Sphere It – To Provide More Value To Your Blog
TheSpot-er on May 11th, 2007
NOTE! If you enjoy this post, please feel free to
twitter it with the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/5pymwd and comment below. Thanks, I appreciate it and value your feedback! Alex Sysoef
While I didn’t discover America I think this little find is well worth posting about. I have just downloaded and installed a nice little plugin that adds value to Wordpress blog without creating any clatter. I’m talking about Sphere plugin. You can see it in action at the end of each and every post and individual pages just like in screenshot below …
What is so cool about it? It doesn’t take much space and provides additional value to your blog visitors by supplying related content. How cool is that?! You don’t have to do anything, except install it.
Installation is straightforward: simply drop it into plugins folder and activate. Toni Conrad (author) provides you with additional options for placing this plugin on your blog. I have used an optional install where I had to add the code to theme myself and I’ll explain why …
- While providing additional content is fine and dandy – I would like people to read or at least scroll through mine.
- Index page was out of questions for this plugin as my goal to have people that arrived to my pages actually read them.
- It allows me to place the button shown in pic above exactly where I wanted it to appear!
This is a great little plugin I can recommend to anyone and as I mentioned – if you are not too friendly with technology – default install works great! Download it here!
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Hi Alex - thanks for the kind words - much appreciated. Great blog!
Best,
Tony Conrad
CEO & Founder
Thanks Tony!
Your feedback is much appreciated.
Hi Alex -
I have to agree about Sphere… it is a great service and plugin for WordPres — but is it ethical? In writing a blog article about it, I learned that bloggers can “skew” what links come up in Sphere in one political direction or another. See:
http://webhelpermagazine.com/2.....influence/
For instance, you can set Sphere to show only links to Republican websites. Talk about a lopsided “sphere”. I suppose it’s ok… but wouldn’t you want to at least notify your readers? And why, especially in politics, is it valuable to only listen to one side of a debate? Anyway… we’re using Sphere at WebHelperMagazine.com… without any limitations — we want the whole world (in the spirit of the world wide web) to be our sphere of reference.
- Scott
Scott Frangos’s last blog post..Five Reasons Why You Need a WordPress Blog
Scott,
I wasn’t even aware of the options you are mentioning and will read it right now. I personally just use default settings.
On ethical part - blogs are an expression of our personalities, beliefs and knowledge. I personally do my best to stay away from politics not because I don’t have an opinion but simply because my blog is not about it. And if someone is openly expressing their views on certain political topic and they have an option to display ONLY sites directly related to their personal opinion - I don’t see an issue with it. I can understand the need to see both sides of the issue but blogs in my opinion are NOT official site and don’t have to be objective. People read blogs because they want to know the opinion of the person creating it, however wrong it might be. It is our uniqueness that draws readers and providing links to content that confirms to what we think I think only works to bloggers advantage. Just like you link from your post to like minded articles …
Take for example comments. I haven’t had the need to delete any comments made by a person but I do routinely delete trackbacks from splogs. If they want to link to me - fine, but I will not give them benefit of linking. Is it ethical? In my opinion yes! It is my blog and I control what content is displayed here.
So I do see your point but as blogger - I don’t agree with you on it.
Hi Alex -
While I agree with you that Blogs are basically about opinions, I am not sure that providing a Sphere button that locks out the other side of the debate WITHOUT DISCLOSURE, is a good thing. At best this limits the dialog, and at worst it looks like deliberate deception. Why be afraid of a good debate? Sure blogs are reflections of you and your own belief systems. But what enriches us most is to consider the full spectrum of opinion on a subject, for ourselves, and then make up our own minds.
To cut off routes of honest inquiry is a shame, and analogous to providing a Google search button that excludes any sites that disagree with what your site is proposing. I don’t have a problem that you can do it, or even that you choose to do it. The problem comes when it is not disclosed to the readers. To be clear, I am not accusing you of this… I am simply seeking to make this limiting option, built into Sphere, known. You stated you weren’t even aware of the “turn off political opponents” option in the software. There, precisely, lies the danger.
Yours, Scott
Hi Alex’s last blog post..Social Media Outreach 101 - 5 Tips For Integrating Into Communities
Thanks Scott,
You make some valid points …
Honestly I didn’t research the subject enough on what sphere does. It seems like good plugin but perhaps I need to have a second look to make up my mind on it. Thanks for heads up.
Alex
This is my first time hearing about this sphere it plugin. I do have a couple of wordpress blogs on different topics, so I do see the point from both sides. I see it as simply the preference of the blogger and what kind of objective he/she is after for the blog. And whatever that objective is will dictate what kind of readers the blog will attract and keep.