PlugIM.com – An Internet Marketer’s Haven
Dec 20, 2006 Business & Marketing
When a site like Digg.com becomes mainstream popular, you can bet that there will be many attempts to clone or knockoff the original concept. There are at best guess a few hundred to a thousand or so Digg-like clones running in production mode today. My prediction: 2007 will mark the year of the rise of Digg clones! The number of digg clones will increase exponentially in the next 12 months. Sure we’ll see a lot of horrible default installations of CMS softwares like pligg.com (a digg emulation script), but we’ll also a lot of creative uses, creative designs, mods, and unique features that you can come to expect from a solid open source community.
Such is the case of PlugIM. PlugIM is a fantastic example of pligg done right. It is also my new favorite digg clone if you couldn’t tell. It is focused on providing news and resources just for Internet Marketers, which I happen to be. This is a perfect example of hitting a niche on the head. Internet Marketers (IMs) are as hungry for new information just as much as any of the savvy consumers we are marketing too. We’re always looking for the latest trends, trying to beat all the other IMs to market, researching ways to optimize revenue efforts, and always shamelessly promoting ourselves or products (aka “plugs”). PlugIM provides an IM playground, were only the best tips and products make the front page, while the rest is filtered in the background.
But all is not golden unicorns and lucky charms cereal in the land of plugIM. One risk they are taking is opening its doors to spammers. This is always a concern in the IM industry. An IM forum or site can expect to be massively spam attacked by formidable spammers, just as fast and easily as a warez or hacker forum can expect to be prodded and port-holed by a script kiddie. Pligg offers a few tools to combat spam, but plugIM will definitely need to stay on their toes until the anti-spam techniques are refined and tested. I did hear that there was an akismet plugin for pligg somewhere, and this would be a solid start of a defensive strategy for any pligg site.
plugIM offers a fresh design that differs a great deal from any of the pligg default templates. Design is so important in the world of startup clones, as I found out with my poor attempt at a pligg site in PureGenio.us. (The site has since died at pligg version 5 — but since pligg has since released v.9, I think I’ll take another shot at it soon.) plugIM utilizes the Adsense revenue sharing module (a plus!) and a few other unique features that makes it very valuable for any Internet Marketer.
Visit the plugIM homepage. Also, you can see my profile there too.
[DISCLAIMER: I am in no way associated with plugIM, pligg, or digg. I am simply a fan of all three sites]
December 21st, 2006 at 7:32 am
Nice idea, but that design is really killing that site. It’s like the “newest old design” I have seen for a while.