Increasing Your Online Presence With Sivatar

Written by John Cow on December 27th, 2007

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Thank God December is nearly over and done with. You people have had us slaving over all these half price reviews this month and we’re tired of it! Come 2008 and prices will return to normal. (for all you smart-asses out there, yes you can order a review for the discounted price before the month is over and have it published at a later date.) Anyway, on with the show!

The boys and girls from Sivatar.com forked out their savings and have spend it wisely on this review of their neat-o website. It really is something neat-o, because we think they might just be onto a winner with this concept. It seems to be something like Mybloglog meets Blogcatalog meets Entrecard meets You! A highly interactive community where you can hang out with the cool kids, (*edit* removed bad Michael Jackson joke :twisted: )

michael jackson

The Sivatar community is aiming to increase it’s members personal branding by sticking a name to the face. All avatars/sivatars link directly to one’s blog and since they’re spread throughout the sivatar site, changes are people will click through to your blog. You’ll have to have an attractive 50×50 button to stand out though. Something sexy to lure the traffic in like we did.

To have a bit of a chitchat with other bloggers and not having to use their or your blog’s comments section, there’s a chat page (ironically enough the URL calls it spam.aspx instead of chat, perhaps they’re trying to tell us something) A very cool feature here is definitely the star power system. The more you’ve been promoted, the bigger your text becomes and the more people will notice. We love this functionality, being the attention whores seekers that we are! Others will promote you by replying to your comments and you can upgrade yourself by leaving comments. More attention will most likely result in more clicks to your site, something which we really didn’t have to point out seeing only smart people read johncow.com, but we just did it nevertheless.

starpower.gif

We’ve tried to see if we could speed things up a little by trying to reply to ourselves - nice try, didn’t work.

Overall Sivatar’s team did a great job so far, although in Beta phase, it has a lot of potential to grow big in 2008. The simple, straight forward interface is definitely a strong point and the concept is quite unique. A bit of feedback from us; The tag system will work wonders for SEO, but we’d try to make it look a bit more organized. Try to generate a tag cloud with different font sizes. The more a tag is used, the bigger the font becomes, kinda like the star power system. There’s a reason why big sites like Technorati use this. Another thing we’d love to see improved would be the avatar upload function. Try to create an auto-resizer in there. It’ll save new users a bit of hassle, trying to resize their own avatars for their profiles.

sivatar.gifWe’re curious how this site is going to get monetized further down the road. Signing up is free and obviously there are no ads around. There are no special features available for users to buy (yet?) and there’s no option to upgrade to anything. Guess we’re gonna have to stick around to find out!

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28 Comments »

Comment by sir jorge
2007-12-27 22:15:00

Looks like a fad….like Entrecard or blogrush, this will spike, then hit the ground and wiggle and worm its way into the after thoughts of tomorrows blog graveyard.


 
Comment by John Cow
2007-12-27 22:17:43

This doesn’t require you to put a widget or avatar on your site though. By signing up, we actually discovered a few cool blogs that we hadn’t seen before.


 
Comment by ryan
2007-12-27 22:18:12

Sounds promising. With Entrecard entering into competition with mybloglog and Sivatar coming to the table, who knows what the blogging social media scene will look like in a year.


 
Comment by Jamie Harrop
2007-12-27 22:21:44

Interesting. I’m not sure there’s anything really unique about it, but I’m always game for giving something a go. I just joined. Pending approval. :)


 
Comment by Abdalla Ahmed
2007-12-27 23:20:18

Looks promising, I wonder if it will take off like blogrush and last…

P.S this auto comment subscription is not cool!


 
Comment by John Cow
2007-12-27 23:22:16

what auto comment subscription? We have no idea what you’re talking about :twisted:


 
Comment by Think Like An SOB
2007-12-27 23:57:25

Will give it a try.

ps. Yeah the auto subscribe to comments is not cool! Have to uncheck the tab.


 
Comment by Mike Huang
2007-12-28 01:24:28

Pretty nifty site I might say, but I’m sure they’re going to stick in BETA for a long time unless they prove us wrong. Most sites that name themselves with the “BETA” tag never seem to get out of the “BETA” phase…lol

-Mike


 
Comment by vhxn.com
2007-12-28 01:27:19

Moooooooooo thanks for the Link , I joined Sivatar Pending approval


 
Comment by Laura
2007-12-28 02:56:04

I want to hear the bad Michael Jackson joke! :twisted:


 
Comment by bloggernoob
2007-12-28 04:13:22

i went to this site earlier. looks pretty lame to me. I know mashups are popular and all but it’s like a poor man’s version of entrecard…and entrecard ain’t that rich either. Cow, i know you had to write this cause you were paid to do so, but this site is lame.


 
Comment by Laptop Bargains
2007-12-28 04:27:39

Cool site, now for new years resolutions, will you protect cows??

If you’re open to helping out your bovine friends, take a look at what they’re enduring first. (warning, very real and gruesome)http://www.meat.org/index-1.asp?c=MYMblogad1207


 
Comment by redandwhitestripes
2007-12-28 04:45:23

There are lots of good idea. The question is which ones will take off? This one you blogged on looks like it has potential.
titland.net.tc


 
Comment by Think Like An SOB
2007-12-28 05:53:16

Ok, tried that site. Not too happy with it. Have you tried logging back on??? That is a joke! It asks me what the secret question was during registration… haha! Two months later, I am really gonna remember what that was? Also, a simple email verification should solve the approval process to get going. There are many other flaws in that site, and I can keep going….


 
Comment by Steve
2007-12-28 09:54:35

Sounds like a good idea. Will be signing up,


 
Comment by Ruchir
2007-12-28 11:43:40

I’ll try it. As long as it only involves uploading an avatar and not sticking any widgets up your ass blog…


 
Comment by Nicholas James
2007-12-28 13:07:04

Seems like a cool site/service i’ll be signing up later.


 
Comment by David Chew
2007-12-28 14:12:13

Thanks for the info.


 
Comment by ITrush Subscribed to comments via email
2007-12-28 14:18:37

This is what I need, thanks for sharing! I’ll give it a try.

Nhick
http://www.itrush.com


 
Comment by Michael
2007-12-28 14:49:15

@SOB

There’s a “Find my question” button on the login page…

Can you elaborate on the email verification? We plan to send emails out to those who have been approved but the typical “click this link to verify” does not work here. We need to moderate all avatars and websites before you become a member.

Thanks for the feedback.


 
Comment by Michael
2007-12-28 14:53:08

@JC

Nice feedback on the tag cloud & registration. We definitely agree that the registration has been a pain-point for some users. An auto resize ability is in the works, as well as organizing the tags.


 
Comment by Think Like An SOB
2007-12-28 16:36:26

@Michael
I forgot to mention in that last comment, yes, I did try the “Find My Question” but it still kept saying “Invalid Answer” or something similar. You should really tweak the signup and login process. Also, one feature that you really need to incorporate is when you hover over the avatars, would be nice to be able to see the url of the avatar or a little bio in a snap type cloud. That will probably help us visit the blogs that we want to visit.


 
Comment by Michael
2007-12-28 18:34:26

@SOB

Sounds like you probably had an extra slash (or missing) when you put your URL in.


 
Comment by David Chew
2007-12-28 18:40:55

Well this website looks like will be providing traffics to users.


 
Comment by The University Kid
2007-12-28 19:16:54

I tried it out a while back - couldn’t make head or tail of it, and the avatar I added didn’t display either. Ah well :cool:


 
Comment by How2Blogger
2007-12-30 11:23:17

I decided to check it out after reading your review Cow - thanks! And congrats to Sweet Mummy!


 
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