My thoughts…on stuff

As you all know, I’ve been using Entrecard for some time now, and I have been satisfied with the results. I’ve found some good blogs, gained some new readers, seen a boost in comments, feed subscriptions and of course, traffic. By the way, I’ve unraveled the mystery behind the name. The word “entre” comes from entrepreneur. Makes sense with the whole e-business card schtick. With all these benefits, it’s little wonder that Entrecard has grown as it has.

On December 17th, they gained their first 1,000 bloggers. It’s now February 21st, and they now have 4,400. Pretty impressive. Having their widget on popular blogs like Problogger and John Chow helped them no doubt. But while Entrecard’s growth may be encouraging news for its owners, it’s bad news for its users. Why? Well, more users means more competition, making it harder and harder to stay on top. So what’s a blogger to do? Sadly, many of them have been gaming the system, only dropping on blogs that promise reciprocal drops, forming their own little cliques that only drop on each other, using browsers that allow them to chain drop faster, top dropper memes, entrecard contests (which nearly every Entrecarder has) etc.

My point is, too much attention is focused on gaining and not on gaining readership. Entrecard was built to encourage networking between bloggers, but it seems the same old blog exchange syndrome has emerged. And what happens to the bloggers that don’t game the system? Their blogs get undervalued and fall out of the spotlight, while those who game the system rise to the top. Now it’s hard to tell which blogs are truly worth their advertising cost and which are inflated.

You have to resort to their tactics whether you want to or not just to survive. I even had to resort to some chain dropping to keep my head above water. But I tend to frequent the blogs with good content and avoid the inflated ones. I loved the initial community spirit of Entrecard. It felt like my cozy little hideout on the Net where I could recapture the simple joys of blogging, with bloggers who actually cared about your content. Now it seems like that spirit is being eroded, and Entrecard runs the risk of collapsing under its own weight. But I know one thing, I’ll be long gone by then.

P.S. Does anyone know if there was a glitch in FeedBurner’s system, as I went from having 52 subscribers to 39 in one day flat! I know that readers can be fickle but jeez!