The Smartest Sphinn It! FeedFlare — Now with comments counter

Oct

Published by Hamlet Batista on Wed 17 Oct 2007

I was looking at my search engine referrals for this blog and I noticed some people looking for the Sphinn FeedFlare. I am glad I checked the page again, because I realized that I had forgotten to move it to the new server. After the move, I finally found the time to add a comment counter, similar to the Digg FeedFlare.

In order to install it, follow these steps:

Log in to FeedBurner. Select your feed, click the Optimize tab, and then the FeedFlare option in the left column.
Add my SphinnIt! FeedFlare by copying and pasting this URL in the Add New Flare field: http://hamletbatista.com/sphinnit.xml?version=1.0
Select both checkmarks to make it available in your feed and posts, and, in case you haven’t done so, make sure you copy the JavaScript code to your blog template.
Optionally you can use drag and drop to move it to the top of the list and make it more prominent.

Happy Sphinning!

6 comments ↓

Dr. Pete on 10.18.07 at 4:30 pm

Hamlet, if you’re being brutally honest, what’s your take on how effective the Digg, Sphinn, etc. links are? I’ve hesitated to add them, from a usability perspective (seeing them, on the one hand, as noise to my readers), but also really value referrals and have gotten some solid link-love lately. Your FeedFlare is pretty unobtrusive, and the Sphinn add-on increases my temptation, so I’d love to hear your opinion on the value.

I also have to say that I love the “Welcome back…” functionality on your comments. In fact, I have to admit that I love it so much that I’ve borrowed it for my own blog. I hope you can forgive me

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Hamlet Batista on 10.18.07 at 5:44 pm

Dr. Pete,

I really like FeedFlares because, as you say, they are unobtrusive and they make it very convenient for my readers to submit and vote for my content on social sites. I recommend you limit them to post level pages only. It makes sense for readers to vote or submit your content only after they have actually read it

I had great success on SEOmoz/Youmoz, but very few people visited my blog as result of post promotions. On the other hand, when I target social sites I can focus on building my content and readership.

Thanks to Sphinn and StumbleUpon I have been able to grow my blog’s audience gradually and steadily.

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Ruchir on 10.21.07 at 9:28 am

I never knew there was a Sphinn feedflare that displays comments. Thanks…Another flare added to my arsenal

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Hamlet Batista on 10.24.07 at 3:26 pm

Ruchir - There wasn’t. I had to create it ;-). Thanks for your visit and comment.

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NSpeaks on 11.22.07 at 1:13 am

I added your feedflare along with email this….email this appeared immediately but your app is not visible even after 2 hours of adding it. Strange.

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Hamlet Batista on 11.22.07 at 11:11 am

Nspeaks - I received a similar report Yesterday. I will need to take some time to debug the script and find the problem. I will work on it this weekend. Thanks for the heads up!

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