Saturday, January 29, 2011

New feature: LinkWithin. Feedback?

This weekend I'm testing a new third party feature here on Wild About Harry - LinkWithin. You'll see at the end of each blog post is now a "You might also like" tag with links to past stories. It's supposed to learn the site and generate only relevant suggestions, i.e., stories about Hardeen will recommend more Hardeen stories. I don't know what I think about it. I like that it offers up stories that might have been forgotten, but I don't like that it junks up the design of the overall page. It's just a trial run, so I would love to hear your feedback. Should we make this a permanent part of our blog, or send it packing?


UPDATE: Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I've decided to deactivate the feature for now. It just didn't work with the overall site design. But you can always explore old stories by clicking a topic in the Blog Index.

7 comments:

  1. Actually I was going to ask you how you did that, and now I know. I think it's a very clever addition.

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  2. It is clever, I just wish I was more controllable. Like maybe you could customize it to appear only every 3 stories or select which stories it should appear on. I saw this on another blog and thought it was pretty cool. But I notice that blog took it off in time. I'd like to see it start working and see how smart the suggestions are. I don't know. As cool as it is, I think it might ultimately feel obtrusive.

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  3. Melbo tells me this is is superimposing itself over my comments field. This happening to anyone else? Not good.

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  4. Dang, still doing it. I hope it is just me.

    It does have a good feature about it though which is that it pulls up different stories each time. It is never the same three links.

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  5. Yeah, but it isn't working as advertised in that it should be pulling up relevant stories. Also it appears to be cycling the same small number of old stories. I'll get it the weekend to work itself out, but I'm not overjoyed with it.

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  6. Can LinkWithin read my mind when I visit this site?

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  7. Maybe!

    It seems to be working better, finding relevant stories, but I still think it clutters up the page and is distracting. It may not see Monday.

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