Q:  What is Cool-O-Rama?

A:  Cool-O-Rama is an online news aggregator. We take the best content from around the web, and we bring it to readers in a convenient, easy to read format.

The true heart of Cool-O-Rama is our emphasis on small blogs (some of whom are virtual unknowns) in the content we serve up. While we do bring some content from large, well-established sites to our readers, we give equal footing to the little guys out there on the interwebz, too.

Q:  Why the big emphasis on small blogs?

A:  We feel it benefits everyone.

Readers benefit because, alongside the mainstream stuff, they get lots of interesting, geeky, funny content. Much of this they would probably never find just by surfing, it’s all in one convenient place, and it all gets updated 24/7. Cool-O-Rama is really a gigantic, fun-to-read newspaper, full of offbeat content.

The small bloggers benefit because they get increased exposure, recognition, publicity, traffic, and backlinks.  These smaller sites also have the chance to convert these casual passersby into regular readers, too. Over time, this boosts their traffic.

Q:  Are you guys bloggers too?

A:  Every member of our staff is a veteran blogger, and we all contribute to Cool-O-Rama.  There’s a special section for our “official” staff scribblings in the sidebar, just to the right over there.  See it?  Feel free to click on some of those links and get to know us.

We also have an entire page dedicated to the nonsense we write.  Considering the extremely low quality of our work, dedicating a whole page to it seemed a bit lofty.  However, there are some fans that actually like our work (crazy, huh?) , and demanded a dedicated page for their own nefarious purposes.

Q:  So, are you guys some sort of ‘hard news’ site?

A:  Because we emphasize geeky content (gadgets, video games, film, tech, comics, and other nonsense) we’re really better described as a pop culture site.  Our content includes a nice, gooey mixture of topics, insights, opinions, rants, and other whatnot on a daily basis.

Q:  Other aggregator sites (Google News, HuffPo, AOL, Yahoo News, etc) only use big, established sites with proven track records. Why do you go to the trouble of seeking out these little-known blogs?

A:  Because the playing field isn’t even.

Look, the blogger was the voice of the web. Independent thinking, brutal honesty, frank reviews, and real emotions kept the tubes raw, interesting, and funny.  Many bloggers came to know one another, they referenced each others’ work, and they linked to each others’ posts.  Ordinary people, because they blogged, had a prominent voice.  On top of that, the net had a  fun, geeky quality to it.  We miss all that.

Sadly, Big Media now dominates the net, and the net is now a very aggressive, competitive place. They’ve skewed the whole system in their favor, drowning out the voice of the ordinary blogger, and those happy days are gone.

Q:  Big Media?  What’s that?

A:  Big Media is our term for the large, well-financed, powerful networks of sites that now dominate the web.  Big Media operations are driven primarily by profit. It is the nature of these corporate beasts to crush any and all competition, including bloggers.

The size of these networks varies – they can consist of a handful of large, well-financed sites, or a conglomerate of dozens.  These undoubtedly include sites you visit every day.  However, Big Media tends to conceal all of this from the average consumer.

Our primary beef with Big Media is that they use some very manipulative tactics to drive traffic to their sites and boost their advertising profits, while simultaneously forcing smaller sites/blogs into obscurity.

Q:  That sounds downright unfair.  What do you mean?

A:   Consider this typical day at a typical Big Media web company:

• Writer 1, a paid staffer for the Big Media  network, is told to write a “feature” on a hot, trendy topic.  A dozen other writers on the network all write fluff pieces, and they all link to Writer 1′s article.  This ‘forced linking’ gives the article undue attention and credibility and, more significantly, artificially drives up the search engine ranking of Writer 1′s featured piece.

• Next, Writer 1 submits her story to Digg and other social bookmarking sites.  The other writers all across the network (along with editors, secretaries, and other staff) all log into Digg and upvote her story, driving it to the front page. They simultaneously downvote any competing stories on that topic, relegating them to immediate obscurity.  Writer 1′s story is now guaranteed to receive millions of hits.

• After manipulating both the search engines and social bookmarking sites, the network’s “media specialists” spend the rest of the day sending emails, leaving links in the comments of trendy sites, Facebooking, and otherwise networking to promote Writer 1′s featured story.

• Lather, rinse, and repeat until the story is carried by all the big social bookmarking sites and major aggregators, and the search results on Google, Yahoo, and Bing are all skewed in the network’s favor.

Meanwhile, the three guys that run MySmallBlog.com write an intelligent, truly insightful article on the same topic.  Their excellent story ends up buried on page 6 of a Google search, and it gets voted off of Digg within minutes.  They can’t figure out why.

Q:  Wow, that sucks!

A:  If that ticks you off, check this out:  we know of several Big Media staff writers that also work as ‘volunteer community moderators’ on the biggest social bookmarking sites in the world.   We know of cases in which these supposedly impartial moderators have outright deleted competing stories, thus ensuring that their own network’s stories would be upvoted.

There are also concerns that these Big Media sites pay some ISPs to give their network preferential high-speed treatment, while small blogs are served up to the public much more slowly.  This is known in the industry as “traffic shaping”.

Q:  Man, Big Media networks are totally evil!

Well, it’s all about maximizing their corporate profits.

While not every large online publication behaves this way, these kinds of behaviors are common.  It’s also important to note that the above examples only scratch the surface.  Big Media manipulates the web in numerous ways.  As you can imagine, these kinds of things have all but drowned out the voice of the independent blogger.  Our goal at Cool-O-Rama is to level the playing field for the little guy, at least a little.

Q:  How do blogs partner up with Cool-O-Rama?

A:  The Cool-O-Rama editors hand pick each of blogs featured here.  The whole point is to ensure that interesting, high quality, funny content reaches our readers, and we are always looking for new, cutting edge blogs.

On that note, if you’re a blogger that would like to join us, or you know of a blog you’d like to recommend, just drop us an email at Staff[at]Coolorama[dot]com.

Q:  How often do you update your stories on Cool-O-Rama?

A:  We are constantly updating our content throughout the day, to ensure everything on the site is nice and fresh.

Q:  Do you link directly to the blogs featured on Cool-O-Rama?

A:  Yes. In fact, the way we handle linking is one of the things that make us very different from the other aggregators out there.

We link to every site on Cool-O-Rama in a number of different ways.  To maximize the reader’s experience, they can read quite a bit of content right here.  However, readers are openly and repeatedly encouraged to visit the original source to see what else they have to offer.  We also have tools in place to make sure that stories get a lot of ‘second chances’; readers have opportunities to see content that has drifted off the front page, and even stories from the past.  It’s a balancing act, that’s for sure, but one in which everyone benefits.

Q:  One of your stories had some really messed up formatting.  What gives?

A:  Yeah, that happens sometimes.  There are currently nine kinds of RSS feeds, and two kinds of Atom feeds.  Further, feeds can be customized in various ways.  Although our ham-handed coding skills are getting better, this has proven to be a tough nut to crack.  What’s more, the system we use to read, digest, sort out, and republish our partners’ feeds is largely home-made, and it’s all held together with alchemy and duct tape.

Q:  Pffft.  I’m totally on to you.  You jerks are just stealing content from others and posting it here.

A:  Sites publish their Really Simple Sindication (RSS) feeds in the hope that someone, somewhere, will syndicate their content. That’s the whole point.

However, when it comes to the use of RSS feeds, there is debate is about “link etiquette”. Many aggregators engage in scraping. Scraping is the practice of stealing the feed/content from another site, and then posting it as your own. (If you’re interested, here is an excellent treatise on the subject.)

There are a lot of variants to scraping out there. Many sites “borrow” content, add a few original lines of their own, and claim it as original. Others will acknowledge the use of outside content, but refuse to link to their sources. Still others take everything, and confuse the reader with lots of links to their own content. If they’re feeling generous, they might bury one lonely link to the original story in there somewhere.

Cool-O-Rama doesn’t condone those practices (it’s happened to us, and it sucks). In fact, unlike other aggregators, Cool-O-Rama bends over backwards to honor the original intent of an RSS feed, and uphold the highest standards of link etiquette. We try very hard to make sure the the sites and blogs featured here are treated very well, and more than fairly.

Q: Really? What do you do that’s so different?

First off, we very openly encourage our readers to visit the original source.

Further, Cool-O-Rama doesn’t publish everything in a given feed. We don’t publish videos at all. Also, the pictures that appear on Cool-O-Rama tend to be smaller. To get the full experience, readers need to visit the originating blog.

On top of that, we limit the number of stories we’ll carry from a particular source each day. Readers only get a sample of the content from a given site; they simply have to visit the originating blog if they want to get everything they offer.

Also, unlike many aggregators, we clearly and repeatedly acknowledge the blogs featured here.

Quite a bit of thought went into setting up Cool-O-Rama to make sure that it’s doing what it’s supposed to: giving small bloggers the exposure they deserve, while simultaneously helping them achieve an equal footing with Big Media. In fact, we aren’t aware of a single news aggregator that goes to the same lengths we do.

Q:  I have a blog, and I think it’s pretty clever.  May I join Cool-O-Rama? I could really use the publicity.

A:  “May I?” Did you go to charm school or something?

To join Cool-O-Rama, all you have to do is ask. If your content is high quality and regularly updated, we’ll be happy to add your feed.

Happily, you’ll probably get a lot more publicity from our partnership that you could ever get on your own.  In fact, we absolutely guarantee that the stories you post will be featured on the front page of Cool-O-Rama, which will help your work to be recognized.

Q:  Isn’t Cool-O-Rama just like Digg, Reddit, or other social bookmarking sites?

A:  Definitely not.  Those sites carry stories based on popularity, not quality and, as we indicated above, they’re subject to manipulation.  Our setup is immune to that.

(If you have and doubts, just try to get a story onto the front page of Digg.)

Q:  Do you screen or filter the individual stories that appear on Cool-O-Rama?

A:  No.  The whole point is to give bloggers their voice back.  We do not censor them at all.

In the unlikely event that a blog’s content drops severely in quality or becomes objectionable, we can remove them at the discretion of our editors.

Q:  Uh, these pictures don’t have a lot to do with this FAQ.  They seem pretty random.  What gives?

A:  Wow, you caught us.  We admit it, some of these pics were chosen at random.  And there’s nothing pretty about them.

Q:  I’m a small, part time blogger.  How much does it cost for me to join Cool-O-Rama?

A:  It’s completely free.

Q:  Really?

A:  Yeah.

Q:  Ok, now I have a question about….

A:  Whoa there, partner, we’ve answered so many questions, our answer box is now empty.  If (somehow) you’re not getting the gist of what we’re all about here, feel free to send us your question at staff[at]coolorama[dot]com.

Cheers!