Scoutle: another layer of automation?

scoutle logoI have been struggling to get started with Dojo and Ning lately. Both these technologies are fairly new and the number of books about on Dojo is severely limited, and as far as I know there are no books on Ning. So I would like to hook up with some other developers who are knowledgeable about these technologies, because I learn best from humans. I’m in several social networks, but they are general, and I haven’t had much luck finding anyone with these narrowly defined brands of geekery. I have been hearing about Scoutle. Supposedly it scurries around the web and locates people for you. That did it for me. I’m kind of a tryer of new things, and anything with the word “automation” in it gets my attention. Apparently, once you’ve installed Scoutle, every time someone visits your site, your Scoutle agent takes two steps toward finding your online soulmates.

Signing up for Scoutle was easy. After you sign up you create a scout for each of your blogs and you tell it what to look for. Then you install it on your site. It breaks my layout a bit, but what’s a little eye candy between scouts right? I named my scout Dorkseeker. (Say hi to Dorkseeker!) Beside her name there was a number. Each time I did anything the number went up. Scoutle’s documentation mentions some terms that I don’t understand yet, but one thing is clear: you want your number to go up, and lots of site visits make it go up as well as increasing your connections.

Well I’ve been a member of Scoutle for a whole 3 minutes now and I still don’t have any connections. Come on, I’m an internet girl. I want it all and I want it NOW! Looks like I might have to wait. I’ll update this post when I figure out how to get connections and what to do with them when I get them. Meanwhile if you want to try Scoutle, you can click the link above and try it. I promise it’s not an affiliate link.

Update after 12 hours: Scoutle did indeed propose for me about 40 sites, and about four of them I deemed to be a match for what I really want, so I requested to connect to them. The trickiest part was finding where it listed them.
I also later found this youtube promo video about Scoutle:

Updated again: Look! they put my review on Scoutle! I’m famous! Wheeee! Duplicate content be damned.

7 comments to Scoutle: another layer of automation?

  • Hi there!

    Great you signed up and about the connections… The servers are very busy so we update the meetingslist for you every two hours. Maybe this can go quicker in the future but hold on!
    Besides… Scoutle is now online for a month and more users will bring better connections/meetings.

    Hopefully you lke Scoutle and if you have any suggestion on how to improve it… Let us know! Really, either by email or Scoutle message…

    Kind regards,

    Godfried
    Scoutle – Meet You Soon!
    http://www.scoutle.com

  • admin

    Wow! I knew this was fairly new but SO new the company comes back and comments personally on my post! I sincerely doubt that was an automatic reply. Scoutle stock just went up several points for me!

  • Thanks for the heads-up. This seems to be interesting. I just tried to sign-up but keep getting an error. I will try again later when I have more time. In the meantime I will watch your posts for further news on Scoutle and how to use it.

    sailors last blog post..Total Validator

  • Hi Colleen, like you I also like to try out new and interesting things and I find Scoutle quite interesting.

    Scoutle admins personally emailed me to ask for permission to use a portion of my review on their “Users about Scoutle” page. ‘Twas really very involving of them to do comments and emails. Makes us feel that they are humans we are really part of the community.

    P.S. I requested a connection from you in Scoutle :).

    Louies last blog post..Vysr: RoamAbout Offers a Better Browsing Experience

  • admin

    Hey Louie Thanks! I will pick up that connection next time I am at Scoutle. Thanks so much for dropping by. Scoutle has great potential, and I believe those of us who get in early will be in a good place.

  • Me again 🙂

    Well, although Scoutle is all about automation… Comments we don’t automate 🙂 It takes a lot of time to find reviews though but it is important to know what users think. You all are the early adopters that believe in something before it has completely proven itself… The least we can do is know about what you think.

    Sailor… You had errors while signing up. Now that is an issue we like to know of course. We did have problems with the server requests last week but now have rewritten a lot of coding to overcome this.
    Could you try again maybe or send an email about your error message? Check the contact page.

    Thanks for you believing in this new network. Although there is hardly any reason NOT to use Scoutle, it still is hard work to get the number of users to go up more quickly and help your Scout meet more interesting Scouts.
    We do our best!

    Meet you soon!

    Godfried – Scoutle
    http://www.scoutle.com

  • Hey this is me, Colleen again, commenting under my open id because I don’t feel like logging into my blog. Isn’t openID da bomb!! Yeah looks like scoutle is gonna use my review too. Great, link LUV is a good thing. I agree that they should use tag clouds because a heirarchy is too confining. And they could actually have a neural net of tags to see what tags correlate more strongly with what other tags.

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