Kate's dashboard

A comment on the problem "outbrain rating widget not showing up on blogger template??" in outbrain:

Hi,
I'm not sure I understand what you are asking. You want to change "boring" and add "reactions"? Can you please give me some more details on what you're asking?
Thanks,
Kate – Kate, on August 31, 2009 18:05

A comment on the problem "No Recommendations with Safari?" in outbrain:

Hi JeeeM,
Can you post your url so I can take a look?
Thanks,
Kate – Kate, on August 28, 2009 19:22

A comment on the question "Widget above Feedflare, below "continue reading" link" in outbrain:

We won't - we'll be back to you shortly. – Kate, on August 28, 2009 19:21

Kate replied on August 28, 2009 19:19 to the question "Rating widget showing a different message than usual" in outbrain:

Hi Albert,

The 'rated by X people like me' language (RECOMENDADO (5.0) por 2 personas como tú [Cómo] in spanish) is part of our score personalization, which is intended to give registered users a slightly better user experience as it tweaks the average based on other like-minded people. However, this only shows up for registered AND logged-in users which is a tiny fraction of the people on the web.

Almost all visitors to your site will see the plain averages that you'd like them to see.

If you want to see the same, simply go to our website - www.outbrain.com - and log off from there. Then all personalization of the scores will go away.

Hope this helps.
Kate
The outbrain team

Kate replied on August 21, 2009 20:56 to the question "What is a recommendation; exactly how does it benefit a blog?" in outbrain:

Hi Ian,
Great question. A recommendation is a link at the bottom of the post that leads to another article or piece of content. The link can be from your own blog or from another site. Frequently the recommended link is contextually related to the post it's on, highly rated or occasionally simply a popular post or article that is getting a lot of traffic that day.
The main benefit is to having them on your blog or site is to make it easier for your readers to discover great content that they will love. Showing recommendations after posts will do exactly this, whether the links lead to older content from your own blog that have fallen off your front page or to other sites around the web that your readers will enjoy. Having outbrain recommendations on your site also increases your pageviews because they have high click through rates.
Finally if you choose to participate in our sponsored recommendation program, you can also raise money for charity (or for yourself if your site is big enough) by showing sponsored links to high quality relevant content.
Hope this answers your question. Let me know if there is anything else I can help with.
Thanks!
Kate
The outbrain team

Kate replied on August 21, 2009 18:19 to the question "Language translation not available even though it was translated" in outbrain:

Hi urko,
Thanks for pointing out the error. I've reported it and it should be fixed in the next couple of days.

In terms of your custom file, we just do one version per language - if you'd like to have an alternate version you can you just have to have a place to host it yourself. Then you can choose custom language in the outbrain dashboard. Pictured below:

As soon as we've fixed the existing file, I can email it to you and then you can make whatever customizations you want and host it somewhere.

Thanks for your patience,
Kate

Kate replied on August 20, 2009 20:09 to the question "Widget above Feedflare, below "continue reading" link" in outbrain:

Hi Albert -

I'm not sure how to do this - let me check with our engineers and get back to you.

Thanks,
Kate

Kate replied on August 20, 2009 19:09 to the question "Where do I post the verification code?" in outbrain:

No I don't think this will work. Let's take this off the forum - please email me with your user name

Kate at outbrain.com

Kate replied on August 20, 2009 18:41 to the question "Where do I post the verification code?" in outbrain:

You should paste it on your home page just above the < / body > tag. So depending on your site that would probably be just below the footer. It won't show up on the actual rendered page, it will just be in the page source.

Give it a try and if you experience any problems email me your site url with the code still on the page and your user name and I can investigate it further for you.
kate at outbrain dot com

Thanks!
Kate

A comment on the problem "FILES AUTOMATICALLY DOWNLOADING" in Chicago Tribune:

Hi Andrew -

I actually deleted my original comment myself because I decided to check with Danielle before jumping on the thread she was handling. You'll notice it says essentially the exact same thing. We emailed directly and decided that she should post the information under her account so that it would display at the top of the thread (it's more noticeable there). There was no bad intention or attempt to "hide" anything there - the priority was getting the information out in the clearest way possible.

I apologize for any inconvenience this bug may have caused you and any other readers. I assure you that as soon as we realized what was happening we put all of our efforts in to fixing the problem, as did Tribune.

If you have any additional questions or comments please feel free to email me directly. Kate at outbrain dot com

Thanks again for your patience and feedback.

Kate – Kate, on August 20, 2009 02:20

Kate posted an update in outbrain on August 19, 2009 17:44:

Experiencing site difficulties today... :(

We're currently experiencing some difficulties that are causing our site to be a tad slow. We're working on it and it should be fixed shortly.

A comment on the problem "Old rating gone after chaning domain name" in outbrain:

Ok No problem. I'll add your site to the queue. It may take several days to complete the process.
Thanks,
Kate – Kate, on August 19, 2009 14:33

Kate replied on August 19, 2009 14:31 to the question "Outbrain slow loading in my blog" in outbrain:

Hi Kenny-

Our engineers took a closer look at your blog and there seems to be a problem with the installation. They are seeing the installation twice in your page source. Can you email me at kate[at]outbrain[dot]com? I'll try to help you get it sorted out.

Thanks,
Kate

Kate replied on August 18, 2009 19:08 to the question "manage one blog by more than one account" in outbrain:

Hi Helen,

I think the best way to handle this would be for you to register and claim the site for your client and then when you finish the site and hand it over to the client give them their user name and password. They can always go in and change these in the account settings section of the site.

The reason we don't let to users claim a site is for security reasons.

Hope this helps.

Kate
the outbrain team

Kate replied on August 18, 2009 18:06 to the question "Outbrain slow loading in my blog" in outbrain:

Hi Kenny -

We put a lot of work into making sure that we do not slow down your page. We actually load very quickly but we load last - this is in an attempt to allow your reader to get right to the content. Since our widget is usually interacted with after reading (rating or clicking on a related link) we wait until the end.

We follow an internal principle called “graceful degradation” to ensure minimal impact on your page load. When your page loads:
1. Our javascript pings our datacenter to ensure connectivity before making
additional calls. If the ping does not return, we make no further calls and the
widget simply does not render
2. We assess how much content is user visible and only load when the user scrolls far enough down the page to see our widget. This reduces unnecessary loading.
3. We wait for all your content to load before we attempt to call our services
4. Our images and javascript are served through a CDN for fast & reliable delivery

Hope this helps.

Kate
The outbrain team

A comment on the problem "Old rating gone after chaning domain name" in outbrain:

I'm trying to understand if this is just a domain change or if it is also a structural change to the url. To merge ratings we need to match up old and new versions of the same post and if it's not a simple search and replace we need an excel which matches them up for us - is the rest of the url for each post identical to what it was before just with the change of the domain or has the rest of the url changed as well?
Kate – Kate, on August 18, 2009 16:54

A comment on the problem "Old rating gone after chaning domain name" in outbrain:

Hi,
Can you please send me a list of your old urls and the corresponding new urls? I want to make sure this merge is possible.
kate[at]outbrain[dot]com
Thanks,
kate – Kate, on August 18, 2009 14:35

A comment on the problem "Old rating gone after chaning domain name" in outbrain:

Hi saik,
Your rating history has been merged, thanks for your patience.
Kate – Kate, on August 18, 2009 14:35

A comment on the problem "Old rating gone after chaning domain name" in outbrain:

Hi Steve,
Your rating history has been merged. Thanks for your patience.
Kate – Kate, on August 18, 2009 14:34

Kate replied on August 18, 2009 14:07 to the question "How can i change outbrain's widget style?" in outbrain:

Ohh I see now. Sorry about that -

I made some changes - let me know what you think.

Kate