pt0 A CLIQ Covering SEO, Blogging and Web 2.0. When creating your own, you’ll be presented with a number of options. These include the name of your CLIQ, Description, username, email, password, BLOG URL, and CLIQ Enrollment where you can choose whether to make your CLIQ private (invite only) or public. I have chosen to make my CLIQ private because I want to have complete control over who joins my group. Since I’ll have complete control over who joins my CLIQ, I can ensure that only relevant blog postings and URLs are displayed within my widget.

Your CLIQ Widget:

After you register your CLIQ, your given the chance to invite others via email. Unlike Quechup, your friends won’t be bombarded with invite spam since this is a manual process. Once your done with the invites, you can then give your CLIQ a public avatar image. This image will represent your CLIQ and will be seen within the CLIQ directory.

ShinySilver Bold Black GoofyGreen

At the time of this writing, CLIQ only supports three different color schemes for their widget. Those are: Shiny Silver, Bold Black, and Goofy Green. I would imagine that there will be additional color schemes available sometime in the future but I wonder, why don’t services that offer a widget give users the chance to colorize the widget themselves via CSS or HEX codes? It can’t be that hard to implement. The minimum width of the widget is 160px but will scale to fit the width of your blogs sidebar.

Once you choose your theme and move on to the next step, CLIQin will automatically try to recognize the blogging software attached to your domain and provide you with the appropriate code to copy and paste into your blogs sidebar. Here is some detailed information from the CLIQ support forums in regards to which blogging platforms are currently supported.

In order to fully support a blog platform, two things have to “work” :

1. CLIQ has to be able to ‘read in’ information about the posts (Title, Tags, etc.)

2. The CLIQ widget (which is JavaScript) has to display on the page correctly.

Currently, we fully support blogs with standard templates on TypePad, WordPress and Blogger.

Blog templates with customized fields and names for data elements require some manual set-up from our team, which we can do on a case-by-case basis.

Due to their JavaScript limitations, the CLIQ Widget does not currently work on Hosted WordPress blogs. If you’d like to see JavaScript on Hosted WordPress, contact your Senator…

We are looking into ‘slimmed down’ versions of the CLIQ Widget that would offer (likely limited) functionality on the platforms we don’t yet support…so stayed tuned!

Configuring The Widget:

There are a few options in which you can use to configure what is displayed within the widget on other blogs. You can choose to feature your most RECENT post which is updated daily. You can choose to feature your LONG TAIL which shows one of the five posts with the least total views, this also rotates daily. Or you can choose the manual option and select an article from the list of articles that are presented to you. This is a good feature if you want to pump some Google Juice into a specific page.

Configure The Widget

There are a few things that I don’t like about this widget. The first is that, it doesn’t look good if you have a skinny sidebar for widgets. The text appears cramped and at times, the content within the widget looks like a mess. The second, there is no link displayed that allows visitors to JOIN the CLIQ or at least REQUEST TO JOIN if private.

CLIQ Reports:

Since I created an account yesterday, the reports section of CLIQ is pretty bare. The reports section displays a dynamically generated graph that highlights views that were contributed through CLIQ. You can choose to view stats from your own blog, member blogs or, all blogs. The stats timetable is broken up into three sections: The Last 1 Day, Last 7 Days and Last 30 Days. Alternatively, you can select ALL VIEWS or how many times your CLIQ Page was viewed within the CLIQ Directory.

One Of The CLIQ Report Views

Conclusion:

Overall, this service reminds me of old fashioned web rings from way back when. Web rings were essentially a group of websites that were all related towards a specific topic. Maybe I’ll coin a new term here and say that CLIQ is WebRings 2.0. Unlike MyBlogLog, BlogRush, or any other community based widget I have come across, this one gives site owners full control over who is part of the group which means, you can really create a targeted CLIQ and share each other’s traffic. Because most if not all of the posts within your CLIQ will be related, there is a higher probability of someone clicking on your blog post, thereby gaining you a new visitor.

I would compare this service to BlogRush but that is for another post. If your a blogger currently using BlogRush, I strongly advise you to check this service out and create your own CLIQ. Work on inviting high traffic blogs that are related to your content and build a small niche network where everyone within your CLIQ benefits. As it stands, I currently have my own CLIQ. If your blog covers the topics of SEO, Web 2.0, Blogging or WordPress related material, your welcome to request an invite to join the group.

As always, I look forward to hearing your feedback whether it be about this review, grammatical corrections or questions.

A Big Heart Felt Thanks To YOU

Thanks To You

I’d like to say thank you to my sponsors. Just kidding. No sponsor has been dumb enough to give me money so instead, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my readers. This blog was started back at the end of May as a one year project to see where I could take it. So after four months into the project, let’s take a look at some statistics.

Subscribers:

This site now has a total of 103 Subscribers according to Feedburner. This number varies day to day but is steadily showing over 100 subscribers. Thanks to all of you who have subscribed either by email or by RSS. I truly do appreciate it as it tells me that what I’m writing is important or at the very least informative.

Conversations:

At the time of this writing, this site has a total of 348 comments on 227 posts contained within 13 categories and 1,147 tags. Some of the comments within this specific stat are actually trackbacks or pingbacks but for the most part, the comments were made by real people. One of the major goals that I am trying to achieve with this site is building a COMMUNITY. A social community at that. A community that contributes intelligently to the conversations that I start with each post.

Any time I publish a post on this site, I always look forward to checking my email to see if and who has contributed to the conversation. I realize that as a blogger, comments are hard to come by. That is why I try to thank everyone who leaves a comment as I’m appreciative of the time you took out of your day to stop by and say hello. So I’ll end this by saying THANK YOU to each and everyone of you who have left a comment on this blog since it’s inception. It’s nice to know that I’m not blogging within an empty room.

Akismet The Time Saver:

Every blogger seems to toot their own horn when they reach a milestone with spam such as Darren Rowse. I’ll be no different except to let you know that so far, Akismet has blocked 1,377 spam messages. Although a far cry from two million, Akismet has been one hell of a time saver for me. I will say however that, Akismet is not perfect and in recent weeks, Akismet has been missing spam but overall, it’s the best anti spam solution I’ve ever seen other than disconnecting from the net. So here is a big thank you to everyone involved with Akismet.

In Closing:

According to the logs, each month has shown a steady increase in traffic, an increase in subscribers and more importantly, an increase in user interaction. In the past four months, I’ve managed to develop virtual relationships with various people across various blogs. The next four months will be interesting as I continue to experiment with this blog and continue with my writing. I’ll write up another post like this when we hit the eight month mark to see where we have progressed. Rest assured that I appreciate every comment, trackback, pingback, linkback, bookmark, stumble, digg ect. that is given to me. It would be great if I could get paid to do this sort of work, but as it stands, this blog is advertisement and sponsor free. So in the mean time, what I mentioned above is what I consider blogging currency. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m no longer a blogging bum, thanks to you of course.

Readers First

Unlike most other sites or blogs, I don’t mind thanking those who have helped me reach this point. So in no particular order, I’d like to thank the following people. I apologize if you don’t see your name on this list.

Last but not least, thanks to all of you who have joined my MyBlogLog community, added me to Twitter and to everyone that I have associated with on TalkShoe.If you want to be removed from this list or if you would like for me to change the site your link is pointing to, let me know by leaving a comment.

Icon Based Social Bookmarking Plugin

m Lienzo.com Logo

Aaron over at Milienzo.com has published his first ever WordPress Plugin entitled ‘I Love Social Bookmarking‘. I love social bookmarking gives your readers a chance to submit your site/articles to various social bookmarking services via a tidy drop-down list.

Screenshot of the plugin in action:

Screenshot Of The Plugin

Version 0.1b is a pre-release trial version released to eliminate bugs and identify popular feature requests before a general public release. If you’d like to help me test this version please install it and let me know of any problems you encounter or additional features you’d like to see included.

Personally, I enjoy using the ShareThis plugin as it provides many more options than Milienzo’s plugin, including the option of emailing the post. However, this is his first ever plugin so it will be interesting to see where he takes this. Milienzio, my advice is to look at what ShareThis has to offer and see if you can improve upon that.

Break Down Of Communication

Ever notice how a good conversation on a forum or blog will usually take a nose dive? What was once an informative exchange of information turns into a slug fest with expletives being tossed around left and right with someone usually being referred to as a nazi. I’ve learned that the term for this breakdown in communication is called ‘Godwin’s Law’.

Back in 1990, Mike Godwin of the EFF noted a feature of online discussion groups: As a thread gathered steam, members would start hurling insults and inevitably someone would be compared to Adolf Hitler. Hence Godwins Law. The longer an online conversation continues, the greater the possibility of a reference to Nazis. Usually at this point, the conversation is over.

Although this video doesn’t highlight the comparison to Adolf Hitler, it does a nice job of showing just how communication breaks down.

Viewer Voices: Where We Respond To The Opinions Of Our Uninformed Viewers

FeedSmith Plugin Security Update

Feedburner.com LogoThe FeedBurner Feedsmith plugin for WordPress which consolidates all of your WordPress RSS Feeds into one, has undergone a small security update. According to Feedburner, older versions of FeedSmith, can be vulnerable to what is called a “cross-site request forgery.” This permits someone to change WordPress plugin settings on your system without you noticing during the time you are signed into your WordPress control panel.

Feedburner recommends downloading the latest version of the plugin, FeedSmith V2.3 as this version ensures that the only person who can change FeedSmith settings is the administrative account that is signed into your WordPress account.

Here are the directions to update your plugin.

  1. Download version 2.3 of the plugin.
  2. Sign in to your WordPress admin control panel.
  3. Under Plugins, locate the current FeedSmith plugin, and click “Deactivate.”
  4. Copy the plugin file, FeedBurner_FeedSmith_Plugin.php into your default WordPress plugin directory, wp-content/plugins/
  5. Reactivate the plugin by logging in to your WordPress administration area, clicking Plugins, then clicking Activate at the end of the “FeedBurner FeedSmith” row.

At the end of this process, v2.3 will be active and will use your existing feed redirection settings; there is no need to re-enter them. You will also be protected against any potential request forgery attack.

Schwag Is Almost Here

StartupSchwag Logo

StartupSchag the successor to Valleyschwag that I wrote about here, ( From ValleySchwag To StartupSchwag ) will be shipping their first batch of schwag starting on Thursday/Friday. This means that the schwag should start arriving on your doorstep starting on October 16th.

Thanks to the guys at StartupSchwag as they have sent me a care package for review. I’ll be taking photos of the entire process from obtaining the package all the way to wearing the product. Stay tuned for that.

Over 600 Free Vector Logos

AllFreeLogo.com Logo

Are you in the need of a professional looking logo but lack the artistic skills needed to create your own? After registering an account on AllFreeLogo you’ll have access to over 600 vector logos. The logos can be browsed by each letter in the alphabet or by popularity.

Before you get excited about using these logos on your own site, you should know that all of these logos are professional logos that are already in use by major corporations or businesses. These vector logos are available for download for those who are in the printing business who need a high quality logo to screen onto T-Shirts or other merchandise. Here are a few logo samples:

Apple Logo FireFox Logo Mountain Dew Logo Ubuntu Logo

The logos vary in file formats. Each logo is either a .EPS file or .AI file, both of which can be edited in Adobe Illustrator. Although you can’t explicitly lay claim to these logos, they do make for an excellent source of inspiration.

AskApache 404 Google Fix

Askapache.com Logo

For those of you who are using the ajax powered Google search plugin for your WordPress 404 page that I featured here Add Google Ajax To Your WP 404 Page, you may have noticed after upgrading to WordPress 2.3 that the search results have stopped displaying. A number of others including myself have experienced this problem and the fix is relatively simple.

In your WordPress admin panel, click on the OPTIONS link. Now click on the AA Google 404 link which will load the options for this specific plugin. Where it says Google API Key, click on the GET ONE link. Type in your URL to Google and they will provide you with a new API key. Replace the plugins current API key with the newly acquired one and click the save button. Your 404 search results should reappear.

Babytalk In The 21st Century

As I was listening to Leo Laporte on his Tech Guy radio show, I noticed how he tried to pronounce a variety of different Web 2.0 company names and in the end, he mentioned that it sounded like a bunch of baby talk. I have to admit, listening to Leo try to say the names of these companies was hilarious. That’s when I got the idea to feature a list of Web 2.0 companies who’s names are nothing short of googlymoogly.

Not only is it sometimes hard to pronounce these names, but after you figure them out, the question then becomes, what do they do? I’ve taken an excerpt from each companies About page, as they would be the ones to best explain what the heck their company does.

If I missed any, be sure to let me know by leaving a comment at the end of this article.

Vyew Logo

vyew – Vyew is a next-generation online collaboration and web conferencing service that brings people and content together. With Vyew you can host LIVE conferences and work collaboratively on content asynchronously over time, ANYTIME.

Vizu Logo

vizu – Vizu provides services that make online opinion polling and market research easy, fast, accessible, and affordable to everyone.

Musio Logo

muiso – Muiso (pronounced MOO-EE-SO) is the best new way to enjoy music on your computer or mobile player.

Philoi Logo

philoi – Philoi (pronounced ‘fee – loy’) is the first person-to-person online bookmark sharing community!
Stay connected with your friends and the Web at the same time!

Jamendo Logo

jamendo – jamendo is a new model for artists to promote, publish, and be paid for their music.

Diigo Logo

diigo – Diigo (dee’go) is about “Social Annotation”. By combining social bookmarking, clippings, in situ annotation, tagging, full-text search, easy sharing and interactions, Diigo offers a powerful personal tool and a rich social platform for knowledge users, and in the process, turns the entire web into a writable, participatory and interactive media.

Chuquet Logo

chuquet – chuquet scans thousands of blogs to find the latest and biggest news stories

Bloggoogle Logo

bloggoggle – Peer rated and categorized, bloggogglers are searching the Web’s credible best and asserting themselves among them. It’s about building and sharing networks of industry expertise. It’s about navigating the pros efficiently and communicating your value with authority.

Filangy Logo

filangy – No longer Online so I suppose it’s available.

Tedda Logo

Yedda – Yedda strives to merge the convenience and efficiency of search with the unlimited value of individual knowledge to get you the best answers to your questions.

Qumana Logo

Qumana – Qumana Software, Inc. is a leading developer of tools and services for bloggers.

IMVU logo

Imvu – IMVU is a consumer internet startup in downtown Palo Alto. IMVU makes the world’s best 3D instant messenger, which is now in beta testing with more than 1 million customers around the world.

Edgeio Logo

Edgeio – Edgeio is making it possible for valuable content to be made available for sale on any web site. The web site does not need an ecommerce system, or a billing system – edgeio takes care of both

Lulu Logo

Lulu – Lulu eliminates traditional entry barriers to publishing, and enables content creators and owners – authors and educators, videographers and musicians, businesses and nonprofits, professionals and amateurs – to bring their work directly to their audience.

Ookles Logo

Ookles – Another service that apparently has bit the dust but you can get in if you know the password.

Goowy Logo

Goowy – goowy is a service that offers you simple, intuitive tools for communicating and sharing on the web.

My Me Logo

My-me – MyMe is a FREE web-based service that lets you easily create your personal online identity.

Elgg Logo

Elgg – Elgg is an open source social platform based around choice, flexibility and openness: a system that firmly places individuals at the centre of their activities.

Qoop Logo

Qoop – QOOP turns digital content into products.

Etsy Logo

Etsy – Etsy is an online marketplace for buying and selling all things handmade.

If I missed any that you think should of made the list of company names that resemble babytalk, please be sure to add or suggest them by leaving a comment.

Bugroff Welcome To The AntiSocial

I found this image and site mentioned on TheGlobalGeekPodcast blog and thought it was so hilarious, that I would share it here as well. It’s interesting that I just read a blog post over at ChrisBrogan.com that discussed the overall feeling that social media was nothing but a waste of time. Then, I took a visit to Michael Baileys site and checked out his post, showing off his ability to disconnect himself from MySpace and Facebook.

I smell a battle of all battles brewing within the interwebs. Social vs AntiSocial. Wisdom of crowds vs Wisdom of one. A realization that, just by having an account on all of these services that appear to be a boon for companies is simply not enough. Although you try and try to garner friendships online, nothing compares to a real-world friendship/relationship. Using Twitter and other social outlets becomes a fruitless attempt of being heard as you find out no one is listening because your’re seemingly not important enough.

Let me know what you think.

Click the image to see the full size.