"Not exactly perfect, but darn close. Sphinn has a brighter future."

About a month ago it was said that Sphinn, the social network focused around internet marketing, was a complete wreck.

In the original post Sphinn was deemed as "pathetic, practically useless," and "extremely worthless." Because of observations made about the community and the efforts of that community to become a popularity contest, the points made about Sphinn were true. Or so some thought.

As it turns out, the original observations are now completely inaccurate; Not exactly perfect, but darn close. Sphinn has a brighter future. Thanks to it's users.

The rise and fall of Sphinn.

When Sphinn first opened to the public - merely five months ago - it faced an uncertain future as a Digg clone, or another popularity contest online; which, assumingly, defeats the purpose of such a site.

A few months in and the big names were already taking over the network. To a new user it would seem that Sphinn is falling apart, the community is a mess, and the network is practically useless.

Spend a few minutes there, submit some content, and poke around some, you will discover that Sphinn not only is nothing like Digg, it's quickly turning into what it should be: a community.

This creates the illusion of the rise and fall in popularity of the network. The reality is that it's only been a few months, and the transformation of Sphinn from it's first day in existence until today is beautiful.

Above all: Sphinn a community.

Read the responses to this Sphinn article and you can get a feel for what people are there for: they are there for Sphinn. They are there for the community.

They are not there to scam the network - although there are those who do - they are there to benefit the community in the best ways they can.

The comment made by Sphinn user Baiduyou backs up this claim of community benefits when he said: "If you're that bothered [by what Sphinn has become] then take the lead in making it better; call out the people who are voting for crap and asking for rubbish articles to be Sphunn - we've all got opinions on what we think Sphinn should be about - let's hear them."

No longer are Sphinn users obsessed with Sphinns or befriending big names, they are focused on building and strengthening the Sphinn community and making it into - what will be proclaimed as - the best social networking community of our time.

Not only are the users focusing more on the community, they are also realizing that some content doesn't need to be voted up. Other than one article from Matt Cutts, the homepage as of the time of this writing is chock full of extremely useful articles that - in one person's opinion - deserve to be seen.

Articles like: "Deep Links, Longtail Keywords, and Why you Should Love Them Both", "The Top 5 SEO Client Questions...Answered", and "Push Link Marketing: Pushing the Right Spots" are beginning to clutter the homepage, offering great news, tips, and advice for all internet marketers.

The future of Sphinn...

So, it comes down to the line an Sphinn users are focused on building a great internet marketing community, but it will take time to overcome the obstacles Sphinn is currently facing. Don't fret, the ways things are going now Sphinn is going to be exactly what it needs to be.

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