Wednesday, 10 June 2009

• Xanga Should Stop Experimenting and Just Drive More Traffic to the Blogs

  There is no reason to divide the community, Xanga should grow user sites in the same way they grew the "ish" sites.
   
  They need to drive traffic to those sites.  Xanga has been doing a little experimenting and they asked the question about the best way to drive traffic to xanga user sites.
  
  I think the best way for xanga to drive traffic to users on xanga is to use the same method they used to grow the "ish" sites.
  
  How did they grow the "ish" sites?  Look at the box on the front of xanga's front page.  What do you see?  You see a rotating box that shows a bunch of posts on xanga.  Now look at those posts carefully and what do you see?  You see that the bulk of those sites are "ish" sites.  Xanga is driving traffic to the "ish" sites.  If I were visiting xanga, I would get the impression that the "ish" sites are pretty important to xanga.
  
  You will also notice that for about 80% of the day, the post that is the number one featured post is an "ish" site.
  
  How does a site drive traffic?  It uses all of its most powerful traffic links and drives traffic to those sites? 
  
  So Xanga put it out to the xanga community on how they should rotate the Top Blogs.  They even did a survey.  They asked the community whether they should drive traffic to the top blogs or the most recommended.
  
  For the record, I thought xanga should actually use a randomized link from their front page of the top 20-25 commented blogs.
  
  In other words, Xanga asked the community whether they should use the top 10 commented blogs in order or whether they should use the top 50-60 commented posts randomized on the front page.
  
  This was actually a false choice.  People are going to naturally say that xanga should probably give more exposure to 50-60 blogs as opposed to 10.  In fact, you would have to be almost a complete idiot to say otherwise.
  
  But notice that xanga did not ask the more obvious question.  What is the smarter strategy for growth, driving traffic to the users or driving traffic to the "ish" sites?
  
  What would have the community voted?  I can tell you in advance what they would have said.  The bulk of the community would vote to give at least equal time to the top 50-60 users as opposed to the current strategy of giving 90% of the top page coverage to the ish sites.
  
  In other words, the issue is not whether xanga drives traffic to the top 10 bloggers in order or whether xanga drives traffic to the top 50-60 users in a random way.  The real issue is whether xanga will drive traffic to the users at all.
  
  In its current state, you will not benefit if xanga drives traffic to the top 10 bloggers or whether xanga drives traffic to the top 50-60 users.
  
  Until xanga drives traffic to the users using the same method they use to drive traffic to the "ish" sites, no user will really benefit.
  
  So let me give my own solution to help xanga drive traffic to the users.
  
  # 1 Xanga should move Top Blogs farther up the front page.  If xanga does not move Top Blogs above the fold (the top half of the page), they will not grow user sites.  In other words, nothing currently being proposed will cause a site to grow.
  
  Have you ever noticed that once a site is featured, it suddenly gets comments?  Why?  It gets comments because xanga is driving traffic to the post.  It is at the top of the page.  Once that post moves below the fold (off the top half of the page) it slows down in getting comments.  Why?  Because once a blog is no longer visible from the front page without scrolling down, the blog will get a ton less comments.  That is why xanga updates every night with an "ish" site last.  They want that site to gain traffic.  Now xanga has explained that this is because they get more ad money.  (Oddly, the xanga team has become noticeably smaller since they began this strategy but who am I to question xanga's strategy?)
  
  # 2  Xanga should make at least half of the posts in the top rotating box regular xanga users sites from Top Blogs.
  
  
  What is xanga doing?  They are driving traffic to the "ish" sites.  They are doing it with passion.  But look at the top rotating box.  How many of those blogs are Top Blogs?  None.  Not even one.  How many are "ish" sites?  Watch for a few days.  You will see that about 90% of them are "ish" sites.
  
  Since xanga has mentioned that they want to drive more traffic to the users, it only makes since that they would use their best traffic driver to highlight users.  This is what youtube does.  Youtube is a successful site and they are awesome at finding multiple ways to highlight their users.  Go to the front page of www.youtube.com.  Notice the top of their page.  Do you see the videos that are marked "Videos being watched right now?"  Where does youtube get those videos?  They get them from their top viewed videos of the day.
  
  Check it out.  I speak the truth.  Go to the top viewed videos of the day.  You will notice that 80-90% of the videos on the top of their front page are selected from the Top viewed section.  Some of the videos are from the Top viewed section from a few days ago.  Youtube will keep some of the successful videos on the front page for a few days.
  
  So this is a brilliant strategy.  Youtube is growing by sending traffic to the users.  Does youtube use ads?  Yes.  Do they sometimes place those ads on the top of their front page?  Yes.  But watch youtube for the next month.  I have been watching them for two years.  80-90% of the time they will give top priority to the most viewed videos.
  
  Youtube has bills to pay.  They have to have ads.  But youtube also needs to grow their user base.  They need to highlight sites.  I have always been amazed at how awesome youtube is at finding multiple ways to drive traffic to their users.
  
  Now lets get back to xanga.
  
  Xanga should use 80-90% of that top rotating box for the top 20-25 randomized Top commented bloggers.  But I know xanga won't give me that.  So how about xanga just give half that space to Top Bloggers?
  
  It is funny because so many bloggers have fought over being featured or whether they were at the top of top blogs.  Xanga is running a discussion that feels like it divides bloggers.  If I didn't know better, I would think that was the case.  It makes them feel like they are fighting between most recommend or top bloggers or top ten verses top 50-60 bloggers.
  
  I say lets unite.  Instead, xanga should just drive traffic to the users.  There is no reason to divide the people over a little space on the lower half of the right corner.
  
  Instead, xanga should move top blogs to the top right right under the sign in.  They should just remove that ad and move top blogs up.  I know xanga needs ads but all the "ish" sites are essentially ad sites.  Just move that one ad and move top blogs to the top.  Then xanga should make half of the rotating box Top blog sites.  This would really help grow the user sites.  (Most people in the current top 25 don't realize how fast their sites would grow if they were in that top rotating box).
  
  Now we might get a few objections.  You might hear something like, "Xanga has to be careful not to allow porn on the top of their front page."  Youtube has to be careful for the same thing.  It must take a ton of time for xanga to approve 5 posts a day for 12 "ish" sites.  They have to match content with the "ish" sites.  How long would it take them to approve the Top bloggers to make sure there was no porn?  It would take a few minutes a day.  In other words, I am not asking that xanga censor content.  I am simply saying they make a basic porn check.  They already have the rating system in place.  They can remove the occasional spam site that says "Hi, I am new to xanga. Comment me."  They don't have to get psycho with the edit. 
  
  The second objection would be that the content is not strong enough.  It is funny because you should read the blogs that make it into the top rotating box.  Have you noticed that some of them are nothing more than a question?  That is right.  They are just a question asked on a "ish" site.  So xanga has no real quality standard.  The top rotating box is run off the top commented from the "ish" sites and the featured content posts.  In other words, comments are king.
  
  Xanga should drive traffic to the users using the same method they use for the "ish" sites.  There is no reason to divide the community.  Just drive traffic to the users.
  
  
                                                        
  

  • 10:02 PM
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