Our dev team is working very hard on SocialSpark 2.0. This is not an upgrade. It is a completely new system from the ground up. We have taken in all of your feedback over the years, streamlined everything and designed a flexible platform that can change with the social media landscape. It looks and acts nothing like the current SocialSpark, though you will see some resemblance to some of our more recent product releases. I am not going to go into too much detail here but I wanted to share a few highlights:
What is Out
- Profile pages
- Messages
- Social Networking (friending within SocialSpark)
- RealRank/ITK
- Sparks
- Clunky processes
What is In
- Direct publishing
- Negotiation
- Speed
- Google Analytics
Google Analytics is probably the biggest thing you should be aware of as it will be a requirement for you to get any Opps. You will be able to register without it, but if an advertiser can’t see how much traffic you get the likelihood of them making you an offer is slim. You will be asked to give SocialSpark permission to access your Google Analytics account in order to pull the most accurate site data possible. If you don’t already use Google Analytics now is a great time to get it installed – it is FREE!
As we get closer to launch the team will be providing more detail about these new features. I am excited about SocialSpark 2.0 and I think you will be too!
Whoa, big changes. Interested in seeing what it is like. Pretty excited.
@BenSpark: Whoa is right. It is a pretty radical change.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by ted murphy, Todd Miller. Todd Miller said: SocialSpark 2.0 : Things You Should Know: Our dev team is working very hard on SocialSpark 2.0. This is not an upg… http://bit.ly/bbrOiw [...]
Looking forward to it. Any eta? 1 week, 1 month, 2012?
Thanks.
Wow. This sounds exciting AND fun. Maybe if today was opposite day.
Sounding good, just set up all my blogs with Google Analytics for the first time (finally) last week. Sounds like your getting rid of a lot of “clutter”, looking forward to hearing more.
This is exciting and scary too, lol. Well, if it’s for the better goal, I’m all for it too!
Thanks for the update, Ted! Looking forward to hearing more and jumping in!
is this one of the reasons why my post has not been approved yet? I already added google-analytics on my site. Hope I did it right.
I hope I can get more opportunities here at SS…
good to hear that the social networking aspect of socialspark will be gone. I like SS a lot but I never thought the “networking” aspect helped any. looking forward to 2.0!
I liked the social aspect of the site. Through it I’ve met a lot of bloogers I wouldn’t have otherwise and have been introduced to a lot of interesting sites.
Hey there. Sounds good, especially since Izea Rank seems to be wrong on my socialspark profile. I’m looking forward to the new system!
I like the fact that you are going to use real analytics instead of the current method, but are you going to require that we open our entire analytics account or is there a way to access just one profile? I have dozens of websites I track and multiple clients under my account so I don’t want to give access to this to anyone, unless it can be segregated so that only Man Tripping is visible to you.
It’s funny that James is saying you’re going to use “real analytics”. As opposed to fake analytics programs from others besides Google?
I don’t know that I like the Google Analytics approach.
I’ve been working in website design and traffic analyzing for over 13 years, and my experience with Google is far from what I would call amazing.
Because I don’t like to put all of my eggs in one basket, and because I frankly don’t trust any one analytics reporting framework, I use 5-6 different traffic tracking resources, and of those, Google is by far the worst at reporting true numbers.
It does have many nice features, and it’s probably used by the majority of those being herded into it like sheep, simply because it’s free and flashy, but I don’t think it’s the answer you should be looking for.
It sounds like the new version will be quicker and easier for both advertisers and bloggers to get more important information about each other, I’m looking forward to it
@Steven-Sanders I am not a web novice either and I agree with you that GA has its weeknesses. Overall though IMO it is as good if not better than many of the for-pay analytics programs. You are welcome to disagree though
My comment was directed to the fact that the izea tracker seemed to be even less accurate and that it was just another thing to slow the site(s) down. Also, with the new update and availability of the AS code, GA is MUCH faster and more accurate + it is still a standard metric.
The problem with ALL analytics programs is that they completely depend on how / what you are actually measuring and when in the page load cycle that you count the traffic, so there really isn’t anything “completely accurate”.
I look forward to trying this out on several of my hobby sites. hopefully it will get advertisers to pay a bit more for blogs done better? i.e. higher success = more pay for the same type of posts? that would be interesting…maybe not.
[...] Ted has alluded to already, SocialSpark is undergoing a major overhaul right now. Part of that overhaul is all but [...]
[...] Ted has alluded to already, SocialSpark is undergoing a major overhaul right now. Part of that overhaul is all but [...]
I have multiple WordPress blogs. Recently I began having trouble with just TWO of them. They happen to be the ONLY two that are registered with Social Spark 2.0. :/
Periodically — without any input from me — the comments on EVERY post are closed. It is not only damaging my traffic but very time-consuming to fix.
I’ve started to see other reports of this creeping up. I hope you’ll check into it.
@Alison Moore Smith If you haven’t already, can you please start a thread about this in our support forums (http://getsatisfaction.com/izea). This will help us document the issues, and address any bugs (if there are some).
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