A little while back, I saw a tweet from Stuart Foster stating that David Spinks had invites to give out to a new site called Scribnia. Excited by the description of the site, a review community for bloggers, journalists and other writers, I immediately sent David a tweet asking for an invite. I’ve been using the site for the past month now and feel confident in sharing my thoughts about it here with you.
What is Scribnia?
Scribnia is a Boston based startup company that is working to provide an online community for users to review bloggers, reporters, columnists and other online writers. It’s a five month old company that is still currently in private Alpha mode but is expecting to launch publicly this week. Side note, if you can’t wait and want to try out Scribnia today, send me an e-mail. I’ll invite my readers as long as I have Alpha invites to give out. All I ask is you in public beta mode.
Scribnia allows users to rate writers on a scale of 1 to 10. There are also niche specific metrics that allow you to rate a writer based on criteria relevant to writers in that niche. For example, the profiles for sports bloggers like Bill Simmons or Josh Gans list the following three “Context Ratings” on a sliding scale:
- Statistical Reliance
- Tone
- Controversialness
From “Distrusts stats” to “Stat geek”.
From “Light” to “Serious”.
From “Non-controversial” to “Controversial”.
This context scale is a great way to sort authors, but it has one downfall. For writers like me who bounce from subject to subject, site to site, the Context Ratings system isn’t able to capture all the niches multi-topic authors write about and instead hones in on one niche.
For instance, I’m listed in the Blogging sub-category, but I also write about social media, Boston, bicycling, business, sports, and news articles for The Dorchester Reporter. If someone reads just the posts I write at Sports Fan 4 or just the news stories I write for The Dorchester Reporter, they’re not able to fit that material into the blogging metrics. So, in other words it’s not a perfect system but for most writers who focus on one or two niches it works splendidly.
Scribnia Rocks
If Scribnia rocked any harder they’d be in danger of passing Dewey Cox on the list of people/companies that rock/walk hard. The site itself not only kicks major butt, but their contact points are all quick and know what they’re doing too. Scribnia really gets the blogging community, which is huge for a site where bloggers (and other writers) are reviewed.
For Scribnia to succeed they must successfully reach out to bloggers and give us a tool we’ll enjoy. Well, they use Twitter well (@scribnia) and their site gives feedback to writers, which near any blogger will tell you is much appreciated. It also gives bloggers another venue for us to post our opinions.
Speaking of Twitter, they borrowed an idea from the micro-blogging platform and have their own follower/following system implemented directly into the site. It allows reviewers to follow other reviewers and thus see what they’re reading and reviewing. It’s a great way to check out new authors and see what your friends think of other authors. Follow me on Scribnia. Scribnia also has a commenting and thumbs up/down system on each review. Following other users will allow you to see where they commented and which reviews they gave a thumbs up or down to.
So far, I’m really digging Scribnia and think you will too. Much like Yelp I’ve found the reviews are genuine, critical, and well written. They are really on their way to developing a database of online author reviews that will become the main stop for anyone looking to expand their reading collection. When it launches publicly it will become the top resource for online author reviews. So don’t delay, send me an e-mail today to get in before everyone else!
Write up a review of me on my Scribnia profile.
Here’s a few more posts on Scribnia from other bloggers.
Adam,
Wow, what a great (and thorough) review. May be the best one I’ve seen. Thank you very much for all your support and for being such an enthusiastic user.
The multiple topic limitation is definitely something we’re having some trouble with. With the way the system works, we cannot create more than one category for blogger. This isn’t a common issue as most bloggers focus on one segment, but we’re hoping to fix this for the versatile bloggers such as yourself.
Thanks and looking forward to seeing to continue to be a prominent user as we continue to grow.
David
Something I should have added to the review is that the Scribnia team is very, very good at listening to user feedback and implementing changes. I’ve sent over a few suggestions and they’ve responded quickly and either agreed with the improvement or noted why it couldn’t be done or why it might not be a good idea.
People like David and Russ D really get that they should listen to blogger feedback since we’re a huge part of the target audience!
Looking forward to seeing what you guys do with Scribnia in the future David. The multi-topic issue seems like it’d be a tough fix but I’ve got confidence in you guys!
Really like your assessment of Scribnia as the “Yelp” for bloggers. It’s pretty much dead on. I think that your concerns are warranted, I also think that some of these are going to be addressed very very soon though. Had a great talk with Russ and David the other day via a conference call. Looking forward to the progress that will be made there.
You’re right Stuart, the Scribnia team is really great at continually improving the site.
Looking back I’m a bit amazed someone didn’t come up with a Yelp for writers idea sooner, but I’m glad the Scribnia team is leading the way as they’re clearly very talented.
Alex,
Sorry man the other day I lost some emails, and of course the invite you sent to me was included.
Can you send again?
Great review BTW..
Alex is out of the office but Adam just resent you an invite.
That’s like the tenth time in the past two years someone has called me Alex. Do I have it on my site somewhere? Don’t mind, I think it’s hilarious but am curious.
Anyhoo, let me know if the resent invite doesn’t go through.
All signed up, gracias
Lo siento mucho..
[...] Scribnia is an online community for online authors and their readers. Anyone can review an online author based on an overall score and industry specific metrics. I’ve been using the site for a few months and think scribnia really rocks. [...]