Death to Linkbait. Long Live Sphinn-bait!

Lyndon Antcliff, Marty Weintraub, and Chris Winfield Are Part of the Sphinn Posse

Linkbait is dead and no longer relevant. The body is cold and rigor mortis has set in. What killed linkbait? Why, that would be Danny Sullivan’s white-hot social media community for search & marketing professionals, Sphinn. Most certainly, if you haven’t re-purposed your quilting blog to become a steroid-injected, article-pumping SEM site, then you’re hopelessly out of the Web 2.0+ loop. At least it can seem that way when it comes to Sphinn. Have you Sphunn your world yet? If not, you’re missing out on all of the “sfun” and an awesome way to inject some much needed moxie into your site.

Launched In July, Sphinn’s Surge Is Meteoric

I’ve been a rather passive Sphinn user so far, although I did sign up soon after its July 2007 launch date. I despise Digg, so I wanted to make sure that Sphinn wasn’t a Digg clone. For the most part I have been reading quite a few articles, sphinning (voting) for some of the same, and adding an article here and there. Although I do cover SEM (search engine marketing) topics from time to time on this blog, my subject matter is a bit broader and leans toward providing information desirable to freelance writing colleagues.

Sphinn, though, cannot be ignored for long. Let’s face it: if you are looking to connect with some of the most visible names in all of blogdom, then Sphinn is where you need to go. Digg has a broader appeal than Sphinn, but that site has long been dominated by a secretive cabal who will not let just anyone in (only the disgruntled need apply). With Sphinn, it only takes 20 votes before your page goes hot — a low enough threshold for most Sphinnsters (my personal term for Sphinn users).

Getting back to Sphinn’s members, if you have a habit of visiting the blogs of Dosh Dosh, Andy Beard, Tamar Weinberg, Loren Baker, Shana Albert, Rand Fishkin, Lee Oddin, et al, you can do some serious damage to your laptop’s keyboard with all of that clicking around as you jump from site to site. With Sphinn, all of your favorite peeps are gathered there each and every day jockeying for position by leaving comments, sphinning, and trading good natured barbs. If you happen to be a StumbleUpon user (you just knew I would mention StumbleUpon now, didn’t you?) you’ve probably been asked to stumble and sphinn pages instead of stumbling and digging them. Provided you are a registered, bonafide Sphinnster, that is.

The Coming Sphinn Calamity?

Natch, as Sphinn’s surge has truly been meteoric, one has to wonder if the community will eventually burn out. Trouble spots are already appearing and they include:

BlogRush Spamming — Really, does everyone need to Sphinn articles about BlogRush at the same time? Some Sphinnsters believe that there is a concerted effort to promote BlogRush which is yet another social community for bloggers. Gosh, can BlogRush really be that good (or bad)?

Sphinn Goes To Kazahkstan — I wonder if Danny Sullivan realizes that his domain has been registered for only one year? I am worrying that come April 2008 we’ll be logging on and finding a male enhancement site in its place! Unless, of course, Danny and gang already see the writing on the wall and are preparing their exit strategy. Uh, oh…here comes Google, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo!, and MSN with their first bids….

Digg Gets Religion — A recent Digg makeover may be the first part of a much-needed overhaul for that site. If Digg wakes up, they could become more Sphinn-like and toss the cabal before things spiral completely out of control.

Long Live Linkbait!

All right, Sphinn hasn’t killed off linkbait but the thought off that happening is kind of nice. Especially, when your Sphinn-bait article goes hot and all of the A-Listers rush to your blog to read what you wrote. Happy sphinning!