Bubblews: an uglier, but incentivized mashup of Reddit & Tumblr?

Just signed up for Bubblews to test it out. Now, before you say, Ana: yet another social network, really? Well, I like testing obscure and new social networks, like it's my job! (Well, it kind of is.)

Here's what I did before deciding to register: I searched for "Bubblews vs ..." and got two suggestions on Google: Squidoo and Hubpages. Then I clicked on the first result, which was this page: "Bubblews vs Squidoo". (Note to Bubblews, your brand name sucks because Google kept trying to substitute it with the word "bubbles"!). Reading that article peaked my interest and I decided to register and test it out.

Here are my first impressions of Bubblews:

• Based on my experiences on Reddit, it allows similar vote up/vote down buttons for posts. It has 15 categories (kind of like subreddits), including: personal, art, tutorial, ideology etc. 
• Like Tumblr, you can post images, text or both.
• The interface looks a bit dated, like 2008 dated. They need to go for a more modern look if they're trying to attract a mass amount of new users (Although Reddit's interface is pretty hard on the eyes too).
• Unlike Tubmlr or Reddit, it says you can earn $ in your account based on the number of likes and comments your posts get. Will this incentive result in the submission of better content by users? Time will tell. Also, posts must be a minimum of 400 words long in order to qualify for payment.
• I'm guessing original content will get you more $ than curated content, but this is to be determined as I haven't posted anything yet.
• Bubblews only has 107K registered users, which can be determined by performing the Google search for "http://www.bubblews.com/account/". Interestingly, however, in May of this year Bubblews had only 31K users, so it has seen some growth. I haven't yet determined their geographic distribution or other demographics.

Next steps: I'll post some stuff and see what happens! (Updates to follow).

****UPDATE: I will however be monitoring the number of Google Search results of the search terms "Bubblews scam" to see if the number of results for this search grows in proportion to the number of users or faster, which could indicate that it is moving in that direction. At the time of this writing there are 43.5K results for this search term.

Have any of you tried Bubblews, Squidoo, Tumblr or Reddit? If so, please comment on your experiences and/or what you like or don't like about these sites.

Twacebookgram+

That's right. I coined it. Twacebookgram+! Ok, so it's not been focus-tested, and honestly it's just too many syllables to be viable, but

you know what I mean, and that's the most important thing! And this is not a blog post, it's more of a rant about how I'm sick of trying to remember who does and doesn't overlap in which social networks and wish they would all just merge....but then again that may cause the company who owns this behemoth to consume the internet....but anyway, I'm rambling now. We'll see what I think of this post when I look back at it in 5 years! 

Facebook: Is your professional world mixing with your personal?

Mine started to. So I did something about it. A few weeks ago I created a separate, professional Facebook account using my work email address. Now, this is not simply so that I can network with colleagues, managers, and other people on a professional level. I found I also needed to have a separate account for my work duties - i.e. I recently started promoting corporate events via Facebook. I didn't want people clicking on "event creator" and not seeing anything at all because of my strict privacy settings, but I also didn't want people seeing/reading things about my personal life - people that I have not "friended."

Another reason I decided to start a separate professional account is because I often want to share my Tweets, or articles I'm reading, but most of it may not be relevant to my friends, classmates and extracurricular group members. And, I really try to avoid annoying people. I will now only post articles that are of a "broader" nature on my personal account.

So far, it has been working out well for me...although some people have asked me "Ana, what's with the two Facebook accounts?" I proceed with explaining that if they want to read / know more about my professional life, they can "friend" my second account too, and if not, then not to worry about it! Essentially, I'm giving them a heads up that my professional account will not talk about the movie I saw or the restaurant I went to, so not to expect that type of conversation there.

Furthermore, I find it very liberating to have a separte professional account - I don't have to worry about constantly saying no to professional contacts asking me to "friend" them when I don't know them well enough to share my entire personal life, and I can add people from Twitter whom I may not have ever met in person (which so far, my Facebook contacts have been 99% people I've met in person).

To sum up, here is my list of Pros/Cons of having separate personal/professional Facebook accounts:

Pros

• separate personal chatter (movies, restaurants, vacation, parties) from professional (work projects, work travel, and articles I'm reading), and at times more serious subjects
• not have to worry about giving wrong impression to professional contacts with some Wall posts posted by myself or others
• ability to post more often on common interest subject matter - people on my professional account are usually from the same field or organization type (i.e. public sector) and are interested in similar things. My personal contacts audience is much broader, and only a small percentage may be interested in hearing about my work all the time.

Cons

• Splitting time between two accounts
• People commenting/wondering why there are two accounts, negativity?
• Search engine stuff: both accounts will appear in results - how will Friends / Professional contacts decide which one to add as a friend?

Also, to comment on one of my "Cons" someone I know has added the word "work" and their Twitter handle to identify a particular Facebook account as their professional one - maybe I'll do that too?

Feedback

Feel free to add additional pros and cons I may not have thought of!