Robin

GMPlanet has been completely created and managed by Robin, and I am unaware of his plants for it — but I personally do not think GMPlanet in its current form can replace GameMaker.info, but I don’t believe Robin wants it as a REPLACEMENT of GameMaker.info, but rather as an effective tool of Mass Subscriptions, or checking the entire sum of Game Maker news for those who are really interested.

I am happy for the GMTech Feed to be posted all over the place, as this allows announcements to be shown to more and more people, however the way its set out in GMPlanet means it wont work as well, GMPlanet.

If it was possible to set which feeds you want to display, like GameMaker.info then it will work out better for everyone, you get to see news from the websites you want to know about, and you don’t end up with news that are 1 line long.

I understand that work is still being worked on, and maybe it shouldn’t, we already have one good aggregator website, is there need for another one, that is so far not as good (I am sure with time it will be just as good).

For the record, MarkUp’s content is available in an online format in GMpedia, this was the case long before GMTech did so, the issue is.. its going slow as it isn’t a top priority.

Blijbol
“Imagine what happens if Game Maker.info was suddenly replaced by your GMPlanet. Game Maker Blog will lose a lot of traffic, so it also loses ad revenue. Instead GMPlanet takes all the money.”
That is my fear.

Eyas – GameMakerStream was different. It was providing content in a format it had not already been available in, months after it had been released. Not to mention the project has now been made almost irrelevant by GameMakerTech’s decision to place their content online. Planet, on the other hand, takes the news every 15 minutes and displays what was already available in a blog format in a blog format.

Robin – I just subscribed to the GMPlanet feed and it is certainly nice to see you are linking to the original articles rather than the equivalent on GMPlanet as I assumed you would.

The way I see it, this will give the end user a chance to get access to many more blogs, quicker than they could before. Also, if the blogs content is good, the user would read the article on the original site to comment, or to view photos/videos or other “extras” not included in the feed.

It is also possible for the sites syndicated to include text ads in their site and feed, since GMplanet makes a point to not alter the feeds, they would be included (so long as they really were text, not JavaScript). It’s also possible for the site to only provide “teasers” of their content by using feedburner.com or their content management system, although that’s a rather cheap trick to lure visitors.

Finally, game developers and other sites that produce content have an easy way to reach more users.

It’s a win-win.

Robin

Still, I’m not so thrilled about gmplanet, maybe this isn’t my thing.

As simple as that. I personally believe that GMPlanet should add extensive advertising to the original blog (e.g. “Read more @ GMB.com”) the post is being fetched from.

I quote:
“.info sends a fair amount of traffic our way, it is the third biggest referrer to Game Maker Blog and we are also their most popular site.”
Imagine what happens if Game Maker.info was suddenly replaced by your GMPlanet. Game Maker Blog will lose a lot of traffic, so it also loses ad revenue. Instead GMPlanet takes all the money.

“Unless of course the aggregator sites start achieving higher search rankings taking away surfers who would have otherwise found the original gmnews or gmtech website.”
That’s indeed what’s going to happen.

Personally I would not cooperate with GMPlanet and I would choose the same strategy as GM Tutorials: taking back the ‘stolen’ content.

Personally my choice for Game Maker.info was to promote sites and give each site more traffic. Just like GM Tutorials I only provide teasers for the content for that reason.

If people feel the presentation of GM.info is flawed then they are more then welcome to contact us with additional designs to incorporate. While we won’t make changes like displaying the full article we welcome custom themes.

My main gripe with GM Planet is that 99% of the news items they promote is terrible. I annoy a whole lot of website owners by not featuring them on default on the frontpage because the public at large is not interested. The vast majority of Game Maker sites have already contacted me that they like the site, like the traffic, but that they want to be on the frontpage with more items higher up. We have some very strict policies to determine which content is interesting enough to feature that place.
While I feel there’s nothing wrong with my personal blog I really don’t see why it is included on the frontpage on default on there website.

We do allow you to set your page up to 1 column with just the feed “All the news” which gives you a nearly identical site except with teasers and some stricter requirements on what is and isn’t news worthy.

I’m looking forward to see how this site develops though.