Striking a Balance
Our most requested feature, by far, is the ability to see a list of your blog's email subscribers. Not a week goes by without at least one person leaving a comment, sending a support ticket, or leaving a suggestion through the feedback link. And every time these comments com in we on the Quick Blog team wrestle with the issue.
We've left several comments about this matter before, but we've always felt that we didn't do the matter justice. This blog entry is an attempt to explain our rationale for doing things the way we have, to provide the reason why we haven't yet implemented a fairly easy feature that would make a lot of paying customers happy, and to ask for feedback from you so we can maybe see something we're missing. It's not at all certain that we won't implement this feature; we're just leaning towards not doing it. We can be persuaded.
I was the one who developed the entire subscribe via email feature and I always viewed it as an adjunct to the feed system. Feed syndication and subscription is still in its infancy and most of the public doesn't actively use feed readers, so the subscription via email is a way to get a feed's contents through email. It has been quite successful, I think, and, when the email system doesn't get backed up for one reason or another, it works very well.
The thing about feeds, though, is that they're completely anonymous. In fact, you can't even tell how many feed subscribers you have unless you go through a third-party service. The online feed reader Bloglines(tm)
, for example, might make one request an hour for your blog's feed even though there are thousands of Bloglines users subscribing to it whereas an individual running his own feed reader might make a feed request every 5 minutes. And given the variability of IP addresses, you can't really even link one request to another.
With email subscriptions, you get a comparative boatload of information about your readers. We can tell you how many people subscribe to your blog and how many people subscribe to individual entries. We also know exactly who they are. And that last bit is where things get messy. There's a lot of value in such a list of subscribers.
The most cited reason for wanting to have access to that list is so that the customer can correspond with his or her subscribers. It all sounds very innocuous until you think about how the customer already has the power to correspond with his or her subscribers in several formats: the blog site itself, the email subscription system, and the feeds. The customer can easily write a blog entry that will get sent out to all of his audience in whatever form they want to receive it. Our thinking is that the correspondence is some sort of non-blog content being sent to the subscribers.
Therein lies our quandary. The subscribers signed up initially to receive entries and comments via email, not this non-blog content. We cannot, in good conscience, allow our customers to send unsolicited, potentially commercial emails to people. So we have to balance the desires of our customers with the privacy needs of the general public. I think we've struck a good balance in that our customers can get some basic statistics about who's reading via email as well as unfettered content publication and our blog visitors can subscribe to blogs without worrying about subsequent, unauthorized communications.
That's the reason we've done what we've done. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this matter and we promise to listen to them with an open mind.
Bill, thanks for the well reasoned explanation. You've clearly given this a lot of thought.
I have to say that I agree with you. There is an implied expectation of anonymity by subscribers that should be respected.
Now about that "MORE >>" prompt... ;-)
Let me tell you about the rationale behind the prompt. Umm, er, okay, there isn't one.
Thanks, Bill
Sounds like you have put a lot of thought into it and to tell you the truth, I agree.
Perhaps a compromise would be to provide some sort of statistic. Maybe show the domains of emails that subscribe instead of the address itself. Like you say, blogs can already send a message to the subscribers but still they (we) want more. Maybe it would be enough that a blogger just gets an idea of who is subscribing rather than the address itself.
You know, I had this exact same idea on Friday. Does anyone else like this idea or think it is sufficient?
Thanks, Bill
We totally understand the need for privacy for the subscriber. I would be happy if we could get some idea of where the subscribers are coming from (Geographically). We like to know who our audience is and some sort of background to better cater to them.
That's a great idea. We don't capture that sort of data about subscribers presently, but it certainly wouldn't be hard. There would be the basic issues involved with divining geography based off of one's IP address that might not be indicative of their actual residence (dynamic IPs, Internet cafes, and anonymous proxies come to mind) but it would at least give some notion.
I'll mark it down, Bill
Second support problems -
I'd like to be able to edit the permalink but I can't... what gives?
Need a FONT COLOR button on the editing tool
Greetings,
You can change a permalink up until the moment you publish. I.e if you save a draft and return to it you can change the link . Once you've published an entry however the permalink is fixed which is what makes it a permalink. Other than removing, and recreating the post with another name there's no method to change the URL.
We are also looking into the addition of allowing a free chose of color on the main template.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team.
Hi Folks,
I've been "out and about" on the internet for a while, and this is what I've learned:
Opt-In subscription = The visitor VOLUNTARILY leaves their email info, etc, AND you post a Privacy Policy and Terms of Service and tell them to read it Your Terms of Service MUST specify that in offering their info, the Visitor is Opting In to receive email and/or other ads, etc. We MUST also offer a way to UNSUBSCRIBE on every item sent. All this being done to be Spam-Act compliant, the blog owner then has legal PERMISSION to send such material and as such, we have a RIGHT to view this information as collected by Quick Blog. We can LEGALLY view it and respond to it, but we CANNOT publish, rent or sell it.
So how's about giving us the info we are ENTITLED to here, huh? The VERY PUROPOSE of a subscription form is to collect info to build our businesses, otherwise why bother to have one?
Reply to this.
Midge,
Thank you for your detailed input with regards to the mail. I'll start by addressing the last point first. "why bother to have one?" Essentially the service is there for people that either don't use an rss aggregator to receive notification of new articles or prefer to receive emails for offline reading on non connected devices.
Since we're not in a position to validate all of our blog user's policies in relation to how they will treat email addresses used to subscribe to the blog. What is claimed as an entitlement is not per se, a legal issue, but one of opinion. We're attempting to remedy taking the concerns we've outlined in the main post and then providing a solution that will satisfy / protect both owners and subscribers of the blog alike.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team.
I have to agree with Midge Baker on this one. A person can not expect to subscribe to ANYTHING on ANY website and not expect to possibly receive email correspondence from the owner(s).
Greetings,
While I understand your perspective with regards to the subscriptions/notifcations from Quickblog there are indeed many people that hold an opposing view. Trying to accommodate both camps,through dialogues such as this is helping us guage the varying expectations of readers/ owners and hopefully arrive at an equitable solution for all.
Regards
John
Quickblog team
I would say it would be nice to know who is subscribing and to be able to remove certain subscriptions, if need be. I've only been using this since last night so maybe that is a feature. I know I've used that for my existing blog which I'm hoping to phase into this one. Would it be possible to offer more flexibility in the template to permit a blank sidebar snippet to include my own html?
Greetings Rich ,
Thanks for your recent post. Should we begin offering the ability to show subscribed emails that does indeed to the kind of questions you brought up. "how to remove subscribers?" to which the answer currently is the users would unsubscribe themselves , there's an opt out link on all the blog's mails. We do provide html/ custom text in the sidebar area for paid version of Quickblog of which you can have as many as good taste allows
Regards John
Quick Blog
Do you plan to add support for any of the blogging APIs?
Greetings,
Thank you for your recent request. We are certainly considering this for a future update. As to the API used or timeframe ( would rather need to know the first to estimate the latter) I have no more information.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
If I'm hearing you correctly, the reason you don't allow customers to see the list of email addresses is that you don't trust your customers.
Nice way of doing business...not what I'm looking for. Thanks.
Greetings Mark,
I'm not in agreement with you that our prior posts convey a message that a lack of trust is at the root of our decision. At no time have we said that we're not going to accommodate this request but provided the reasons why we currently do not and ways in which we could do so in the future.
Out of the blogs that I have on other services mail subscription is not that common on most default installs and the inclusion of this was an additional feature we thought would be useful to many prior to most people's browsers being upgraded to display RSS in a friendly manner. It was created for the visitor side primarily which we have since realized would be a valuable feature to blog owners as well and we're looking at ways to improve how we handle subscriptions.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
I have a personal blog, not a professional one. And it frustrates me that I cannot see who is getting the email. When I used Blogdrive, an internet site, there was a nice neat list of who was subscribed and I could delete them if I wanted to. It was very handy because I had lots of spammer addresses, trying to choke up the system. Also, when my mother complained she wasn't getting her email notifications, I could look at it and see that she'd put it in wrong.
If the "customer" didn't want to get an email from you they wouldn't have subscribed to your blog. That makes no sense- they are getting emails from you every time you update.
I would like to have access to the raw html but could settle with the ability to add things to the HEAD tag field.
Greetings,
Thank you for you suggestions with regards to more control over the template. We're certainly considering the ability to edit the head tags given their usefulness with so many serviceswith the possibility of expanding this to include the bulk or all of the template.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
Hello... I just got off the support line, having raised the question of how to look at my subscribers. I was happy to come to this blog and see the discussion has been going on about this capability already...
I would only add my two cents that it would be very beneficial to see who is subscribing to my blog. I understand the privacy issue, but I would like to think that there is a way for a service the quality of GoDaddy, to provide blog customers with the info, and if necessary require some sort of privacy waver to absolve GoDaddy from any liability for privacy violations.
As much as I like the service, not having access to the subscriber list, indirectly forces me to look at other blog solutions which offer the subscriber list.
If there is work being done on this function, I would like to hear about it so that I don't have to worry about the hassle of moving my blog...
Thanks, Mike
Greetings Mike,
Thanks for your take on the "know your subscriber" issue. There are solutions currently available that can extend your usage of QuickBlog and provide this feature presently , and often for free. One such service is Feedburner which provides the subscriber management . Admittedly it's not integrated directly into QB and gives you another login / account but adding the resulting feed from this service in one of the blog custom html sidebar items would be pretty seamless to the end user. and there are also some neat features that make the feed more accessible to readers that don't use a RSS aggregator.
Regards
John
Quick Blog team.
John,
I am also of the group who believes it is an author's material which brings in subscribers to a blog and the author should have the ability to export their list of subscribers to any other blog hosting provider and subscription management service.
I have a couple of issues I'd like to discuss. First, you mentioned Feedburner as a "seamless" transition from Godaddy's method of subscriber management. How is this so? Can a quickblogcast user import his existing subscription list to Feedburner? How would you define "seamless"?
While it may not be the intent of Godaddy, the subscription list is essentially being held hostage. If you move to Wordpress, TypePad, or any other blogging software you must leave your subscription list with Godaddy. You essentially are stating that the subscription list is Godaddy's property.
As another reader mentioned, the subscribe feature is a passive way for readers to receive a blogger's content. There is no need for the reader to visit the blogger's site, the content just wonderfully shows up in the subscribers inbox. Godaddy chose to provide this method of subscription. In fact, I am in the midst of having a custom Wordpress template designed and am saddened that I will be starting from square one in building subscribers when I do make the transition. A Goddady sales person told me the list was exportable and likened the service to Express Email Marketing, which is an incorrect comparison.
Just as Godaddy allows users to export entries, comments, and trackbacks; they should also allow bloggers to export their subscriber list. You state in a previous post that part of your decision not to disclose the email addresses of subscribers was that it would negatively impact more people than it would benefit. The people it would benefit are also the people that pay for the service. It seems you are more concerned with attempting to please people other than your customers. Not the best way to run a business.
Your choice to not disclose subscription lists seems to be a moral issue and not a legal one. If it is a legal issue I would like to hear more about what the issue is.
You have already discussed using Feedburner as an alternate means of managing subscriptions, since they do disclose subscriber lists. Is a blogger that uses Feedburner to manage subscriptions of less moral fiber than a blogger that uses the built-in Quickblogcast subscription feature?
Just as cell phone number portability had to be addressed by attorneys, perhaps subscriber list portability is another issue which needs the same attention.
Greetings,
I've already noted in much of the discussion that followed the original post that I broadly agree that the blog owner should have the right to the data with the appropriate notification to the subscriber of how that information is going to be used. What I can tell you is that a future feature that addresses this is on the product roadmap and should appear within a future edition of Quick Blogcast.
Subscriber:
When the user subscribes to mail they are told that their email will be known to the owner of the blog.
For existing subscribers we'll send them a mail requesting the same permission.
when the user agrees will provide a list of all the subscribers that have opted in. The final format of this being either a csv list, added into the blogs address book has not yet been determined.
Owner
Owner will be able to require that people subscribing by email will have to make their address known or be prevented from subscribing. This I believe allows the owner to once again have the control over their subscription base.
I alluded to the need for existing users to have to resubscribe should the work around from feedburner be used and while it's not my preferred solution, which we've still to enact within the blog, it was a viable workaround that once set up achieved so you are correct that it wouldn't be seamless for people that have set it up retroactively. I would contend that to an end user it's seamless once enacted and I apologise for not making that distinction clearer.
Regards
John
QBC Team
Hi guys,
I'm running MyWii60.com with a Quickblog. I find it very good for the most part. A few issues though:
The WYSIWYG editor doesn't seems to freeze and not allow input at random, usually after you put in an image or a video.
The site layout desperately needs more customizability so that google ads can be placed in the usual spots, and so that visitor tracking code can be inserted in the index page for example. Access to the ftp server which hosts the blog would be great but godaddy don't let you do this for some reason so you can't edit any of the files.
My site:
http://www.mywii60.com
Greetings Richard,
Thanks for your recent comments with regards to Quickblog. I'll take a look at replicating the freezing / hangups within the compose window. With regards to the requests we are looking at expanding the options for the paid blog to place advertisements within the top /bottom banner as well as within the feed posts please keep watching for future updates.
FTP is something that's not ideally suited to a hosted program such as this and we provide alternate blogs for use with our hosting accounts I appreciate the current method of loading images en mass would be time consuming as for file operations such as deletion/rename being similarly onerous it's certainly something that needs to change but not sure if FTP direct or at least an FTP like control within the program would be a good balance. Thanks you for reminding me about the WII I need to book a day off when it's released.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team.
Hello, I am not sure if this is the right spot, but I am having a hard time figuring all of this out. I have a GoDaddy account and host my website with them. I have Quickblog as well. I just don't get it. When I publish something from GoDaddy/Quickblog - where does it go? It says something about blog.owensborotennis.net. When it does go somewhere, how do I get it to appear on my webpage? I have tried the online support and tutorial and I just don't get it. Can somone help? I need step-by-step instructions. Is there a website out there that can help. I am very frustrated!!! Thanks to anyone that can help me.
Jeff,
Greetings and thanks for giving us a try. Quickblog is essentially it's own website so it's independent from any hosting account you may already have with us. Apart from the links you make between the site and the blog they are presently separate items though there are many ways you can interact with two let's head back to the start .
Your blog publishes to a hosting account managed by us which is linked to the address placed in "manage blog" "settings" at the the bottom of the screen. When you publish a blog it's made available at that address for people to read.
If you've already published your blog, e.g all of the steps in this quick guide have been followed, you should be able to click on "view blog" within the Quick Blog application and see the template / site you have chosen. If not there's elements in your particular set up that it may be best that we work on a more one to one basis since the step by step instructions may not be applicable to other users and as you've said, haven't yielded the desired results to date.
Regards
John
Quick Blog team
No new updates in 6 weeks..... Anything on the horizon ???
Greetings Tom,
There was an update to Quickblog yesterday where most of the changes where improvements to the program on the backend. One addition was the ability to delete sidebar items as well as improve upon our feed, improve imports,spellcheck and a few other items which we're glad to have unoticed which is the best indication it's working.
There's something big and hot on the horizon and it's not the Sun setting. We'll announce this on the blog as soon as it's available.
Regards
John
Quick Blog team.
How do I insert a cut in a blog entry? For example, 1/3 the way through an entry, if I want to have a link that says "Keep Reading" which then opens the rest of the entry, how do I do it?
-Art
Greetings Art,
Thanks for your recent question with regards to showing a partial entry.
We don't have a specifc cut tag but you can use excerpt to achieve the same effect. Note this only works on the rich text editor versions. After you have written your post select the area you wish to show on the main page and then click the excerpt button
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
Maybe this is the wrong place to ask, but how do I get content, etc along the sidebars of my blog. I've seen other photographers with really slick blogs with slideshows on the side, etc. They are all part of typepad, so maybe I should switch? Seems like QB, along with the issues of not being able to know who is subscribed, is not as high of quality of a blog service? I joined mainly b/c I am a GoDaddy customer, but would really like a more personalized blog, without having to know a ton of html. Even using the templates (is there a way to NOT use a template, none of them really "fit" what I wanted??) my header looks different every time I log on. AND the last two entries I posted never got emailed to ME (I am definitely a subscriber to my own blog) so how do I know if my customers are getting them??
Thanks,
teri
I would also like to see my blog subscribers.
When people subscribe to my blog they are not interested in keeping themselves off my email list. As a matter of fact, THEY WANT TO BE ON MY EMAIL LIST. They also assume I am going to have their emails and trust me not to abuse them. If they did not they would not give me their email.
GoDaddy should not be involved in the transaction between me and the 20ish people who subscribe to my blog. They don't think GoDaddy is involved, I don't need GoDaddy to be involved. Why is GoDaddy in there blocking?
Dear David
Thanks for adding to the debate on this item. The reasons for the involvement are included within the blog post though I can try to expand the scope a little regarding the involvement. On our comments form we do recognise such a relationship between commenters wishing to be known and the emails are indeed visible to the owner, and can be required by the owner to even be accepted. Their intent is obvious in a manner that doesn't carry over to the mail subscriptions as it currently works and there's a reasonable case to be made on either side and it's not being dismissed as an area that needs reworking just one that until we have the solution to please subscribers, owners and ourselves.
In the interim there are several services which offer this feature using your blogs rss feed to provide email subscriptions were you can actively manage a subscriber list for the blog Feedburner.com and Feedblitz are two examples of these.
Regards
John
Quick Blog team
Could it be that Godaddy interferes between us and our opted-in leads so that Godaddy can keep those leads for itself?
If so, for shame!
Midge,
No it couldn't be. The reasons that we've stated during this thread and the many comments on the blog addressing the issue are exactly why this feature functions in the manner it does today.
We've tried to be as open about this feature as possible and we've suggested alternatives in the interim that exactly fulfill this niche. There's no conspiracy ,no ulterior motive just a difference of opinion with regards to the intent of a subscriber using the email service.
Regards
John
Quick Blog team
Thanks John, I'll try that. Then once I get it to work with feed burner or the like then I can disable the email subscriptions on Quick Blog?
Thank you for the Entry and Information on email subscribers.
I would like access to not only see who is subscribed, but to modify that information, and delete any email I choose.
As an example: I have had to block 3 prior commentators on my blog. 1 of them I am certain is an email subscriber and I would like to remove this person.
We Blog Owners are sent the email people use when they fill out the Leave a Comment form, so we have their emails and the ability to email them "non-blog" content, which you list as a concern. I think perhaps you could address this via any spam complaints you may receive.
Just thought I would share a reason for having access to the subscriber email list & an ability to modify it, which had not been brought up before.
Now about QuickBlog for .mobi names...!! I want it. :-)
Sally,
Thanks for your comments I'll reply to the parts that haven't been addressed in prior comments.
With regards to the deletion of subscribers anyone would still be able to read the blog directly, access the RSS feed and use a "throwaway" email account to rejoin. Without locking the blogs down as private blogs it would have no practical effect. The solution I'd suggested was for owners to require the address be revealed and the readers had to check a box agreeing to it. In the meantime I had suggested using third party services, most of them are free, that allow this very feature.
At present with our remote posting feature and RSS feeds mobile devices are relatively well served by the blog and blogs in general,we do need to look at making a mobile admin panel though to make it .Mobi compliant the viewer site would need to display according to their standards. We'll certainly add that to the list for future consideration.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team.
First, the nice things. I moved my blogs from Blogger to here -- already had a GoDaddy account -- and I love it. Every time I've had a question or issue, the online tech support has been right there; and everyone loves the clean crisp layout of the blog. The service has been ultra-reliable. I can't for better in regards to any of the above.
But...
As others have commented, I too would like to have control of who subscribes via e-mail. However, this is not due to being a control freak. (Which I am, but not in this case.) I have received missives from three different subscribers at different times having issues with the service. One reported getting scrambled code instead of the new posts when they were created. Given that he is a Web programmer by profession, I can accept his report at face value. The second subscriber reported they were getting the comments e-mailed to them prior to my having approved them, including comments I chose not to approve. The third subscriber reported she had to change e-mail addresses as at the time I was getting a barrage of spam trackbacks and each of those was being sent to her.
It was frustrating to me that I couldn't help any of my readers having these problems. Yes, they could unsubscribe to the service. But I can't do it for them?
I understand the desire to protect a subscriber's privacy. However, given that Feedburner offers its users the ability to see the addresses of all subscribers, I'm thinking in this matter Pandora's box has already been opened.
That's my two cents worth. Thanks.
Greetings,
Ok I love all the parts above the word "But..."
I'm very keen in investigating the issues with the mails, we had those in the early days, ok the first few months till it was finally nailed and this is the first report of this occuring in over three months. If this is still ongoing have the affected person send "Feedback" from the link in the blog and I'll investigate this.
The comments , will look into this one, but I was sure this was a legacy issue too. I've never seen a subscriber, that wasn't also a blog subauthor with "notify me of trackbacks" receive such again if this is still occuring any details that would help us prevent that would be welcome. We are no longer automatically sending mails for trackbacks and will move to not sending out emails when we've classified them as spam.
As to the subscribers and the actions that can be taken I know it's been a contentious issue but the same issues for a third party being able to do this are not the same for us. Email blogging was included as RSS adoption wasn't as widespread amongst the general population at the time the blog was created, we added a feature that was questioned by some as being unecessary and on the face of it retrogressive. Blog by email was never intended to replace a CMS or becoming a subscription management service and the advent of 3-4 good solutions for managing email lists based on the blog content, nearly all free , would seem to cover those that needed to know the audience on a more traditional basis that blogs seem to do.
Many people have argued that they don't know who their users are and want a level of control over their audience , that seems antithetical to having a public weblog I.e I'm not opposed to making a marketing/CMS system ( though my Colleagues over at Express Email marketing may not want us replicating their program ) but we already address this niche at the time being. While we do have several items planned that will address this need we have some original items to get to first. I've never said we're not going to add this as a feature just that we have our reasons for not yet doing so and alternatives for those that really need this feature today.
Regards
John
Quick Blog team
Why not give subscribers the option? Add a checkbox to "allow blog owner to see your email address" or something along those lines. Of course, you still have the issue of all the existing email addresses that have been collected, but it's a start going forward.
Thanks!
Shawn,
Thank you for you comment. That was indeed an idea that we'd considered to allow both users to have control on whether they needed to make this info available to the blog owner. You are correct in identifying one of the issues involved in grandfathering in the service. In the long run the need for this feature has been split between three parties. Those that want to stop people reading their blog, in which case it's best not to blog given the lack of restriction on the site or feed. Those that want to add people to the blog and turn it into a psuedo emailer ( which is my main worry) and those that want to talk to their users which is precisely what the blog's for. Meanwhile there's several useful services that accommodate this need , for free ,that fulfill this niche for those that require this functionality now.
Regards
John
Quick Blog team.
I have my blog setup where anyone who wants to post MUST supply their email. As this is a feature of Quick Blog, I am missing how anyone thinks emails should be secret.
It is MY blog. If someone doesn't want me to have their email, then they do not need to leave a comment. After all, Blog Owners are not forcing anyone to post on our blogs.
My reason for wanting access to the emails, is I want to delete emails of those I have blocked from commenting. After I block them, I also want to stop them from being subscribed. I think this is reasonable.
I understand your concern about a 'feed', however .. this is a BLOG, it is not a feed reader, nor is it owned and paid for by those who visit it.
Who is you want to make happy? Those of us who PAY? Or only a few lurkers?
Just my thoughts on it.
Greetings Sally,
Thank you for comments with regards to this item and rather than fully reiterate the reasons why the current feature works this way which appear throughout the comments to this entry it's based on the user is requesting that they receive mails from the blog only. Indeed their expectation may now be that you know their email
I agree that it's your blog and that your request is reasonable as a blog owner but when we looked into the reason that the feature was requested it was either to remove people they didn't wish to read the blog or to gather the addressed to separately contact users. Not that neither of those are incorrect per se just that we don't have it set up with both parties interests presently for the latter case and the former case is impractical.
In the long run you can't prevent your blog from being read while there's still a public feed available and users can at the simplest message use another mail, subscribe through a reader like Google's or as mentioned via the feeds which addresses your main concern.
I think the title expresses it, it's hard to strike a balance between blog owners and blog users and one which we are again reevaluating.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team.
A couple of comments: if people abuse their subscriber list, they will stop getting subscribers; it is nonsense to provide a crippled tool in order to "do no harm"; the real reason to control subscriber list access is to prevent portability and lock in customers; this is why I have disabled the feature and provided Feedburner access instead - I have all the reporting and analysis in a free tool that is also portable and gives me access to my hard-earned subscribers.
I am disappointed that your rationale is that you don't trust me. I work at this every day, building value to attract subscribers. I am shopping for a new platform that respects my role as the customer.
Sincerely,
Douglas Ireland
www.vidopp.com
Douglas,
It's not as isolated as the individual user stops getting subscribers. Should people abuse their list the mails all come from a common source and action by other companies marking such mails as spam can have a detrimental effect on all Quick blog users rather than the individual which I assure you is a real concern.
We have no desire to lock in users based on anything than the blog's ongoing performance something , the presence of an export feature from the beginning is testament to that. At the time we created Quickblog Email subscription was a missing feature from nearly all blogs and it wasn't built to be crippled but to provide an alternate subscription means for readers e.g It wasn't conceived as an author centered feature and it's criticism on those grounds is indeed fair it doesn't do what an author would expect at this time. It's still within our scope to change this in an upcoming release.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
As a publisher, I would be interested in knowing the subscriber email addresses, but I believe the privacy issues override that. I support your decision to keep the addresses private. It also allows me to assure my readers that the email address will never be used or distributed, even if the blog were handed off to someone else.
Scott,
Firstly I apologize for the delay in replying to you. Secondly thanks for taking the time to voice what until now has been a "blog developer" opinion. We thing there's definetely a way in which we can do this but meanwhile I'm "old fashioned" re thinking that the blog itself is a great way to know your users
Regards
John
Quick Blog team
Woah Daddy!
I think you're badly confusing your role here. You're the conduit and I'M the creator/publisher of and the person responsible for my blog and my actions. You have no more right to nanny me than The Phone Company did years ago when it tried to censor content.
It's MY content that attracts readers and it's MY content that prompts them to subscribe via email. The email addresses that are entered are MINE and not yours. If I abuse them then I suffer the consequences.
I don't understand why you think that a blog is a special case. I run several mailing lists. I have ALL those email subscribers' addresses. I have the email address of every person who corresponds with me. I have every email address of people who click my site's "email" button. What is the distinction between a blog and a mailing list as far as subscribers go?
My cynical side says that your existing policy may have something to do with making it harder to move to another hosting service. Just my cynical side talking.
Frankly I despise web-based streams. Webmail, syndication, web forums and all that other stuff that requires me to be online and in many instances remember to check things.
As quaint as it may seem, geography forces many of us to limp along on the shoulder of the information superhighway via dialup. At my mountain home far back in the Tennessee hills, that's all I have. Waiting for all the eye candy to load to get to a little new content at a blog or forum is excruciating and intolerable.
Email and Usenet let me be passive - things come to me, nicely sorted into folders for my easy perusal. I don't have to be online to read the stuff or reply and I can snatch a day's worth in just a few seconds - even when traveling and on a very slow wireless link. Your email subscription facility, if I understand how it works, lets me enjoy blog contents without the web.
I'm an very long time online writer, going back to the pre-web days. I'm now very reluctantly moving most of my writing to a blog because I could not figure out a way to monetize my mailing lists without becoming as obnoxious as yahoo.
QuickBlogging's email service was one of the two reasons I just signed up with you as a paying customer, the other being that I host my website through godaddy. If I am to be denied access to my property (email list) then I'm going to have to look elsewhere.
Lastly there's the Big Brother aspect. As popular as pan-nannyism is today, I resent it. I resent being punished in advance for something I'll never do. I'm just old fashioned enough to believe in the traditional system of crime and punishment - only the proven guilty are punished and the rest of us are left alone. There isn't much I can do about NannyGov out in the real world but I CAN vote with my virtual feet in cyberspace.
John
( Apologies for posting this to the incorrect comment prior)
Greetings,
I'd hope the prior comments had at least shown that it wasn't a case of confusing our role but a deliberate choice based on our allowing this feature would likely impact more people negatively than those it would benefit. For the same reasons as I gave in prior posts only punishing the guilty comes at a price of allowing the abuse to occur thus affecting everyone. It's hard to address the big brother issues since, well we've created the system , hopefully it works as designed, so yes we can't divorce ourselves from making decision that on an individual scale seem capricious but over our entire network make sense.
The feature is the way described not to make it harder to move blogs it was solely an additional feature for those not yet comfortable with RSS and it was surprising how many people used it and how many blogs now include this as a standard feature. We provide a means to export the entries. comments and trackbacks to another provider which would not be the case if that were a stated goal to tie users into our blog.
With regards to the special case an email list is close but not analogous to requesting notifcation/content when a new entry is published you receive a mail so without us gathering permission from the subscriber , yes it can be argued that the user expects to be known at that point but we didn't explicitly state that. Using a third party ,free, solution like Feedburner would provide that ability , and much more re monetization possibilities of your content, and makes the feed a lot more usable in far more places than just the raw RSS.
RSS readers with offline capability are ideally suited to dial up conditions , though the ability to reply still requires you be actively connected it's not that much different ,from a reader's perpective, than using a newsreader. Thank you for making your feelings aware on this issue it really helps to craft future editions of the blog.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
John,
You've done a good job explaining your position. I was at a marketing seminar today with 40-45 professionals who own their own businesses. One of the speakers was extolling the virtues of blogs and of the uses for the subscription e-mail list. He praised Go Daddy as a great hosting, etc., site (I largely agree; you do a very good job). I felt compelled, however, to share this issue with the blog e-mail subscription list and to point out how it is incompatible with their marketing suggestions. They had no idea. These guys run 2-3 marketing seminars each week for business-owning professionals and, I suspect, the Go Daddy recommendation is now off the agenda, which is too bad because I really like the work you've done on the blogs and the support you provide.
That is unfortunate to hear. We can't be all things to all people, so there's going to be some pet features that we lack that other engines have. We definitely try to offer everything that our users want, but at this time extrablog emailing isn't one of them. Personally, I don't see the compelling case to need to see the email addresses of your subscribers but I'm convinced that a lot of people want that feature.
Thanks for sharing the story, Bill
I am hosting a new site w/ godaddy I may want to have a blog.. or multiple blogs in discreet subdirectories/sub sites. Can I do this?
Greetings Frank,
There are several ways you can accommodate this though I think the easiest way is by using a paid Quick blog , the free one is restricted to 1 author, 1 blog, and just add the blogs as sub domains.
If you're already on a hosting accounts we have other blogging platforms availabe through your hosting account via our Metropolis community that allows you the same with open source software.
Short answer is yes, you can do this. If you need a long answer we can help with that too
Regards
John
Quick Blogcast team
I would also like to alter the required fileds for postings and would prefer to moderate this. Is eamil an absolutly REQUIRED files? Can I alter this on my own website/blog?
Greetings,
For people commenting , which is the only time we require email. You can switch off the need for an email in Settings, discussion and check Allow anonymous comments: I hope that's the area you are getting at since postings , i.e the entries you write we only require two things, Title and time. Let me know if there's anything further I can do to assist you.
Regards
John
Quick Blog Team
John,
Thanks for the prompt response. I can understand your hesitation to provide the email addresses of subscribers to bloggers because they might email the subscribers with "non-blog" content. However, the Quickblogcast End User Agreement does address the issue. It states:
You agree not to engage in unacceptable use of any Services, which includes, without limitation, use of the Services to: (i) disseminate or transmit unsolicited messages, chain letters or unsolicited commercial email;
This should relieve the Quickblogcast team of any responsibility. While you are trying to reduce the wide spread problem of spam, you are doing so on a very small scale and in a way that is detrimental to paying customers with good intentions. It seems like Godaddy crossed this bridge when they began the Express Email Marketing service. The Express Email Marketing service can be used the same way as the Quickblogcast subscribe feature with the use of an html button added to the sidebar. It seems the philosophy of the people in charge of Quickblogcast vs. the people in charge of Express Email Marketing are polar opposites. Strange since you all work for the same company.
I do hope you give bloggers access to subscriber lists very soon. Your proposed solution of sending a second email request for giving the blogger their email address is redundant and confusing. The subscriber thinks the blog host already has their email address. How else have subscribers been getting new posts emailed to them? Most of my subscribers are older and not as tech savvy as others.
When subscribers sign up via Quickblogcast there is no notification that their email address will be kept private. In fact, all it says after you enter your email address is "You are subscribed to the blog." On my blog I added a custom text box asking people to add themselves to our mailing list.
The Quickblogcast End User Agreement addresses what can and cannot be sent out. Myself, and many other bloggers, would prefer to use a more comprehensive service such as Feedburner. Please do not treat subscriber lists as your Quickblogcast property.
Tom,
Other than agreeing with you on the prior post for the need for this ,and providing the way we plan to implement it I will take your opinions into consideration when this feature is placed back into the blog.
Regards
John
QBC Team
I think the fact that we cannot see our list of subscribers is ridiculous. I understand your concern about privacy, but when you enter your email address into a form, you are saying "Contact Me".
I decided to use the quickblog because it was fairly easy to set up and I did not have to be concerned with other people advertising on my site.
However, I am a technical person and am now looking for other blogging tools to run the site myself to have more control over the functionality.
The fact that I cannot see subscribers and also that I cannot change the number of posts on the entrance page below 10 is enough to make me want to move.
Greetings,
Managing the email subscribers was probably the most controversial item we've had in the Blogcast that wasn't really in the Blogcast.
Truth was that it was never thought of as a mechanism to manage and it was merely to provide an avenue for those that didn't like , or "get" rss feeds to have a way to receive updates without having to get back to the site. That was the thought behind it and it fulfilled that roll however it didn't fit the expected usage for the blog owners such as yourself.
We are working on a system that fulfills the owner/visitor privacy concerns as outlined in many of the prior comments which covers most of the requests related to this feature. Until we have this in place there are quite a few services that can accommodate email subscriptions using the content from your blogcast. I usually suggest Feedburner as being a service that works well with Blogcast that can provide this feature.
I'll take a look at making the number of posts on a page adjustable for a future version.Thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback.
Regards
John
QBC team