Sphere It: I Appeared on the Wall Street Journal
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Well not as an article, but as a related articles and blogs. When I was viewing my Google Analytics this morning, I usually look at it on a weekly basis. I found a high amount of traffic for 2 days! Most came from online.wsj.com, when visited it was the Wall Street Journal! I was very surprise to see this and I was happy at the same time that I appeared on the WSJ.
Below is the screen shot I captured at the bottom of the article about Business.com being sold. I came up as a related Blog Post about this topic and I came up right before TechCrunch! This flow of traffic was beautiful I can say as it provided me with lots of traffic for 2 days.
Wall Street Journal has a high Alexa ranking and traffic, view their rankings here. They are well established and have a constant flow of traffic; always up to date and providing fresh information. Which I tend to do as well provide fresh information on my blog as well as trying to keep up current news and information about making money and blogging.
How was I gather to gain this traffic and appear on WSJ? Well first I know I appeared on a widget at the bottom of the article that was written. This widget is powered by Sphere.com. What is Sphere It? From their about us page they describe themselves as:
Sphere is a startup from a handful of people passionate about connecting mainstream and conversational media content. So far we’re best known for our Sphere Related Content Widget but we have a lot of other interesting things in the pipeline as well.
The four of us (Tony Conrad/ CEO; Martin Remy/ CTO; Steve Nieker/ CIO; and Toni Schneider/ Advisor) are strong believers in conversational media. We believe everyone has a voice, and our mission is to create exposure for each of them. By creating connections between contextually relevant mainstream media and blog content, we’re exposing a broader set of Internet readers to blog content, fundamentally giving more power to the people.
Their widget finds blog posts and media articles related to your content. It gives your readers additional info on the things you like to write about, and they like to read about; making YOU look like a hero. The Ajax widget appear right in front of you too, by simply just clicking on the sphere button on a current article it will pull related information about the current topic.
I can say this is just like networking as it provides n easy access to other popular articles/blogs online. Networking without really actually networking. Sphere searches related articles and blogs to the current post. Helping the reader read more in depth or discuss what others have to say about the current topic they were reading.
WebLog Tools Collection has a mini review about Sphere it:
I like the plugin. Many of the big boys are using it and Sphere is less gimmicky and more useful. A click on the Sphere icon opens up a new AJAX window with a few related posts from other bloggers talking about the linked topic and a set of related articles from the blogosphere and news sites. Of course, TechCrunch has their own modified version of the plugin but the net effect is still the same. I really like the fact that the plugin does not weigh down the main page with dynamically downloaded content until the supplemental content is requested by a user.
But how did I appear on Sphere and on WSJ? That I do not know, I have yet to find out how Sphere actually works in terms of finding related article. What are the algorithims? How does it know if it will be good or bad content? I would like to know how this actually works and how I appeared on WSJ, if you know let us know by simply talking about it below. But I enjoyed that burst of traffic for the 2 days!
As I can see it is about publishing current information fast, I assume. Since TechCrunch has posted about this topic as well, I also do not think it is about traffic both because I appeared before TechCrunch and my traffic is no where near TechCrunch. I would like to do a case study but I am trying to think how hard it would be to track where I am appearing and how I appeared on Sphere. Again all base on assumption, and I would like to know how Sphere actually works.
Has anyone gained experience from Sphere?
I don’t have any experience with Sphere, but I did also get linked to by the Wall Street Journal. It was a technical piece, so I didn’t get much traffic, but it was nice! I think I got my exposure from the pings I have set-up.
Hi Ian – thanks for posting about Sphere, much appreciated.
We get notes every day from bloggers who get links from big media sites. Sphere Related Content is displayed on over 1 Billion article pages across the web. You can find our icon at the bottom of articles on most of the leading publisher sites like Wall Street Journal, CNN, TIME, New York Times, etc as well as many of the leading blog sites like TechCrunch, GigaOM, Real Clear Politics, All Things D, etc as well as lots of WordPress.org blogs (we have a plug-in – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sphere-related-content/) and through a Feedburner FeedFlare (http://sphere.wordpress.com/2007/06/01/sphere-related-content-launches-via-feedburner-feedflare/)
We’ve developed some algorithms to match high quality blog posts to articles. The ranking mechanism is part of our secret sauce so we don’t talk about it openly b/c it could lead to gaming the system and that wouldn’t be good for real bloggers such as you.
Our mission to is connect the voice of blogs to that of mainstream media, resulting in a more informed dialog. So far, we’ve been really fortunate to have partnered with a number of very progressive media sites who embrace the value of the blogosphere.
Thanks again for your kind post and I do hope you’ll add Sphere Related Content to your site too!
Best,
Tony Conrad
CEO & Founder, Sphere
> desty
congrats! pings? may you explain in depth?
> tony
this is a great system that you have created and I hope to appear to more popular posts! thanks again!
Before your article, I had never heard of Sphere. All I ever did was post my articles, submit a few to various blog carnivals or Netscape. But, I do use as many pings as possible. Here is a good article about pings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping_%28blogging%29
I’m constantly on the look out for new ping addresses I can add.
> desty
wow that is great! that is a lot of ping services that I was trying to find, wonder why my google search never showed this up, THANKS!
I admit, I hadn’t seen very many articles about pings. Everytime I find one, I copy all the addresses and add any new ones. Glad I could help!
SOG knives…
Interesting ideas… I wonder how the Hollywood media would portray this?…
Wall Street is a street in lower Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. It runs east from Broadway to South Street on the East River, through the historical center of the Financial District. It is the first permanent home of the New York Stock Exchange; over time Wall Street became the name of the surrounding geographic neighborhood. Wall Street is also shorthand (or a metonym) for the “influential financial interests” of the American financial industry, which is centered in the New York City area. Several major U.S. stock and other exchanges remain headquartered on Wall Street and in the Financial District, including the NYSE, NASDAQ, AMEX, NYMEX, and NYBOT. Bernard Madoff is not a popular man. Bernard Madoff, once the Wall Street wizard that sat atop the NASDAQ exchange, has pled guilty to running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of $50 billion. He refused to accept a plea bargain that would have forced him to reveal anyone who assisted him, but he wasnâ??t interested, which lead some to believe he is protecting his wife, Ruth Madoff. Regardless of his motivation for not accepting a plea deal, or if he did act alone which is unlikely, prosecutors are seeking a sentence of up to 150 years in prison. There is a high degree of probability that Bernard Madoff will not end his days in the comfort and opulence that his grand theft afforded him.
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