metaViper

Everyone has a topic they’re passionate about. Whether it’s talking about combating global warming or brewing a perfect latte, opinions can be difficult to share with larger groups and finding an interested audience is one way to make sizeable impacts.

Here’s a platform to make that easier. Change.org allows its members to post information about things they’d like to change and these are published publicly. There are also ratings of popular (or unpopular depending on who you ask) politicians and nonprofits, records of what actions members are taking, and a mechanism to donate toward causes.

Lots of people are talking about how the Internet is connecting presidential hopefuls more directly with their audiences and this is another great example of that same concept in action. Change.org provides a summary of what its online population is thinking and will only become more accurate as more people join the community.

There’s a lot of hype on the inter-web about the iPhone and like many I’m tempted to buy one. That prompted me to do a little research on the pros and cons of the iPhone, like with any other new gadget. Most of these points are obvious and my only goal here is to create some clarity about whether or not it makes sense to hand out $500 plus $60/month for a service contract to buy a new iPhone.

A couple of features that I’m finding anecdotal evidence for on both sides include: image quality of the iPhone’s camera, and whether or not using the on-screen keyboard is quick and intuitive.

What other iPhone pros or cons can you think of?

There are two key components to any valuable web site: its content popularity and traffic. Design is also important, but I’ve visited many poorly designed sites that enjoy thousands of visitors every day so I won’t focus on that now. This article will focus primarily on content popularity.

Many of you are site owners or bloggers trying to build presence and authority. Let’s take a look at a couple of widely known web sites: Blizzard.com and the home page of their wildly successful MMORG, WorldofWarcraft.com.

Below is a drill-down of statistics generated by popuri.us for each site:

Blizzard.com (12 years old)	WorldofWarcraft.com (7 years old)

The Google PageRank, Alexa, Compete, and QuantCast ranks indicate that WorldofWarcraft.com is the more popular site because each number in this area is lower for WoW. Interestingly, two of the three search engines indicate there are more backlinks to Blizzard.com, perhaps because it’s had more time to attract link love. Then with the last three statistic Technorati, del.icio.us bookmarks, and Bloglines subscribers, WorldofWarcraft is the clear winner. What surprised me here is that Blizzard.com has no Bloglines subscribers. Looks like an opportunity to advertise/create a company RSS feed!

World of Warcraft enjoys a gigantic userbase with over 6 million subscribers and clearly they’re linking back to the game site and finding its content very valuable. Both sites are popular but WoW has outpaced its parent, as children are wont to do :-}

dnScoop happens to agree with this analysis valuing Blizzard.com at $8,932,000 and WorldofWarcraft.com at $10,693,200 !