I reworked the network’s hub site a little while ago, and just kinda slipped it in there without any kind of announcement. The old site went through a few revisions but I wasn’t especially happy with any of them.

However, this one is good. Very, very good. Apart from being one of the slickest network hub sites out there, it does everything a hub site should do. Like…

• a full network-wide search that covers both the core network blogs, and the independent network blogs
• a main blog that provides network news and content roundups
• featured network content and a ‘river of content’ aggregated from across the entire network
• a categorised directory listing of all blogs in the network
• a detailed page for each network blog

As I said, I didn’t announce the new design as it went live, so I’m doing it now. Short of a few little details here and there and a couple of missing screen grabs of network blogs, it’s complete.

Whadderya think?

I just had this comment spam…

All pretty standard stuff until you get to ummm… the ‘goat cheese’ part. So me being me, I followed the link. And sure enough, it led to a splog.

But not any old splog. This was a cheese splog. Better still, it was called… wait for it… ‘Cheese, cheese bonus’.

Now if that’s not the coolest splog in the world, I don’t know what is.

(If you’re interested, you’ll find it here: http://goat-cheese-3182.blogspot.com/)

… a cheap knock off of memeorandum?

Duncan, is that you? ;o)

I should have been a detective.

Seriously, though? Can memeorandum easily be cloned? For less than a grand?

I doubt it.

And what’s the point? It’s already been done.

Anyhoo. I’m more interested in the quality that comes out of this. A few years ago, I used a similar offshoring/freelance service to get some projects moving, and to be honest, I found out the hard way that to get exactly what I wanted, it was easier to learn to code the damn thing myself.

Have sites like these improved? Can you trust them?

blogfinder.net (beta) has soft launched. Here’s what it does:

“blogfinder (beta) is an experimental web 2.0 hub that connects influential early-opinion-leaders via a transparent, ajax-founded, tagging/detagging framework that is entirely based on documented hyper-neural, multi-threaded, semantic progression algorithms, collective global intelligence, and existing, conversation-led, social-media folksonomies.”

Exclusive screen shots

In the grand old tradition of making up really, really stupid blogging buzzwords, I have a new one: spamalanche.

Because I’m currently picking up spam on this blog faster than I can damn well delete it. I’m literally drowning in shit.

All from different IP addresses, too.

What’s up with that? Anyone else getting buried?

And can I call it a spamalanche? Or will it make you want to Triple-Jump Moonsault me from the top rope.

You know what, when you’re running an internet business, it doesn’t matter where you live. Almost every day, I’m talking to people here in the UK, in Australia, in Canada, in the Philippines, in So Cal, etc, etc, etc - as if they were simply at the next desk.

No doubt you do the same - even if your only interaction is leaving comments on other peoples’ blogs.

Anyhoo. I had an enquiry a week or two ago from a company who wanted to run a text ad campaign across the wurk network.

“Fine”, I said.

My price was $100 per month for sites with at least a Google PR of 4.

“Fine”, they said.

Plus, next time there’s a Google PR Update, I’m probaby looking at around 23 sites with a PR of 4 or above. which means I was in a position to milk at least $2300 a month for the next 6 months. Not a huge amount. But it’s still an amount.

So we started working things through. I first talked to their US office - then, when they discovered the network originated from a European IP, they put me through to their UK office.

“No problem”, I said.

However, they subsequently found out that the network originates from a German IP address. Yup, my server is sitting in Germany somewhere.

“Big problem”, they said.

And sure enough, the plug was pulled from this text link deal, because:

“…we will not be able to go ahead with the sponsorship, since your websites are in English. We would either be looking for English-language websites with UK addresses, or German-language websites with German addresses.”

Sheesh. There goes a couple of big ones down the tubes.

So, the moral of the story is: learn to write in German, kids. And do it fast.

Or, more seriously, make sure you know where your servers are when you buy hosting. Because it might cause more problems than you think.

I’m moving up in the world. I just had an email from BBC Radio 5, who want someone from weird.wurk.net to appear on a short slot tonight that’s going to focus on strange and unusual careers.

So, allow me to introduce myself as the UK’s leading expert on ‘weird and unusual jobs’. Or something like that.

Amazing what a blog can do for your reputation, eh?

As I said, I’ll be live, tonight, on UK national radio, sometime between midnight and 12.30am GMT. No, not quite a primetime slot, but hey, it’s a start. Never done anything like this before, either, so it should be a laugh.

Plus, the wurk network will be featured on BBC Radio Birmingham sometime next week, on one of Ashley from Shiny Media’s new slots.

Exciting stuff.

Y’know, waves, ocean, surfboards - all that kind of stuff. Because I have a little business idea here that you might be interested in.

And here’s the huge problem it solves…

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Check it out. BlogCode.com, is telling me that…

“These are the blogs that - according to their readers - best match blogging.wurk.net in terms of style, content and delivery. (Hint: anything above 80% is a very strong match)”…

Scoble comes out on top with an 85.08% match. All I need to decide is whether that’s a good thing - or maybe a not-so-good thing.

Heh.

Reverse the process and search BlogCode.com for Scoble’s blog, and blogging.wurk.net comes out on top, with a whopping 85.58% match.

Probably all a load of poo. Hey ho.

It’s only been a month since Duncan sold the Blog Herald, and what’s changed? Hmmm. Virtually nothing.

And even though Matt & Co from BlogMedia claim that…

“As to the content, the traffic is up significantly since the acquisition, so are advertising sales and just about any other metric that matters.”

… the metrics aren’t the real issue here. Even though I suspect that the increased traffic and ad sales are simply an afterburn of the hype that came from the sale, that growth won’t last another 2 months if you carry on screwing with your brand.

But even that’s not the real issue here, either.

The real, real issue is that right now, the Blog Herald has absolutely no brand to speak of. It doesn’t know what it is, or what it wants to be. Matt probably has some idea of where he wants to take it, but during the course of the last month, we haven’t seen any evidence of that whatsoever.

Like a big fat fish in a little pond, it’s floundering. And if nothing changes soon, it’s going to run out of air. Fast.

Can it be saved? I think so. And here’s my plan…

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