TTLB Ecosystem Outta Whack

lsw-x
November 14, 2005

My friend, Leanne did it best when she put the following on her site:

The
TTLB Ecosystem
is so
OUTTA WHACK,
I deleted the code!

That about sums it up.

And this post will probably make me

A
Very Unpopular Blogger
in the
TTLB Ecosystem

Ahh well. Can’t let the trivialities of life get’cha down.

My current gripes with it:

1 – If you put their default javascript on your page, inevitably your site will take forever to load while it waits for the data from TTLB’s servers. Not everyday – – but a high percentage of the time. So, you fix it by putting up a alternative script to keep it from hanging so much, your site could be removed from the ecosystem, completely.

2 – The stats aren’t accurate and waiver from day to day. And I’m not just talking a ‘little waiver’ – I’m talking one day your rank is #500 and 24 hours later your rank is #3987 and 24 hours later your rank is #1530 and the next day #6875, you get what I mean. A friend of mine once emailed TTLB asking about this enormous daily variance and the reply was this : “I guess you aren’t as popular as you think you are.”

O-O-ook.

3 – One of my own blogs has been removed from the ecosystem. Why? I have no clue. I’ve emailed in serveral times to find out what the deal is. No reply. Then I used their handy dandy shiny new help desk system and submitted a ticket. I recieved a reply email saying I’d hear back in no less than 24 hours. That was on 10/23 – to date, I’ve not recieved a response back. At all. Another friend of mine used their support ticket system to submit a simliar request – a month later, no response.

I do realize that the TTLB service is offered for free. And NZ Bear does a lot of good in promoting blogs, and heavy issues that matter. I just have to ask – why put up a support ticket system if people can’t get any answers there? Why not just say: “This is a free service. We’re not actively suppporting any trouble tickets at this time due to time constraints” or something like that?

I don’t know – it was once a fun thing to check the stats and see how my blogs, and other blogs I like, were doing. Now, as far as I’m concerned, the ecosystem can take a flying leap. To me, at least the ecosystem stats portion of it, it’s not considered a valid blog resource anymore.

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13 thoughts on “TTLB Ecosystem Outta Whack”

  1. Slobokan

    Here. Here.

    And to think, until recently, I thought I was the only one suffering from the Ecosystem Yo-Yo effect. I couldn’t understand the point spread from day to day.

    I guess I really am not as popular as I thought I was. =))

    Oh well, c’est la vie. Wanna hang out together?

    Reply

  4. Pingback: Slobokan's Site O'Schtuff

  5. Leanne

    Amen, sistagirl. I ain’t no insignificant microbe, he can merge the shit I’ve submitted to merge a dozen times, or he can get a nice public delinking from yours truly. heh.
    :-w

    I still think you should consider that alternate wording. Er. You know which one I’m talkin’ about.
    :)>-

    Reply
  7. Guest

    TTLB is kind of fun, but the biggest thing you can do to solve any slow loading problem is to make the code one of the last things to load – but that might only work well if you have a right column

    Reply
  8. virgil

    I noticed the problem in February before they redesigned the page. I dropped from large mammal to insignificant microbe in one day.

    I did get a response asking for patience and promising to fix things, but thus far I’m just ignoring the rankings and hoping for the best.

    Reply
  9. Leanne

    ‘The biggest thing you can do to solve slow loading’ advice from “Guest” to the WWW Code Diva is cracking me up. Can’t. Stop. Laughing!

    (it must be hard to figure out who you are though, what with your design blog quips and links to portfolio right there at the top. Maybe you should move those down to the bottom so they get more attention? Just a thought.)

    ;))

    Reply
  10. Michael

    Heh. I was a large mammal, then a furry rodent, then a large mammal again. Sometimes weeks go by with no change in my rankings. I deleted their code months ago. Didn’t seem to be any consistent ranking process I could figure out.

    Reply
  11. Sgt Hook

    I’m nowhere to be found in the ecosystem but since I was away for a few months I thought perhaps that had something to do with it. I put in a trouble ticket, a few weeks ago. Technorati you say?

    Reply
  12. Charlie on the PA Turnpike

    Can’t help thinking about this gem…

    Thank you Chevy. Well, another winter is almost over and March true to form has come in like a lion, and hopefully will go out like a lamb. At least that’s how March works here in the United States.

    But did you know that March behaves differently in other countries? In Norway, for example, March comes in like a polar bear and goes out like a walrus. Or, take the case of Honduras where March comes in like a lamb and goes out like a salt marsh harvest mouse.

    Let’s compare this to the Maldive Islands where March comes in like a wildebeest and goes out like an ant. A tiny, little ant about this big.

    Reply
  13. Dr.Dawg

    One of my own blogs has been removed from the ecosystem. Why? I have no clue. I’ve emailed in several times to find out what the deal is. No reply.

    Happened to me months ago, several inquiries, no reply.

    I’ll be removing the code shortly.

    Reply

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