I had an interesting email in my inbox today! So it seems that Entrecard.com, Inc. has been acquired by Los Angeles based ZipRunner Inc. Here is the email that I received and all EntreCard should also have recieved.

Dear Entrecarders,
It is with great excitement that I announce Entrecard.com, Inc. has
been acquired by Los Angeles based ZipRunner Inc.

ZipRunner has the resources, vision, and dedication to Entrecard that
will allow it to grow in pursuit of the vision I laid out nearly two
years ago.

Moving forward, my relationship to Entrecard will be that of an
adviser, and I will help the good folks at ZipRunner take the whole
project to the next level. Expect a follow up communication from them very soon.

ZipRunner Inc. was chosen out of a number of potential suitors because
of the resources they can dedicate to the project, their exciting
vision for the company’s future, and their understanding of social
media and the blogosphere.

I urge you all to look forward to a bigger, better Entrecard, and I
couldn’t be more proud to bring it to this point before passing the
torch. I’ve heard first hand all the great things that are in store
for the company and it’s members, and needless to say it has me quite
excited.

If you would like to keep in touch with me in the future, your can
find me at my new blog Ontrapranore.com where I look forward to
sharing my stories of entrepreneurship and starting/running internet
companies.

Whether you love or hate the decisions I’ve made for Entrecard in the
past, I always did the best I could to move the company forward given
the resources I had, and I always had the best interest of the members
in mind. Now, with new management and ownership stepping in, I urge
anyone who has left the service to give it another chance, and I urge
those who have been loyal members for days, weeks, months, or years to
look forward to a brighter future, a reliable and stable service, and
great new features and strategic direction.

Signing Off,
Graham Langdon
Founder of Entrecard

So what will this mean to users of EntreCard, well I can just imagine a system coming in where we will have to pay subscriptions to use the service and free users having less access to options than those paying for a service, I may be wrong, but usually this is what happens. Just look at Last.fm when the take over happened there, users outside the UK and USA started getting charged a subscription for the radio services!

Anyway time will tell and it will be interesting to see what happens to EntreCard now that they have been acquired by ZipRunner.

Now many users of the EntreCard system have said that is a long time coming, but according to the latest blog post on the EntreCard blog they are to “take action against bounce rates”

So before I get on to this, I’ll just give you a quick bit of info about bounce rates, a Bounce Rate is when a visitor lands on your blog and then leaves straight away without spending time looking around your blog and EntreCard is a terrible culprit for making you have a high percentage on your bounce rates….

So as mentioned by EntreCard they intend to implement a system that will decide if the dropper is a “drop and run” visitor, this is someone who is only there to drop on your ECard and then zip off to another blog, to get in as many drops as they can in the day without even reading your blog, shame on them! As mentioned in the EntreCard Blog:

Up until now, we’ve always allowed the “drop and run” phenomenon to take place. We figured if someone was interesting to the visitor, they’d stop and read, and it was best to let everyone go at their own pace. But now we are taking a slightly different approach, in an ongoing effort to increase the quality of Entrecard traffic across the board.

My problem with the drop and run phenomenon is that you are spending time writing an interesting post only for someone to stop by, drop on the ECard and bugger off! I write these posts not just for me you know but for others to read and show some interest by posting comments, not visit and say, “ok I’ve dropped, I’m off!”

So what will EntreCard be doing about this, well this is what they have said on their official blog:

Starting soon, “dropping and running” will no longer give you credit. We are developing a proprietary algorithm to determine whether or not you engaged in the blog you visitied in some way. If you did not engage in the blog, you will not get credit. We won’t be disclosing exactly the algorithm we use, so that people can’t game it easily.

So it seems that something is been done, but will this cut the amount of view to a blog showing the EntreCard widget? Probably, but isn’t it better to get a few less visits and gain visitors that actually appreciate your blogging, only time will tell when the new system is finally implemented.

Now most of you do visit my blog through EntreCard and may of read in an earlier post that I wasn’t really sure if I would stay or go…

Well my decision has finally been made by the continous issues that EntreCard seems to be having, for example I had no way of knowing who had dropped on my site yesterday and couldn’t return the favour by dropping back due to some error on the EntreCard system where is wasn’t showing the droppers!

I would like to thank everyone who has been dropping on my site and taking the time to read posts and comment on them, your efforts are very much appreciated, all I would ask is that you please subscribe to my RSS Feed and keep your comments coming on my future posts.

So, hopefully I’ll see you all commenting on my blog….

If anyone has a good enough reason to talk me out of leaving then I would love to hear it..

Wow, times flies these days, I can’t believe that another month has gone by and it’s May already.

There has been some up and downs lately with the discussions about if I was going to continue with EntreCard or not and to be quite honest I’m still undecided, but, that doesn’t stop me from dropping and reading some great blogs that I have discovered with EntreCard.

So who are Aprils Top 10 Droppers

Read the rest of this entry »

With the recent changes over at Entrecard I have been in two minds whether to leave EntreCard or stay, I’m personally not happy with the paid ads system over there at the moment, I hate the way that those who take the time to drop on others site have to share their hard earned EntreCard credits with those that are paying to have their ads shown, this means that those that use their EC credits are not getting their full displays on blogs, due to the 50/50 split of EC credits bought ads and cash ads.

So I recently stopped accepting paid for ads at EntreCard so that those using their EC credits to display ads get 100% on my blog. If you have stopped taking paid ads at EntreCard then check out LadyBanana who is making a list EC sites that “DO NOT ACCEPT paid ads on EntreCard”.

My problem with whether or not to drop EntreCard is my blogs traffic, as I was reading over at The Junk Drawer recently it made me think, most of my traffic does come from EntreCard and I would be losing a chunk of traffic from my blog, so I can’t decide to stay or go.

I know that I do have a good following with over 1,500 followers on Twitter and a good amount of RSS subscribers via readers and email subscriptions, so my blog would possibly stand on it’s own, but I really don’t know what to do.

So I would really appreciate any feedback on my dilema and anyone that dows comment, please let me know how you found my blog originally, thanks everyone

I was just reading this post via my RSS subscription to Mystery Man’s Blog – Rants, Thoughts and Other Things and I have to agree whole heartedly on the way EntreCard is currently dealing with is paid ads service, so today is No Dropping Day.

An interesting discussion is going on at the entreblog.

Graham: (The BOSS)

The plan is to give members with the highest ratio of paid ad approvals first dibs on cashing out their credits.

Well, I don’t know the word dibs, but I understand the meaning here.

I feel the efforts of the droppers are completely neglected.
And I also feel the loyalty many have for the ads which were approved before the paid ads were introduced is not respected.

Maybe it’s a good idea to chose a day we don’t drop, so Graham can get an idea how much we mean for the system.
When there are not enough droppers active he can’t do enough with his paid advertising.

I’m calling a strike of entrecard droppers!!

Maybe friday is the perfect day for that.

To show the importance of droppers for the entrecard system.
To show we’re no second rate entrecarders.
To show we want to have complete control over our own site.
To get equal respect for EC and money paid advertisers.
To prevent the decay of the system.

Get your graphic here.

To be clear: I’m not against contributing towards the continuation of the system. Not at all.
And I’m not against paid advertising.
In fact I’m all for two sided widgets, or even two widgets.
But that someone sees it fit to break an agreement and displays advertisements on my site without my consent really makes me mad.

When we want to keep the system going and all have a good time droppers need to be respected to (by someone in his twenties who’s in it for the money. Let’s be clear about that.)

Come back on friday to see links to alternative activities. (No ads. LOL!)

update:

This morning I had a different ad in my widget than should be there.
When reloading I got another one; not the one that should be there.
Right now I’m surfing with blogexplosion. Bit of music, cup of coffee.
I’m even able to drop now and then.

Now I have been using EntreCard for a long time now and I must be one of the few “Droppers” that actually visits a site, stays for a while and even leaves a comment if the posts interest me, but the problem is those “Droppers” that speed drop!

The trouble with speed droppers is that they land on your site hit drop and then bugger off! Which is not really good for your blogs bounce rate, ok, I may be sending this right over people heads right now, so I would recommend reading the Wiki about Bounce Rate to find out what it is, but to cut a story short, bounce rate is the amount of time a visitor stays on your blog before moving onto another site etc.

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