Skribit Review – How Is It Going So Far?
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A few days ago we posted about the new service, called “Skribit” (we think it is pronounced “skribe it” but we could be wrong…. if it is “skrib it”, it sounds like a frog). This service helps provide a way for bloggers to further interact with their readers and find out what it is they want… well sort of.
We promised that we would update you with a more detailed Skribit Review once we had more information and so here it is.
1. Traffic is a Must: This was stated in the comments and is 100% the biggest factor for the success of using this tool. If you have a brand new blog, you should have loads of content and new ideas to write about anyway and you need to focus on growing your readership. Once you have an established blog and readership, then this tool can be worthwhile.
2. Multi Votes: Clear your private data or use a different computer and vote up the story you like. With every tool out there, it is easy to find ways to abuse the systems. Skribit is not a perfect tool of course and as a result there are ways to manipulate results into your favor. If you visit a site using Skribit everyday and vote up the story you want, you can influence its ranking very easily. Now the only possible way around that would be to make everyone register and log into an account before voting and therefore barely anyone would use it… unless of course we figured out how to reward them for thier effort.
3. Open to Smart Asses: Well, since we are pretty much some of the biggest smart asses around, we can see why people would be tempted to do this, but the fact remains that people can post what ever they want as a response to your questions with Skribit. Make sure to check it regularly to delete unwanted posts.
4. Interactive: Anything that can help get your readers more involved and interacting with your blog is a great thing. Not everyone of your readers may interact with it but no matter what you do, you will never get all your readers involved all the time.
Ok, so what is our overall opion of Skribit?
We like it!
As we stated earlier, anything that provides more interaction for your readers is a good thing. The system can be used to find out what readers want you to write about, what they liked best, thier opinions on topics and more. Being that it is user generated content, the variety of uses is pretty huge.
Personally we do not recommend you use it all the time. Mix it in and out of your blog and change its use. Do not keep the same question up for too long as it can look bad on your blog, you do not want to give the impression that no one ever visits your site and nothing changes. Also we recommed that you prefill some responses off the start the first time you use this. People do not always like to be the first to speak up and by seeding it with some responses you can get others to chime in.
Last of all make sure to promote your use of it. Let your readers know it is up on your blog and what you want them to do. Give instructions and explain what you are asking that specific request for.
Now We have two questions for you…
1. How do you pronounce Skribit?
2. What are your ideas for possible uses of Skribit?
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i know the creator of that you can find him at pstam.com, its pronounced
skir-bit
holla!
http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/11/23/what-is-skribit
that might be relevant also!
I like skribit very much, only there is one problem with it that I can see, it’s hard to get users to vote. Even here on john Cow there was only about 30 votes for the leading idea(the last I had seen) and that’s solely because of page location on the site, many users don’t scroll down that far.
Perhaps there needs to be a smaller version where it can be placed somewhere near the top so it can be fully utilized? I don’t really know but that is the only issue that I can see.
Also the pronunciation(I believe) is:
skri(as in skribble)-bit(as in…. bit)
Cronuss last blog post..Twitter – Love It or Hate It
Yes Cronus you are absolutely correct. It is only a good tool if it gets used.
Skirbit seems to be hitting a lot of blogs lately. I’ve seeing the widget everywhere!
-Mike
Mike Huangs last blog post..Being A Frugal Spender
I’m one of the co-founders of Skribit, and it’s very nice to hear that people enjoy using it.
We’re always looking at ways we can enhance our widget, and I can tell you that a smaller version is something we’re definitely looking into.
- Calvin
Calvin Yus last blog post..Pumping on Your Stereo by Supergrass
I’m another one of the co-founder’s of skribit. We’re pleased that you’re happy with the service.
We pronounce it “skrib-it”, kind of like a frog. It rhymes with “widget”, so when you say “skribit widget” it rolls of the tongue pretty well.
Skribit= scribe bit= scribe a bit………….hahaahah……….=p
joshuauns last blog post..All about JAVA
I think “Skrib-It” sounds pretty cool, makes me think of the phrases kids used to make up at school. The widget’s still new so there’s going to be quite a lot of things that can be put into it.
Sooner or later some lucky person is going to find an awesome method or way to use Skrib-it.
A couple of our readers have wondered why it’s only possible to vote things up, and not down. And I really like Cronus’s suggestion of being able to have it smaller so it could appear nearer the top of the page, or at least, above the fold. I love the idea but it wants a LOT of screen real estate. I wonder if some kind of AJAXy expand-on-mouseover trick would be possible?
We wanted to keep the interaction with the widget as simple as possible, so we kept out the vote down. It also saves on real estate.
There is a hack-ish way to make the widget narrower in size, but I guessing in your case Sue you really need to adjust the height. We’re working a new widget that should make this much easier.
-Calvin
Calvin Yus last blog post..Pumping on Your Stereo by Supergrass