Spotplex – Digg which counts impressions, not votes

I came across a social news discovery site called Spotplex. We can’t really call it as a Digg-like site because it doesn’t count votes to promote the article, but instead it counts the number of impression. Blog owners have to insert Spotplex tracking code into their template and Spotplex promotes the article based on the impression counts within a certain time frame.

Whenever someone reads your post, Spotplex tracking counts the impression and determines what is the hot news today, this week, or this month in real time at Spotplex. Additionally, Spotplex tracking code can also be utilized to keep a count of your blog statistics.

While this sounds like a better idea, it has its own, ups and downs. I’m not sure, if Spotplex has an anti-gaming algorithm, but if they don’t, gaming might be a major concern for them. While such a model, eliminates things like mafias and team buries, at the same time gaming it is no big deal (assuming that they don’t have anti-gaming algorithm, you just have to artificially inflate impressions).

Impression based model makes it extremely hard for small blogs to reach their frontpage. Rich keep getting richer :D

This post was published by on March 2, 2007

About the Author: Thilak Rao works as a Social Media Expert. He is one of the first professional bloggers from India, and he loves to write, travel and click photos. Follow him on Twitter @thilak

  • http://www.technospot.net/blogs Ashish Mohta

    It sounds good but i dont support it.Whats the use if my post is good but i dont have low hits.You can generate hits lol.No vote!!!

  • http://www.tech-blot.com Tanner Godarzi

    Unfortunately Spotplex requires an invitation code to sign up.

  • http://thewrongadvices.com dan1el

    Their server problems are making it unusable at the moment. It sounds like an interesting idea but I don’t think it’s really going to help the average blogger.

  • http://shankarthetechie.blogspot.com Shankar Ganesh

    Interesting. Anybody has got an invite?

  • http://alpesh.nakars.com/blog/2007/01/30/how-to-control-spam-on-wordpress-blog/ Alpesh Nakar

    @Shankar,
    Lets see how it works. I did get an invite and have signed up.
    @Others,
    Cannot write off any service just because it is bit different. Naturally Tech Crunch and the likes may make it to front page, provided they add the code. Give it a shot and you may make it popular. Participate and get them to tweak their algorithms. Naturally its algorithm based so multiple hits from an ip should be ignored.
    Cheers!
    Alpesh

  • http://blog.ohmynews.com/spaceufo/ spaceufo

    현재 digg 및 spotplex에 관한 의견을 모우기위해

    올블로그(http://tbmoim.allblog.net/233)에 트래백모임을
    생성하였습니다.

    트래백 주소는 http://tbmoim.allblog.net/tb/233/093397입니다.

    트래백을 날려주시면 감사하겠습니다.ㅆㅆ*

  • http://www.webmaster-dome.com/ Sreejith

    I don’t think its an efficient system. Consider this. I go to Digg everyday and read the news. But, some of them may not sound so good for me. So, there’s an option for me to “bury” it.

    But, in this system, either I like it or not, the page gets hit. So, why should others like it if its lame. It would be good with a button equivalent to “bury” with which I can decrease the hit.

  • http://lagopi.blogspot.com Ramanathan

    unless they introduce a way to give negative votes for stories, its going to be stagnant. Obviously, high traffic sites will make it to the top.

  • http://www.kineda.com Terry Ng

    Kineda has been on the front page several times now, but it Spotplex barely brings back any traffic to the blog.

    There’s definitely no plexeffect yet! :)

  • http://www.thinkartificial.org/web/late-acceptance-to-the-spotplex-beta/ Late Acceptance to the Spotplex Beta | Think Artificial

    [...] heavier hitters registered on Spotplex. A nice overview article on TechBuzz refers to that model as The Rich getting Richer. But in any case it’s always fun to participate in new kinds of online [...]

  • http://alpesh.nakars.com/blog/2007/01/30/how-to-control-spam-on-wordpress-blog/ Alpesh Nakar

    @Shankar,
    Lets see how it works. I did get an invite and have signed up.
    @Others,
    Cannot write off any service just because it is bit different. Naturally Tech Crunch and the likes may make it to front page, provided they add the code. Give it a shot and you may make it popular. Participate and get them to tweak their algorithms. Naturally its algorithm based so multiple hits from an ip should be ignored.
    Cheers!
    Alpesh