APSense stands out in so many ways

If you know me, even just a little, I'm biased when comes the time to compare APSense to any other business social network out there.

I felt it, but was not always able to put it into simple words.

Well, last night, I was inspired. Many ideas came about what makes APSense unique. Not all of the ideas I will describe are unique, but combined, it's such an amazing combination.

Since 2007

Yes, APSense exists since 2007. Or is it 2006? Well, the bottom line is, look at the other business social network sites out there. I'm not talking about FaceBook and Twitter, which are social networks that happen to have many marketers as members. No, I'm talking about sites dedicated to business people. Apart from Linked-In, tell me if any of the popular sites you joined in the past 4 years are still there, and if yes, are they valuable to your business. I would be curious to hear about those.


Alexa ranking

Many ( most? ) of the other popular social networks have seen their Alexa rankings decrease. Either that, or APSense has passed in front of them. At the beginning of 2010, APSense's ranking was around 45,000. At the end of the year, it was a little more than 4,500. I just took a look, it is at 4,311. Some of you might say, "well, not impressive, we've been in 2011 for 4 months". I just want you to realize that competition is much more ferocious at around 4,000 than 45,000.

Now, how can APSense keep improving its ranking? Read on.


New features and services all the time

I became active at APSense back at the end of septembre 2010. Here are the new features and services that have been added since then. The list is not sorted in the order they appeared.

• RevPages: actually, it appeared a few weeks before sept 2010, I think
• Talents
• New look with improved navigation
• Changes to the way campaigns are created and viewed
• New campaign types such as join eZine or group
• Info Homepage Spotlight campaign type, I love it !
• APSense AdNetwork, a low-cost PPC alternative
• New improved APSense Wiki
• 2.0 communities for hobbies and other languages
• eZine service calle eZine space
• eCards, send one to someone you love
• URL shortener
• status
• "add comment" in the News Feed
• Automatic postings to Twitter, FaceBook, Linked-In, with settings allowing you to choose what kind of action you want to be posted
  

There have also been some improvements here and there, change of terms like articles used to be called blogs ( we still see the word "blog" appear here and there ), groups subjects were called discussions in one place and subjects in another.

I'm sure I forget a few things, but as you can see, APSense keeps improving and adding awesome new things to make our experiences more fun and valuable.

One thing that really amazes me is, when a change is made, if there are bugs, it takes less than a few minutes to correct. That's how long it took when the look changed. We're talking about 300 different pages! How about that?

Which brings me to the next point.


APSense has its own development team

Many social network sites are built from scripts that can be bought.

In the case of APSense, the main site and the 2.0 communities have been developed in-house. Only the services are scripts coming from outside. They are chosen carefully, to make sure they are valuable additions for members.

The main advantage of developing a site instead of buying a script is, if there is a major problem, or an annoying one, the owner won't depend on someone from outside for improvements, which might never happen.

About services, there is a little feature that makes it very comfortable for us to navigate from the main site to any service. it is:


The APSense Passport

When you stop and think about it, when you have to open a new login session when you go on a "sister" site, it makes for one more password to remember or store within a piece of software. The APSense Passort is the ideal solution. APSense always adds it to any script that will become a service.


Articles are unique at APSense

Look at the features we find in articles.

For authors:

• HTML, which allows the use of images, videos, different fonts in different sizes and colors
  
• Deleting any comment that is not constructive
• Topping a comment that adds valuable information to the article
• Tags

For every member:

• Add a comment
• Report an abuse
• Top an article ( the author can't top his/her own article )
  
• Share on Twitter, FaceBook, and some other popular social networks

Groups are unique at APSense

All the features I just mentioned for articles are available for groups. With many features unique to groups, such as:

• Paid groups in addition to public or private
  
• Recommended groups section
• Different roles, i.e. creator, moderator, contributor, subscriber
• Limited to 50 groups, I find this good, cause it helps you to choose what groups are really valuable to you
• RevPages tab
• Resources tab
• Stick the best subjects at the top of the list

And last, but not least is: