The growth of our network is remarkable. On July 26 this year we posted about the state of our traffic at that time:

“Since we opened our service as public beta three months ago, nearly 2,000 websites chose to install our rating and recommendation tools, generating a total of more than 500,000 pageviews per day.”

Now, less than two months later, we are happy to report that our installation base has grown to more than 3,000 websites and we serve recommendations to more than 1,200,000 web pages per day.

To learn more about our rating and recommendation tools, please visit http://spotback.com

“I’m telling you, they have to die!” he looks at me and I recognize the laser beam red in his eyes.

“What’s happening, man?” I smile at him, and he shoots me down with a scowl.

“What’s happening? The Spotbacks! They have to die!”

“The Spotbacks? Who are these Spotbacks?”

“Two brothers, the Kaufmans, developed this widget to rate the net, the whole world, all the information existing within mankind.”

“Rate everything? In what way?”

“In such a way that will determine for me, for you, for all of us, what we really love!!!” he barks and his red robe flaps with his winds of rage. “They are the beginning of technology’s world takeover!”
“The beginning of the takeover?“

“Yes!”

“Then what are you so mad about, man?” I smile at him, scratching my head.

“What am I so mad about? I’m mad! I’m mad because they decided to give people the power to rank who they love more.”

“Right!” I suddenly hear a voice behind me and turn around. “Batman,” I smile, “how you doing?”

“Worried to death, just like me,” I hear another voice, and smile at Spiderman hanging above us.

“What’s gotten into the three of you?”

“What’s gotten into us???” the world suddenly shudders to the voice of the Amazing Hulk, “Spotbacks!” Batman cries, stomping his foot.

“What about them?”

“They decided to let people rank which of us is the cooler.”

“And…?”

“And?” Spiderman exclaims, “And then humanity will decide which of us is the coolest! What do you think will be left for all the rest? A piece of tights? Look, look,” he cried, pulling the clothing clinging to his body, “do you know how hot it gets?”

“Chill, guys…isn’t it a shame…to get so upset?”

“I need an Advil,” the Amazing Hulk murmurs, holding his head, “I need an Advil…”

“Chill, man, chill…” Superman signals towards him and Batman pulls out some Advil from a pack hidden somewhere on his body.

“We have to stop them,” he shakes his head, troubled, while handing the pill to the Amazing Hulk.

“Guys, why are you acting like this? What’s with you?” I laugh, “It’s the Spotbacks, Micha and Amit just developed some widget which could help humanity, and not demolish it or censor it, but quite the opposite…the opposite…” I say, swallowing my saliva in response to the Amazing Hulk’s glaring eyes.

“Who is this dumbass?” his voice suddenly trembles.

“A friend of mine,” Superman says.

“And why is he here?” Spiderman asks.

“Dunno,” Superman shrugs.

“Guys, relax, Spotback is just software that helps us find what we like and need in out lives.”

“Spotback you say?” the Amazing Hulk mutters.

“Yes,” I smile.

“Then spot this,” Spiderman calls out, and for a minute I see black.

“Why did you do that?” I yell, in response to the pain in my right eye.

“That’s our Spot Back at you, man,” the Amazing Hulk laughs, and I close me eye, thinking how black it will be during the coming month. Afterwards, I sit on the edge of the sidewalk, and look down at them, fighting, raging, plotting. I smile. I can’t help but think if a Spotback can drive crazy the four greatest superheroes the world has ever seen, what will they do to the way we use the Internet…

To be continued…

Many thanks to our friend, Itay Adam, Teachlies.net author.

Here’s an implementation of the rating widget in Japanese. Kudos yoichi!

This is an extremely useful feature that instantly connect stories that people like with other relevant stories. When hovering with your mouse over the rating widget, a list of related content will appear exposing users to additional relevant content that other users liked.

It looks like this:

As you might have noticed we’ve released a new version of the Spotback website and widgets. Thanks to the feedback from all our users we’ve managed to fine tune the existing website and make the widget just a little bit easier to grab.
From now on, you can grab any widget directly from a website. If you see a rating tool you fancy or a sidebar that fits with your online brand on some other website just click ‘Grab This Widget’ and it’s yours.
We’ve also added the ‘Recent Raters’ feature within the widget. You can easily see all the Spotback registered users that have recently rated on a website or a specific item and then click their avatar to view their rating history.

Our widget Gallery is starting to bloom, we’ve been getting some cool submissions lately, check it out.
Here are a few useful ones:

Metallic Stars:

Filmspot Rater:

TV.com Rater:

Just Recent Raters (and one star):

We’ll be updating new features shortly which will include a statistics chart for the site owner to view!
Keep updated right here on our blog.

Here are some pics we took at the awesome Web 2.0 expo:

Michael Arrington and Jeff Clavier

Orli Yakuel and Frank Gruber

Tommorow we will be arriving in San Francisco for the largest Web 2.0 convention.
If anyone would like to catch up with us and discuss some internet and business opportunities, please contact Micha Kaufman, CEO by mail at micha [at] spotback [dot] com.

For those who won’t get a chance to visit this year we’ll keep you updated with some pictures and stories as the Web 2.0 Expo kicks off.

The long wait is over!
We’re proud to announce the public launch of Spotback’s ‘Rate Everything’ widgets and beta release site.

From now on you can log on to http://spotback.com and view your rating history. But more importantly, you can custom design widgets within seconds to fit with your site’s design. All you have to do is go to the ‘widget gallery’, design yourself a rating tool and sidebar and simply install the code.

We’ve added a lot of new features to the widgets, including comment rating, top comments and a recent raters feature where you can view the recent users who voted on your blog and view their rating history.

Oh, and finally- if you think that all of this is cool, wait until you hear about all the things that we are planning for you next. We are just warming up. Drop by our blog and keep updated.

GET THE WIDGETS NOW!

It’s been hectic here at Spotback HQ. We’re keeping busy installing our widgets on many more alpha user sites and optimizing our compatibility with other platforms.

Here are some new platforms we support:
OSCommerce - open source online stores.
Shopify Online Stores - see our example site here.
Dasblog (only the full installation edition).
Tumblr Blogs - Tumblelogs are like blogs with less fuss.

We also support Blogger, Wordpress, Moveable Type and Google Pages.

More updates soon to come regarding the beta release soon to come…

For those just tuning in to Spotback, our website, up until now, was a personalized news website. What it means basically is everything in Spotback depends on each user’s personal ratings. We’ve mapped the best RSS sources on the internet and present them to you for rating. Once you’ve rated we automatically recommend more stories that, we think, will fit your likings.

DON’T WORRY - SPOTBACK NEWS IS STILL UP!

It has just moved to http://news.spotback.com (don’t forget to update your bookmarks).

FYI - We’ve recently updated all the sources on Spotback for your convinience and launched the Spotback Music Project.