Big Changes on Webupon

Triond writers who have published on Webupon or at least have browsed that site before may have noticed some sweeping changes at the site recently. Three in particular have caught my eye. These changes are bound to affect us and quite frankly they do not seem to augur well at the moment.

Here are the three changes:

(1)    You can no longer comment directly on Webupon articles

No longer can you just be logged into your Triond account and add a comment on Webupon. To comment there you have to log into your Facebook, Yahoo, Hotmail or AOL account. You either do that or you enter that information directly into the Webupon page. There are pros and cons concerning that.

Image via Webupon

The Pros

(a)    Triond writers who have multiple Triond accounts will find it harder to rack up views with multiple comments from different profiles.

(b)   Deviant Triond writers, spammers or the malicious can now more easily be caught since it is easier to get information about people when they use their Facebook, Yahoo, Hotmail or Yahoo accounts. It is one more web footprint that they will leave behind.

The cons

(a)    Having to log into any one of these sites just to comment on Webupon will dissuade many from commenting as it is an extra hassle.

(b)   Not everyone wants to give any extra information about themselves away. Also, there may be the fear that their accounts will be compromised if people do not realize that instead of entering the information on Webupon they can log into their Facebook accounts AND  THEN log into Webupon.

(2)    The “Top Ten Most Popular Articles List” is now missing.

Webupon no longer has a “Top Ten Most Popular Articles” list on the right of their page. I must admit that I do not know exactly when that list disappeared from Webupon but the following screenshot shows that list on Webupon as it appeared on July 18th, 2011.

Image via archive.org and Webupon (July 18th, 2011)

Many of Triond’s sites have such a list on their sites. That list is more important than many realize. Some articles, due to their topic or nature, will appeal only to other Triond writers or online writers in general. After your article is published on a Triond site it appears on your Triond friends’ feed and they click on the link to see your article. After minutes or hours the evidence that you published a new article goes to page 2 of that feed where it is not as readily seen, then page 3 etc. What the “Top Ten Most Popular Articles List” does is to keep your popular article in the public eye for a longer time – for as much as a week. It gives your article a second spurt of views after it disappears from your friends’ page.

(3) Comments missing from Webupon

Apart from the fact that you cannot comment directly on Webupon without logging into certain social sites and that that will be a turn-off for commenting, ten of the comments one of my articles were wiped clean from Webupon recently. See Triond Glitches, Upgrades or Censorship? It may have been due to the revamping done on the site which now does not allow comments that are not made via Facebook, Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL.

For more on various aspects of Triond see: Shelpeare’s Guide to Triond.

I recommend to you an article concerning a book I greatly regard. See The Divine Inspiration of The Bible (Resources).