uptrennd.com: Some times the truth hurts

Last week I have found a posting with -17 points (1UP). A member of the community had simple thrown away his nerves. The comments from some Uptrenndians, who are following their leader like cultists, have been answering something similar like "write better postings".

I have tried to retrace his allegations by making the following test:

1. Click on Trending
2. Select Top in Sort
3. Check that OC has a hook
4. Scroll down until you have more then 500 posts listed
   You can verify the count by using the search function of you browser and search for "posted in ". The browser shows you the hits he has found.

My results have been:

• 619 posts for searching "posted in "
  (that is the count of postings used for the testing samples)
• 236 posts for the search of "posted in uptrennd"
• 425 search results for the word "uptrennd" alone

The first really trending posting, I have found during my own test, had +303 points, the title "is mining dead?" and got posted 16 hours before. Most of the others have been around 1 month old, the two oldest ones have even been older than 6 months.

As Uptrennd is a group name in the Uptrennd community, there got found around 186 postings with the word Uptrennd written in the caption of postings. That are 30%.

Based on the results above I have been asking the Uptrennd community: What do you like to read? Content about cryptocurrencies or praises of Uptrennd?

Some have been answering, that they like to read both. I don't know if they have hoped to get some advantage or they are simple interpreting Uptrennd as their religion.

Others have been answering that the reason is simple to improve the search engine ranking (SEO). The problem is only, that the search engines are recognizing spamming too. On the other site nobody is searching for an invented word like Uptrennd.

In any case too much self-praising and self-congratulations are not good for any company. There a some old sayings like Self-praise stinks, a man's praise in his own mouth stinks and who is praising himself is spattering himself.

As I had on Nov 24, 2019 nothing better to do, I tried to get better results from the postings at Uptrend. So I have taken their All Time Best list, which you'll find by clicking on Trending, sort by Top and put a hook at OC (Original Content). I collected a list of more than 10,000 postings until the scripts from the Uptrennd website crashed. But having more than 10,000 best rated postings is a good sample, which says already a lot about the community.

I have put the results into a database. The first evaluation was filtering out the self-promotion. I have counted as self-promotion where the words uptrennd and level up got found inside the caption and additional all postings where the word moderator got found in the username. Since 100 points (1UP's) currently correspond to US$ 0.2674, I have structured the evaluation in steps of 100.

You can see the results in the following table. Only 1,741 postings got rewarded with 100 or more 1UP's. From these postings are 784 (45%) nothing else than praising Uptrennd, self-praising or self-congratulations.

You'll find even in the remaining 9,006 postings with points in the range between 30 and 99 18.72% promotion postings.

At the moment Uptrennd is promoting that they have 37,465 users, but it looks like that even less than 2,000 are writing OC (Original Content) postings. I have found only 1,478 unique usernames in my testing sample.

By taking a look at their Leaderboard, we find actually the user Altcoin Buzz .io on top of the last month. He made 8991 points (1Up) last month. If we use the actual exchange rate (Coinbase: 1 1UP = US$ 0.002674), then he got an earning of US$ 24.04. If we are counting the points from the top 100 together, then we get a sum of 150,707 1UP, which are representing actually the value of US$ 402.99. In average have made each one of the best ones the "enormous earnings" of US$ 4 during a full month. Even if we the best exchange rate, which has been once available for the 1UP, then each one from the best 100 has only earned in average US$ 42.20 during a full month.

Compare the above results with the real world value for writing "original content". You can find a report at The cost of a journalism story.

Real and successful companies are proud about their name. It looks like the owner from uptrennd.com has no trust into his own business model. For this reason he even needs to hide his name and address by using a privacy protection service for his domain name:

Domain Name: uptrennd.com
Registry Domain ID: 2284323950_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.google.com
Registrar URL: https://domains.google.com
Updated Date: 2019-10-12T16:25:47Z
Creation Date: 2018-07-11T04:51:38Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2020-07-11T04:51:38Z
Registrar: Google LLC
Registrar IANA ID: 895
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: email@google.com
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.8772376466
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited https://www.icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited
Registry Registrant ID:
Registrant Name: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 1242930935
Registrant Organization: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 1242930935
Registrant Street: 96 Mowat Ave
Registrant City: Toronto
Registrant State/Province: ON
Registrant Postal Code: M4K 3K1
Registrant Country: CA
Registrant Phone: +1.4165385487
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: email@contactprivacy.email
Registry Admin ID:
Admin Name: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 1242930935
Admin Organization: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 1242930935
Admin Street: 96 Mowat Ave
Admin City: Toronto
Admin State/Province: ON
Admin Postal Code: M4K 3K1
Admin Country: CA
Admin Phone: +1.4165385487
Admin Phone Ext:
Admin Fax:
Admin Fax Ext:
Admin Email: email@contactprivacy.email
Registry Tech ID:
Tech Name: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 1242930935
Tech Organization: Contact Privacy Inc. Customer 1242930935
Tech Street: 96 Mowat Ave
Tech City: Toronto
Tech State/Province: ON
Tech Postal Code: M4K 3K1
Tech Country: CA
Tech Phone: +1.4165385487
Tech Phone Ext:
Tech Fax:
Tech Fax Ext:
Tech Email: email@contactprivacy.email
Name Server: CORTNEY.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
Name Server: THEO.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
DNSSEC: unsigned