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Desphinn – Power to the People

Social Media and Search Engine Marketing Niche news site Sphinn has just announced its latest feature: the Desphinn. Desphinning in theory will allow a more level playing field, giving regular users the ability to downvote in a matter of speaking. Admin evilgreenmonkey elaborates:

It is important to note that a Desphinn is not equal to a Sphinn, preventing abuse from the same gang-voting actions that we’ve seen with members Sphinning items. Before a story goes hot, only 2 Desphinns are needed in order to take 1 Sphinn off its tally.

Once the story has gone hot, 5 Desphinns are required in order to remove 1 Sphinn. This is because the story is seen as more trustworthy once it has reached enough votes to go Hot (currently 22 Sphinns).

If the number of Sphinns for any story reaches -10, the story is removed.

This actually sounds more well planned out and transparent than some other social sites I’m sure we can think of 🙂

Desphinn

Kudos to the Sphinn team. Keeping users engaged, getting involved in threads constantly, and coming up with useful features such as this are key. Sphinn has become a place of good quality to the point where you can play hookey on your RSS reading and just check out the Sphinn front page for your social / search news fix.

5 Comments

  1. brian

    @David: Sphinn is more search / social media focused whereas Digg is tech and StumbleUpon varies.

  2. Simon Slade

    The weakened power of the de-sphinn was a little surprising, I’d have thought it would be one to one.

  3. brian

    @Simon: I don’t know if a one to one de-sphinn would really be what’s needed. Do you think that Digg has a one to one bury ability? Sure Redditt and Mixx have this ability, but I think that Sphinn did the right thing.

  4. unTECHy

    I’ve never used sphinn, but I’m sure I’ll get around to it one day. I usually just rely on Stumbleupon for traffic.

    I can see how desphinn could be used badly by competing websites though.

    Good post.

    unTECHy’s last blog post..Feed the starving for FREE