That's right, there is a new kid in town and he's looking to grab the limelight from Entrecard. I'm talking about SiteHoppin.com here. The very first impression when I came across this site was "You must be kidding me, this has got to be an Entrecard wannabe!"

I took some time to explore and found a couple of common characteristics between SiteHoppin and Entrecard.
1. Both require embedding a widget to your blog. Both widgets are similiar in design and you can actually place the SiteHopping widget besides your Entrecard widget as recommended by SiteHoppin. (Trying to grab some attention from Entrecard eh Max?)

2. Both sites let you to earn credits from visiting other websites. SiteHoppin calls their credits, Beer Credits.
3. Both allow you to send credits to other members. You can send some Beer Credits to me if you are feeling generous. By the way, my Beer Credits user name is Sksee.

Now, I guess you must be rather frustrated with me for referring to Max twice so far in this post.

Who is Max anyway?
Max is in fact the founder of SiteHoppin.com and also a possible alcoholic due to the beer theme he is using for this site and also for placing the entire lyrics of "99 bottles of beer" into the About Us page.

What does SiteHoppin has to offer?
I guess by know, you are anxious to know more about this. This is how SiteHoppin works as to my understanding:
1. You earn so called Beer Credits from visiting(hopping to) sites submitted by other members.
2. You need not open a new browser for each site you visit, all you need to do is click the TAGHOP button located at the top of the page. A new member site will appear in SiteHoppin's so called Browser-within-Browers. This built in browser lets you do all the site hopping in SiteHoppin itself.
(I'm wondering are we losing out for using this browser within browers? Say for example if you visit Blog A from SiteHoppin, and another visitor visits Blog A also via SiteHoppin, what does the unique counter for Blog A see? Does it record 2 unique visitors or just one single unique visitor, in this case SiteHoppin, visiting Blog A twice? SiteHoppin claims that each visitors hopping to your site will be counted as unique. I'm still a little pesimistic about their claims and will write a seperate article once I get things sorted out with SiteHoppin.)
3. You earn 1 Beer Credit for each site you hop. Once you've accumulated 10 Beer Credits, you are eligible to receive one hop from a visitor to your site. 20 Beer Credits gives you 2 unique visitor and so on.

How do you earn Beer Credits?
This has got to be the question everyone is asking. Here's how you can earn more Beer Credits:
1 Hop = 1 Beer Credit
1 Rating = 5 Beer Credits
1 Tagging or Comments using SiteHoppin's "Tag" function = 20 Beer Credits
1 New Site Submission = 30 Beer Credits
1 Click from your site to SiteHoppin through the Beer Widgets = 50 Beer Credits

The various ways to earn extra credits offered by SiteHoppin gives members and credit hunters a new breath of fresh air after experiencing the mundane card dropping system from Entrecard.

Is there any other way to earn MORE Beer credits from SiteHoppin?
Honestly I can't believe my eyes when I read the last paragraph of the FAQ. SiteHoppin has a built in function called Slideshow Mode. When activated, the slideshow mode starts site hopping automatically for you. Just leave your PC or laptop on and let the Slideshow Mode do the work for you. This is all clear to me now on why SiteHoppin set such a high credit requirement (10 credits) to get a unique visitor to visit your site. Just by using the slideshow function, you can earn hundreds of Beer credits overnight. (Why does this remind me so much of those autosurfing programs?)

Bloggerfocus summarizes SiteHopping.com:
1. Although the site is pretty new, it has already garnered quite a number of registered members.
2. Visitors from SiteHoppin do not read your blog if the slideshow function is enabled.
3. You would most certainly experience a boost in traffic and also an increase in the number of Phantom readers from SiteHoppin. I'm sure you get what I mean.
4. Some bloggers or webmasters might say that SiteHoppin has ruined the actual purpose of having a blog or website. Why have a large number of visitors coming to your site for the wrong intentions? I shall not dwell further about this and leave the ethical and moral part of it for you to decide.
5. Max has done a good job on showcasing blogs and boosting traffic when he introduced SiteHoppin. I just hope that the slideshow function from SiteHoppin does not result in blogs or sites getting blacklisted by Ad Management Services. Afterall, phantom visitors are of no benefit to Advertisers.

Bloggerfocus Verdict:
It seems that this review does not really favor SiteHoppin on the whole. Although there are some plus points from SiteHoppin, I strongly urge readers to decide what is best for your blog or site before joining. If your intention is to garner more traffic for your blog or site, you are more then welcomed to join. For bloggers who desires content reading visitors, joining SiteHoppin might not be the best option for you.

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