MyScoop.co.za your thoughts please.

When it comes to blog aggregation in South Africa the first service on the scene was Afrigator which was then closely followed by Amatomu. Competition in this space is good with both Afrigator and Amatomu pushing the boundaries by trying to be first or the best with a particular feature. I really enjoyed the Amatomu stats and traffic it sent this way when it was still part of Mail & Guardian. The Afrigator leader-board was really cool as you could compare your blog with the rest of Africa.

Amatomu then was down more than it was up which lead me to remove the tracking code from here because it kept slowing down the loading time of this site. Little birdies have told me that Amatomu will be back in full swing as the team at Creative Spark Interactive (the folks behind memeburn) are ensuring the service is fully functional again. Hey, Creative Spark, how about integrating Amatomu’s latest posts into memeburn somehow?

There is now a new Kid on the ~~block~~ blog named MySoop which calls itself “South Africa’s Real-Time Blog Aggregator and Blogging Community”

As I’ve never used MyScoop before, until today, I’d really appreciate any feedback on the MyScoop service. How fast does it fetch your latest posts compared to Amatomu & Afrigator? Does it provide any link love or quality traffic back to your blog once your given it your RSS feed? Does it ever slow down your site like some of the others do/did? Basically your thoughts on the service.

Look forward to your comments.

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10 Responses to "MyScoop.co.za your thoughts please."

Reinhardt Gallowitz says:

12 May 2010 at 13:26

Hey

MyScoop is great. It’s more “real time” than the rest. Fetches posts very quickly and updates your profile. Shows various rankings and you can compare your rank to others.

I have definitely received traffic from MyScoop, but not a lot.
I think when you get a better ranking or hit the “popular” posts page you will probably get a lot of traffic.

So far it’s between Afrigator and MyScoop. My vote goes to MyScoop because they have a much simpler layout. Their stats reporting can improve though.

Cheers
Gallo

Reply
1. Chris M says:
  
  12 May 2010 at 13:31
  
  Agreed, between MyScoop and AfriGator indeed, but just remember that these sites often change a huge amount once the spammers get hold of them and management gets more and more demanding. Also, MyScoops fetches posts quickly, agreed, but remember that they are still small, so there’s far less to “scoop” 😉
  
  I’d still stay AfriGator and MyScoop though, I’m enjoying MyScoop the most at the moment.
  
  Reply
Chris M says:

12 May 2010 at 13:26

To be honest, at first I wasn’t that keen on MyScoop because of Afrigator and Amatomu, but right now I’m spending more time on MyScoop than the other two. Amatomu still isn’t that great, nothing new, odd ranking charts and a few other things. AfriGator is cool and I still check in from time to time, but MyScoop seems to provide everything required, for me.

Just my opinion of course.

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1. Chris M says:
  
  12 May 2010 at 13:29
  
  I think I should just add to my comment that in many cases, these sites seems better when they’re relatively new, but once the nonsense/spammer sites are added and forums are included as blogs, that’s when you get a real idea on them, and in that regard AfriGator has done a very good job..
  
  Reply
Gerhard says:

12 May 2010 at 13:29

I have been using MyScoop from the beginning and must say its performance and usefulness is superb. It does ranking based on traffic, then there is also ranking based on user interaction (comments). Then there is also the real-time visitor stats and what posts they are visiting on you blog.

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Dean says:

12 May 2010 at 13:42

I don’t actually know why I use Amatomu or Afrigator. I really don’t. To be honest those sites feel like a losing battle with aggregation. It’s all about the big get bigger and the.. well you know.

And you joined the party late.. Ha ha! Good luck!

I’ve found that Amatomu and Afrigator usually kill load time. Sometimes I’d wait for my footer to load because they are just – so – slow. Only to fail.. More. In fact I’d rather not even risk it anymore.

Google ranks on page speed now. So, using a slow ass image for tracking doesn’t seem like a good idea.. Especially since I can’t host it locally on the site because it’s for tracking..?

I’ve never had a problem with MyScoop. To be honest. I rebranded a site where both me and MyScoop monitored the traffic. I could see how the change effected my ranking pretty quickly. Daily traffic compared to others and all that jazz. It was easy to use opposed to others where I found that I had to bookmark pages just to find them again. It was worse than having to konami code for extra health.

Did I check Afrigator or Amatomu with regards to these changes I made for comparison? No.

Why? Because it was a losing battle in the start. The only reason why I have those tags on my site is because (1) I’m too lazy to remove them, (2) there’s a chance that *something* might happen.. But that’s me being optimistic.

It’s really strange to see how everyone’s ranking changes from aggregation site to aggregation site — some use local only traffic while others (like myscoop) rank international visits too.

I like that. Why should I be rated on a local scale? Is the internet as big as the countries border?

Yeah I understand that ‘it should be local’ and all that.. But surely you can limit it to local owners only — opposed to local traffic. If you want local traffic, how about you limit it to locally hosted sites too? I mean… That would truly mean local – wouldn’t it?

What disqualifies the fact that internationals are interested in your site too.. shouldn’t that just promote that it’s better than a few aggregation sites might rank it?

MyScoop Vs the rest. I enjoy the system. I’ve received traffic from the site. Not a lot, but then again, it’s a lot smaller than the others. It fetches the feed pretty quickly and it offers equal opportunity for everyone to rank on the front page.. if the article is worth while.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need more information..

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Reinhardt Gallowitz says:

12 May 2010 at 14:10

Oh I forgot to add. MyScoop also ranks very good in Google!!!
Spammers are going to exploit this.

Reply
1. Nick Duncan says:
  
  12 May 2010 at 14:29
  
  First of all, thank you to everyone for the great feedback. I’d also just like to point out that I monitor myScoop on a daily basis and do my best to remove all spammers and chance-takers.
  
  Reply
bidorbuy says:

12 May 2010 at 15:02

bidorbuy registered on MyScoop at the end of February / beginning of March 2010 which, probably makes us one of the early adopters. We like the uncluttered look, the stats, and appreciate the weekly feedback we receive from the MyScoop team by email.

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Galen says:

13 May 2010 at 12:36

MyScoop showed promise from the beginning and Nick Duncan really has done well to make it a great aggregator that is both fast and efficient. I have also never witnessed a website grow and improve so consistently! Well done Nick.

I understand that MyScoop is going to stay local and lekker too so that it doesn’t get over-cluttered and slow – making management more difficult. One also gets great user support from MyScoop, something that Afrigator has lost over time due to its continental reach.

To conclude: MyScoop FTW!

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MyScoop.co.za your thoughts please.

Question: What do these things all have in common? Everybody know…

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