It’s tag line is “The Most Advanced Website Statistics”, except they actually have it in all caps and I just couldn’t do that.

bigwebstats

You just type the URL of your webpage and it will tell you everything you are doing wrong. It provides a lot of stats for any webpage that you key in. There’s also a page for top sites. 1000 websites are listed on the top sites page.

I think it’s interesting. I like the explanations under learn more, but maybe direct links to some of the referenced webpages would be even better.

I’ve not worried about my stats on this blog, but I need to do better on my new blog because it has to support my business.

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Debnests business card

I’ve started a new blog at debnests.com to promote my handmade jewelry and my Etsy shop. My signature item is a bird nest necklace made of wire and beads. Some of the beads I buy and some I make. I use polymer clay to make light weight clay beads and wool roving to make felt beads. I also make button jewelry. I like experimenting with different materials.

http://debnests.com/

https://www.etsy.com/shop/Debnests

https://twitter.com/debnests

https://www.facebook.com/Debnests

http://pinterest.com/debsanswers/debnests-my-handmade-jewelry/

http://wanelo.com/store/Debnests

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Before I go any farther, if it is still March 31st when you read this and you are a goodreads member that doesn’t already have a LibraryThing account, rush over there and get one before the free year offer runs out.

Wordle I made about Amazon, Goodreads, and LibraryThing

Yes, LibraryThing is a pay account. You can get a free account, but you can’t add more than 200 books. Actually you can get more than 200 by importing your books, you just can’t ever add anymore books without upgrading your account. I wish I had known that when I joined. Now that I have free account with 36 books, I’m afraid it would create duplicates if I import my books now. Most people say it’s $10 a year or $25 for a lifetime membership, but that’s not quite accurate. You can pay less or more if you want. I thinking about paying $6 for a year  to decide, then if I want to keep the account, I can pay $19 for the lifetime membership. That would equal the $25 suggested price.

No, Amazon does not own 40% of LibraryThing, even if it did, it’s not the same as Amazon buying 100% of Goodreads. Yes, AbeBooks did purchase 40% in 2006, but Bowker now owns part of that 40% (not sure exactly how much), and Tim Spalding still controls the company with his 60%. Amazon does own AbeBooks now, but they bought a bookseller, not a social cataloging site. Goodreads may have been purchased for access to the community, although some think it was purchased to prevent Goodreads from becoming a bookseller.

I’ve always liked Goodreads a little better than LibraryThing, but it’s nice to have a choice. LibraryThing is best for cataloging collections because you have more control and better data, but the vast majority of the books I read are library books. I don’t own a lot of books because I don’t reread. Even when I do buy books, I’m likely to trade them in at a used bookstore for more books I haven’t read. It’s easier and quicker to add books on Goodreads, but LibraryThing does have half stars. The fact that LibraryThing is ad free doesn’t matter to me because I use AdBlock Plus anyway.

I wonder how many of the volunteer librarians on Goodreads may reconsider the time they spend correcting the database when they realize they’ll be working for Amazon for free?

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You can follow stores as well as people on Wanelo. Instead of boards, Wanelo has collections. The two default collections are “Things I want as gifts” and “Epic Wishlist”, but you can create your own collections and name them anything you want. It has a bookmarklet for adding images just like Pinterest does.

You have a feed that shows people and stores you are following or you can checkout the trending products. There are also feeds for most popular and just posted. You can browse top stores, top people and top collections. You can also find your friends.

My profile is at debnests/collections and my store is store/debnests, if you want to follow me.

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IMGP6158rd (Photo credit: STC4blues)

Do you reblog? Do you like to be reblogged? Is reblogging sharing, stealing or curating?

When I first encountered reblogging on Tumblr, it looked a lot like stealing content from other people. Various platforms use reblogging differently. Tumblr and Pinterest seem to be about curating, Facebook and Twitter are more about sharing. I hate following a link from Pinterest to Tumblr and only finding reblogs, sometimes you can go through several layers of reblogs without ever finding the original source. At least Pinterest does save the source link and not just the repins although it still depends on the original pinner to choose a good source page.

To me, it’s only legitimate sharing when the original source is obvious and available. Sharing on Facebook does include the link and when it is an article, only a small portion is shown, you have to follow the link to read the full article. On WordPress reblogging is similar to facebook sharing since it  includes an excerpt of the blog post, a link to the original blog post and it encourages you to add your own comments or introduction before the reblogged post. Retweeting shares the entire tweet, but is very obvious where the tweet came from and that it is a retweet.

Disclaimer, I started this post last summer, but didn’t post it because I used some of the content for a post on curation instead. I decided to finish it after a book blogger demanded I take down a post I reblogged.

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Reblogged from Charcoal Café - 50 Book Challenge:

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 140,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

English: Political world map shaded according to the number of cell phone subscriptions in each country and spanning the years 1980-2009. Data is from Mathematica CountryData (http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/note/CountryDataSourceInformation.html). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Are you just calling them essentials to justify the expense of things you want? Or are tech essentials just the consumer electronics being promoted? Does the term really mean anything?

Essential means absolutely necessary or indispensable. Many people, even today,  do get by without the latest and greatest consumer electronic devices. However, cell phones (or mobile phones) are becoming indispensable to more and more people. Younger people, older people, and poorer people. Mobile phones have improved many lives in less developed countries.

To find out if your phone is indispensable, try going without yours for more than a day. Most of us depend on our phones more than we realize, until we suddenly don’t have it for some reason. We don’t wear watches or memorize phone numbers. We don’t worry about our families quite as much, because we know they can always call us if they need us.

Phones can save lives in emergencies. Phones can increase safety and independence. Phones can connect families and improve communication. It’s actually harder to justify not having a cell phone than it is to justify the cost. Smartphones may not be within everyone’s reach, but the many features can be worth the money for people who can afford them.

Here is a partial list of devices that you may not consider necessary now that you have a cell phone.

• Watches
• Cameras
• Flashlights
• Calculators
• Portable media players
• Personal digital assistants
• GPS navigation devices
• E-readers
• Pagers

Some people may even be able to get by without a computer as long as they have their phone. What changes would you have to make to give up your cell phone?

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You can’t always take it literally, people will like anything on Facebook. At least I hope they are just using as a shortcut to saying I agree or I understand, instead of actually liking the bad news or sad status they just liked.

Facebook also uses the word like to become a fan or follower of a fan page which tends to confuse people. When I share a link to a fan page and ask people to like the page, many just like the post instead of going to the page.

Goodreads lets you like reviews and lists (but hides the likes in an obscure place where it will likely get drowned out by other likes), but not comments.

Some people use Pinterest likes as a way to save an image without repinning it to give them time to verify the links before pinning it to a board or just because they don’t want it on any of their boards.

Twitter is a little different since it has favorites instead of likes. Many people use favoriting as a way to save tweets.

Favorites on Etsy are important to the shop owners because it increases their chances of being featured or being included in browse and showing up earlier in searches.

The event that triggered this post was an author on goodreads liking my one star review of her book. I was shocked and started pondering what does it mean? Does she like all reviews of her books or did she actually like the review in some way? I did actually say it was a well written book and I did like most of the book, but I felt like the ending completely ruined the story.

Do you ever like something that you don’t actually like? When, where, and why?

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The Saturday after Thanksgiving (in the U.S.) is small business Saturday. Shop Small sponsored by American Express has a map to help you find small businesses near you, just enter your location.

You can shop local on Etsy, too. From the home page, click on shop local and enter your location. In the browse section, you have to select a category before the shop location option appears. You can select location on search result pages too.

You may be surprised how many Etsy shops are owned by people in your area. Other online shopping platforms probably have a location option too, you just have to know to look for it.

Good luck shopping and Happy Holidays!

My shop is Debnests.

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