Why Rand Is Wrong, And Sphinn Is A Popularity Contest

I’m on holiday at the moment (although my wife might argue with that, considering that I have written this blog post), and so I’ve had a lot of time to consider the conversation going on at, and about, Sphinn right now, and especially Rand’s opinion on it. In a post entitled “Sphinn.com is basically just a popularity contest,” TannerC argues that the stories which are dominating the homepage of the site, due to the number of votes (or Sphinns) which they have received, are predominantly from the big names in the search sector; people such as Rand, Lisa, Vanessa, & Todd. He also suggests that this is a de facto status quo that makes it hard for newbies to break into. Rand’s response was a very forthright one, arguing instead that readers were voting for stories they found useful or valuable, rather than simply for stories by people whose names they recognised. Well, in this instance I have to agree with TannerC. Sort of.

Let me explain. Rand’s post on why people should use Sphinn is currently the most popular on the site. Whilst this isn’t solely because Rand wrote it, I think it does play a large part. Not simply because people recognise Rand’s name, but because his position as chief blogger on SEOmoz puts everything that he writes in front of a much larger audience than anything I or other lesser known bloggers would get on our own sites (which is, of course, part of the reason that I am writing this here, rather than on my own blog). I would also suggest that another reason that Rand’s post did so well is that he explicitly suggested that people Sphinn the story and included a large button at the bottom of the post. As far as I can tell, this is the only story on SEOmoz to have had this treatment, and correspondingly, is the story that has done best on the site.

Compare it with Rand’s (in my opinion) more valuable post on viral marketing. It didn’t have the eye-catching Sphinn button here on SEOmoz, and when it was Sphunn, it was by someone without Rand’s reputation, meaning readers on Sphinn might not at first glance realise who the story is by. The result? No Sphinns at present. So, what does this tell us? That people do seem to Sphinn stories where they recognise the author, and also that having a large audience on your own site & encouraging Sphinning is likely to see a surge in votes.

What would be interesting, I think, would be to find out what percentage of the Sphinns on homepage stories came on Sphinn itself, and how many from people clicking buttons on the sites where the stories are originally published. My guess is that the biggest stories picked up a lot of their Sphinns outside of Sphinn itself. It also suggests that Sphinn is a popularity contest in that everyone likes to feel popular; hence, stories about Sphinn, which make the readers feel that they are part of something cool/new/cutting edge/delete as applicable, are likely to do well.

You only have to look at Digg to see this in action. Digg also highlights the point about having a captured audience – Techcrunch, Boing Boing, & the like do well on Digg, not just because they have great stories, but also because the sort of people likely to Digg stuff are also likely to hang out on those sites. They can therefore pick up a lot of votes on their own sites, giving them a better chance of making the homepage, and picking up even more.

At the end of the day, none of this should be surprising, and it’s not necessarily a terrible thing. Essentially, people like Rand are (to use the jargon from The Tipping Point, which I have just finished reading) Mavens, Connectors, & Sales People all wrapped in one. They can find great information, put it in front of a large audience, and convince that audience to buy into it. When others point this out, Rand shouldn’t take offence (which he seemed to slightly); instead, he should take it as the subtle compliment it is. And whilst this might make many of us envious, it is part of life and all we can really do is work to build our own audiences & profiles. (That, or beg Danny to make the New Stories the default homepage, rather than the Hot Now!)


I'm the SEO Director of London based full service digital agency, Altogether Digital. Our site isn't live right now, but why not check us out at our old blog; heck, you might even want to give us a Sphinn. We even updated a Wordpress plugin to make doing so easier.