Sphinn: Our Social Site For Search & Internet Marketing Professionals

When Search Engine Land launched last December, I talked about liking the name in part because it sounded like "a community, where people can meet, talk, discuss and network." I promised to upgrade the site to help a community thrive. It took much longer than the original "month or so" I envisioned to make this […]

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When Search Engine
Land launched
last December, I talked about liking the name in part because
it sounded like "a community, where people can meet, talk, discuss and network."
I promised to upgrade the site to help a community thrive. It took much longer
than the original "month or so" I envisioned to make this happen. But today,
we’re happy to unveil our new social site, Sphinn.

We pronounce it "spin" despite the strange spelling, which I’ll explain
further below. But first, here’s what Sphinn is intended to provide:

Better Commenting For Search Engine Land

Over 1,100 of you have bravely registered and endured our use of TypePad to
manage comments since we launched. Bless you! Within a week or so, that goes
away. You’ll be able to use your Sphinn account to comment more easily on our
stories, with the comments flowing back here at Search Engine Land.

Better News Sharing For Search & Internet Marketers

At the end of each business day, we diligently produce our
SearchCap newsletter
that recaps everything we think was significant in search. Stories we list come
not just from Search Engine Land but also over 100 sources across the web.

We plan to continue that, don’t worry! But which of those many stories we
list daily might be deemed important by our community as a whole? Sphinn is a
way for anyone to share news stories (your own stories or those from others) and
allow a community to vote on what’s hot.

In addition, this Digg-style voting model is
especially appealing to some readers. Some people like email newsletters. Some
people like blog posts. Some prefer to get their news in forums. And more and
more, a growing new audience wants news delivered up with a community flavor.

By no means do we envision Sphinn as replacing general news sites like Digg.
We just think the story submission model can work and be powerful in a
specialized area such as search, as well.

By the way, we’re not the first to try this for search. In February 2006,
The Search Engine Press was
launched, then John Battelle kicked off
SearchMob in September of that
year. Since then, we’ve had others appear, including
BUMPzee and
ISEdb Scoop. We’re happy to join them!

Allow Search Engine Land Forum Discussions

In our short history, we’ve grown a healthy readership — nearly 4,000 email
subscribers, 13,000 people taking our
main search news feed and
anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 unique visitors per day. However, readers can only
comment about what we write about, at the moment. What if they spot something
that’s not tied to a news story or a blog post and want to discuss it? What if
there’s an issue in the space in general that comes up before someone writes
about it? How about the ability just to share tips with each other.

Sphinn will let our readers (and anyone!) start discussions independently of
our stories or any stories that have been posted on the web. Plus, people can
vote for discussions they think are particularly good.

Better Virtual Networking

Something I love about search marketing is how welcoming veterans are to new
people coming into the space. We hope Sphinn will allow people to set up their
own virtual business cards using profiles and make friends. Over time, we want
to especially build out the Network
area at Sphinn.

Better Real-Life Networking

We run a number of Search Marketing
Expo
events during the year, plus people meet up at events other than the
ones we hold. A common problem — aside from knowing all the relevant events
that are happening — is how to network when you arrive at a show. We hope the
Calendar area at Sphinn will help
you find events to attend, associate yourself with going to them and in turn,
perhaps make friends before you arrive.

More About Sphinn

So that’s the overview? Want to learn more? Check out the site! It’s in beta
at the moment — so beta that we haven’t even had a chance to put a beta label
up there! When you arrive, here are some things to do:

  • Register! This lets you submit,
    comment and create a profile page to share with others.
    Here are profiles of those who’ve
    registered already.
     
  • Read the About Sphinn page. It
    provide more overview about the site.
     
  • Read the Sphinn Help page.
    It’s still being tweaked, but there’s information already to help you use the
    site, as well as guidance on submitting and commenting.
     
  • Watch for bugs! It’s beta, remember? There are bugs.
    Sphinn Beta: Known Bugs is a list of
    them that we’re stamping out. Spot something new? Let us know. We expect to be
    out of beta by next week, by the way. You’ll know, because we’ll post about it
    and shift the comments here to using the Sphinn system.
     
  • Share your wishes! There’s so much more we want to do.
    Sphinn Beta: Feature Wishlist covers
    some of our ideas and those others have had. Add yours!
     
  • Submit & Start Discussions. Here’s the
    form
    !

Finally, a huge thanks to
Michelle Robbins,
our director of technology, and the developers who have been tweaking the
Pligg software we’re using to do what we want.
They’ve put in tons of work over the past few months and especially over the
past two weeks.

Oh, the name! I’ll quote from our About page:

Why Sphinn? We liked the idea of a place where marketers could put their own
"spin" on news by commenting on stories or having discussions. But spin.com was
taken, as was spinn.com and sphinnn.com was a N too far, we felt. So we went
with sphinn.com, pronouncing it "sp-hinn."


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Danny Sullivan
Contributor
Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.

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