My Scoutle scout is busy strolling round blogs that match my interest areas. You can see her in action in my footer. She is meeting up with other scouts who share my interests. Hopefully their creators will then come and visit my blog, be fascinated with its content, subscribe, comment regularly and become blogging contacts – time will tell.
Scoutle considers itself to be “Automated Social Networking” where there is no need for communication in order to connect and no real life obligations. I think they must be talking only about the initial method of connection here as, once you have connected with someone, there must be communication for a blogging relationship to develop and establish.The novelty of Scoutle is that you do not have to search for people to connect with, Scoutle’s search does that for you, filtering out sites that it considers not worthy – eg outdated sites or those just that only exist for advertising purposes. As well as finding contacts via the widget you can discover other members on the Scoutle website itself, – via contacts of contacts and through networks based on interest areas.
Scoutle is premised on the idea that it is the quality of connections that is important not the quantity. This appeals to me considering the masses of people I do not know that connect to me on sites such as MyBlogLog; many who have likely never visited this blog. Scoutle allows your Scout to walk twice for every time you have a visitor to your site – the more your Scout gets to walk the more it will appear on the sites of other Scoutle members. You make contact with other users by requesting to make a “Connection” with them via the Scoutle website. You score points based on your site visitor numbers and the number of Connections you make. The higher your point value the higher your place in the Scoutle Guide, which in turn should lead to more visitors.
This service has been available for a good few months now and, although as usual I joined as soon as I heard about it, I felt that I already took part in too many social networking activities and these were beginning to take time away from blogging: becoming counterproductive. I have since narrowed these down to networks I find the most use and enjoy using the most so I have some leeway to explore others.
I will report on Scoutle once I have had more opportunity to find out if it is working for me, although I suspect it is not attracting as many members as it deserves because of general social networking fatigue as well as the desire not to have too many widgets. I have already discovered a few very informative blogs that I had not come across before – one you may be interested in is Social Web Tools by ChaCha Fance – it sent me off in discovery of various new, interesting applications.
If you are a Scoutle member please leave a comment letting us know what you think of it.
(I placed the Scoutle widget in my footer because this reduces the impact of any increase in page load time it causes – the footer loads last so the rest of the page is visible even though the social networking widgets may not have fully loaded)
I’ll look forward to reading your summary of Scoutle
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Hi Jayne
It has already brought me some visitors so seems promising. I am coming along to see you after this to have a catch up on lessons about our country’s history
I never heard of this but I’m sure I will hear more about it. I just stumbled on your site. Nice bloggs.
Thanks Jonathan I am pleased you found your way here.
Thank you for the shout out! I love Scoutle, it’s really one of the best, most discreet blog tools I’ve found. It sits there quietly on you blog doing all the work for you!
Great to hear you find it useful. Scoutle uses a novel approach which makes it interesting to use. When you started using it did you spend time just watching the Scouts walking across the widget as I have been doing?
You have some great material on your blog, you deserved the shout out.
Thanks for writing about us! It is nice to see people like our idea and spend some time thinking and writing about it.
I hope I will even amaze you with the new version which is planned September 8. We will also hope to improve loading time, like you write.
Thanks again and Scout you soon!
Godfried (Scoutle)
http://www.scoutle.com
I look forward to the new version Godfried although I am impressed with what it does already – I do not know that load time is a problem with the Scoutle widget but I tend to assume that widgets with scripts leading to other sites can slow page load down and I probably use more than I should.
Look forward to hearing the results of your findings. I am always reluctant to partake in such things due to the potential slow down of the site – having it in the footer is a good idea though.
Some widgets have little impact on load time so I am always willing to give them a try. If they take too long to load I do not keep them.
Thanks for your post. It’s new information for me, I will look more for that first..
My son just started Joey Scouts and I couldn’t really fathom your heading. Now I know. I will be interested to hear what you find out. Your blog has really progressed since those early blank slate days. Congrats.
I hope you find it useful
Sorry to cause confusion – here I am trying to use titles that contain keywords that people may search for not thinking of the connection with the actual Scout movement.
Thanks for the compliment Colin – it is the encouragement, motivation and help that is given by bloggers I respect that has helped enormously so I can only take some of the credit. You are one of these people.
I’m trying scoutle as well.. you don’t have to actively participate, so why not? It’s been a few weeks and I just got my first contact. I assume that as I gain more contacts, my scout will find contacts more quickly… a snowball effect if you will. Till then, I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed.
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Although contacts are suggested to you via the widget like any social networking tool you get out of it only as much as you put in. You can find contacts yourself through visiting and commenting on any Scoutle recommended blogs that you find interesting, requesting connections and joining networks.
Thanks for the tip on Scoutle. Never heard of it until I came across your site. It is gathering for me as we speak.
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This sounds real interesting – please keep us posted Sue!
Wishing you a great end to your week too
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I’m trying Scoutle out now and it’s pretty good, got a few connections already
Thanks Sue
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Great I will come and make contact with you there
Sounds look a cool program. I’ll have to take a look at it for sure.
Interesting, I will be interested in the bottom line though. I guess I have nothing to lose by trying it. Thanks for the info.
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There are so many social networking sites, it is really tough to know which ones are worth your time. I think I will wait for you next post on Scoutle before joining up.
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I had actually never heard of Scoutle before – I will give it a go
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i never heard about that . interesting!
Yes, it is very interesing concept.
Just tried it out and it looks good
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That is a very interesting concept. I will be trying this out for myself very soon.
I dunno if this type of social traffic will turn into any $$$ but it will clearly help raise traffic numbers.
I will have to use it for awhile and see if it converter at all!
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ill give it a shot, i can use some extra traffic
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You’ve had this installed for a couple of weeks I think … have you found it valuable so far?
Hi there Sueblimely (and the rest),
Just wanted to let you know the new version is online! Since I liked the discussion you had here, I hope you will dedicate a new post on the new version. It has been a lot of work to process as much suggestions as we received from our users.
But certainly check out the new version at http://www.scoutle.com
I am curious to know what you and your readers think.
Kind regards,
Godfried
Sigh. I wanted to use it, but I could not figure out how to get it into WordPress. Maybe I will give up on WordPress:-(But Thank you for these theme!
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Wow, I’m not sure how I missed this tool. Quite fascinating!
Does it truly work?
Any idea when it will come out of Beta?
Thank you,
Jean
It already is out of beta…
do you believe that all these social applications will find its niche? it looks like social media madness
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I was not aware of the Scoutle Scout, but it is so nice. I will use this one.
Scoutle is good site for social networking for blog. I’ll create a network in this site.