-
BetFair Predicts is a blog that aims at the Americans. In my view, it’s a big failure (once again).
- BetFair listened to some snake-oil “social media” consultant. As an experienced and successful webmaster, I can tell you there are many flaws in their whole project and in its execution.
- BetFair has hired some second-tier writers for the content —it is not worth the read.
-
Technically, here’s one instance (in a long list) that shows you that they are completely incompetent.
-
Here’s what you might have seen from them this morning —the screen shot is from within Google Reader, the most popular feed reader:
-
-
Now, here’s what they wanted you to see, actually:
-
-
So, as you have seen, the chart is missing from the content if you are using a feed reader (like Google Reader).
-
Let’s recap:
- They are using a kind of chart widgets that does not go into feeds.
- They are asking bloggers to embed their BetFair chart widgets…. that the blog readers using a feed reader (like Google Reader) won’t be able to see.
- Only the most stupid and most computer illiterate bloggers will actually embed those Betfair chart widgets in their posts. I won’t. [*]
- The fact that the technical team of Betfair Predicts has not been able to understand the importance of feed reading, and the necessity to create chart widgets that are compatible with feed readers (like Google Reader) is telling a lot about the dual fact that the BetFair executives don’t understand the Web and that BetFair has a hiring problem.
-
Technical Note: Refer to my “predictions” webpage, if you want the list of the chart widgets that go into feeds and the list of those that don’t.
-
[*] I do publish some BetFair dynamic charts, but not the crappy chart widgets created by the incompetents of BetFair Predicts.
-
Not surprisingly, BetFair Predicts has virtually no feed subscribers (the people who are so interested in the content of a blog that they want to stick to it on a daily basis). For your information, Midas Oracle has probably about 900 feed subscribers, in all (counting both our PC-based feed subscribers and our Web-based feed subscribers). No wonder that some BetFair Predicts writer come on Midas Oracle to try to gather some interest. 
-
It`s a feature of GReader that it filters out certain types of HTML that it feels may not be 100% safe, ie its a “nanny” functions. The Betfair wigets show up just fine on other readers and ofcourse websites. Being part of betfair, its main funcion is to heard bettors to the main website, bet and ultimately line the pockets of the shareholders, So you and BF may be looking at this from different viewpoints.
Plus a Technically competent blogger would not have a mass of irrelevant and annoying RSS pingbacks showing up on the commentary feed for every post.
Barry O,
1. You are right that Google Reader filters out some bad codes. However, that’s not the issue here.
2. The BetFair Predicts flaw that I described above is universal to all feed readers, I believe. (I am not 100% sure, because they have modified their posts, and put up static charts instead. But at least in one post, they left a chart widget, and I see that it does not display into my PC-based feed reader, “Sage”.)
3. Feed reading is an important practice for the advanced users of blogs. On my blog, I have as many feed subscribers (900) as daily web visitors (1,000). And Google Reader is the most popular feed readers. Ignore it at your own risk.
4. Barry O, you seem completely unaware of the low conversion rate between blog visitors and actual bettors. As I blogged many times, a blog is for branding the prediction market approach and a prediction market webpage is for promoting the betting. And BetFair does not have yet prediction market webpages that can be indexed by the search engines.
5. Yes, you are right that they have a marketing approach and I have a journalistic approach. However, their approach is bad, that was my point above.
6. Yes, the feed subscribers of the comments of Midas Oracle are annoyed by the self pingbacks (it is a little comment that says that one recent post of Midas Oracle has linked to an old post of Midas Oracle). I know that.
a) These pingbacks play an important function. When web visitors download an old post, they can spot whether fresher posts are talking about the same topic. They can go forward in time, so to speak.
b) However, as you said, those pingbacks are also part of the comment feed. They are annoying for the humans who have subscribed to the comment feed.
c) I have looked into the issue. One solution would be to use a plugin that separates pingbacks/trackbacks from the real comments made by people. The reason I have not install such a plugin yet is because I have already 60 plugins, The new version of WordPress will allow me to reduce this number, as some of their functionalities will be included in WordPress. I will then re-investigate this pingback issue. I make no promise, but if I stumble onto one interesting plugin that solves the problem, I will look seriously into installing it.
d) Would the BetFair Predicts guys make a long answer (like mine, here) to a comment posted there?