Archive for the 'Blog Industry News' Category

Feedburner heads-up

Published by Dock on January 22, 2009 in Blog Industry News and Blog Tools & Technology. 10 Comments

Michael Arrington over at Techcrunch has some words for our friends at Feedburner.

Complaints about Feedburner, a service that helps websites manage their RSS feeds, have been around as long as the company itself. But you’d think that when Google spent $100 million to buy the company, they’d get it together.

But things haven’t gotten better. Instead, the service is becoming unreliable. Feedburner problems plague website owners far more than they should. And while Google is notoriously slow in absorbing its acquisitions, it’s far past time for them to get their act together and turn Feedburner into a grown up service.

Now, as it happens, we here at Blogburst have noticed recently that Feedburner feeds haven’t quite had the rock-solid stability and reliability that we have come to appreciate from them. Feedburner offers a lot of flexibility and features to bloggers and it is a great service. Hopefully the current issues they’re facing are only temporary, and they’ll get back to the level of service and reliability that, honestly, we’d all taken for granted over here.

If you are currently using Feedburner for your feed, it would be a good idea to check your feed’s output in a feed reader (at a bare minimum) and if you’re finding problems, to see if you can fix them in feedburner, or revert back to your native feed (the one that your blog generates automatically, without Feedburner) if you can’t address the problem.

30 Posts in 30 Days: NaBloPoMo

Published by Daysha on November 13, 2008 in Blog Industry News. 5 Comments

NaBloPoMo BadgeIt’s day thirteen of a posting fever for bloggers taking part in the NaBloPoMo challenge. For those of you wondering about what type of tongue-twisted soirée you have stumbled upon, the program’s slogan says it all. “Post until the Internet explodes.” It’s not too late to create a blog and contribute to the spirit of National Blog Posting Month.

Organized by avid blogger Eden Marriot Kennedy and inspired by the National Novel Writing Month contest, NaBloPoMo challenges the bloggers to author one post per day for the entire month of November. According to NaBloPoMo’s website, the roster of bloggers has more than double to an estimated 10,000 members since 2007.

The Silent K, City Mama, My Thermos, Not Calm, Mom to the Screaming Masses, Pinch My Salt, Blogfabulous, and The Secret Government EGGO Project are among the many BlogBurst members contributing to the NaBloPoMo challenge.

Are you blogging for NaBloPoMo? Leave us a note in the comments section to let us know.

Something New Under the Sun

Published by Eric on November 6, 2008 in Blog Industry News, BlogBurst, General, Making Money Blogging and Promoting Your Blog. 9 Comments

Hello World! It’s a very exciting day here at BlogBurst, as we have launched a brand new sister product, Pluck On Demand. Pluck On Demand fuses together most of the technology we at Pluck and our parent company Demand Media have been perfecting over the years and delivers it to publishers websites with a simple javascript widget.

Pluck on Demand brings together content from a variety of sources — BlogBurst (you should log in to the workbench and make sure you are opted in for “extended syndication opportunities”), Demand Media content from eHow and Expert Village, and third party sources like Tribune Media Services and Encyclopedia Britannica.

Pluck on Demand then scans any page it’s widgets are placed on, and compares the content of that page with the millions of articles in our network using the same contextual matching system we have been using in BlogBurst for our large publishers. The resulting articles are then teased in the widget you have placed on your site.

When people click on those headlines, they are taken to a full article view within the publishers website that also include social media applications (modified from Pluck’s Sitelife solution), and advertising from our third party advertising partners. The publisher gets 50% of the net revenue from the advertising, the content contributor gets 30%, and the balance goes to Pluck.

Yes - content contributors get paid for their content as it gets used. We are very excited about this.

This (awesome) movie describes how and why it works:


Add content and social media to any website — powered by Pluck On Demand

2008 Blog Action Day

Published by Daysha on September 11, 2008 in Blog Industry News. 7 Comments

Since 2007, coordinators for the non-profit event Blog Action Day choose a topic of global significance and challenged bloggers to dedicate one post to the subject on a particular day.

The 2008 Blog Action Day will be held on October 15, 2008 with a call for posts on the issue of poverty. As of 1:00pm CST on September 11th, there were more than 3,900 blogs and more than seven million RSS readers committed to the endeavor.

Blogburst network members participating in the 2008 Blog Action Day include Techcrunch, Mashable, Teeth Maestro, Dave Lucas’ Notes, White African, RotorBlog.com, Everything and Nothing, PROFY, Ari Herzog, Quick Online Times, Serge the Concierge, eHub, The Savvy Entrepreneur, Interactive Agency Malaysia, Gather Little By Little, Constitutionally Right and Urban Workbench. Did I leave you out? Let me know in the comments section below!

From the organizers:

In 2008, the Blog Action Day theme is Poverty. Bloggers are free to interpret this as they see fit. We invite bloggers to examine poverty from their own blog topics and perspectives, to look at it from the macro and micro, as a global condition and a local issue, and to bring their own ideas, views and opinions on the subject.

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Last year’s focus on the environment resulted in the creation of more than 23,327 articles authored by 20,603 blogs. Not only did the event attract support from organizations such as United Nations Environmental Programme, the European Union Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas,  but it also resulted in topic coverage on mainstream media sites like Reuters, Fox, BBC, and Star Tribune.

Interested in contributing? Visit www.BlogActionDay.org for more information.

Parties Reach out to Bloggers for Convention Coverage

Published by Daysha on September 5, 2008 in Blog Industry News. 1 Comment

Image Courtesy of Flickr: jurvetsonAccording to the list found on the Democratic National Convention Web site, of about 400 applicants, more than 120 bloggers were credentialed to cover the 2008 DNC in Denver. For the 2004 convention in Boston, the DNC credentialed only 30 bloggers. Once dismissed as just an “echo-chamber” for the latest news and commentary surrounding hot topic stories, blogs have emerged as an important cornerstone of community journalism, as well as an important media resource to rally support and spread a political messages within and across political party lines.

Congrats to the following BlogBurst network members who were credentialed for coverage by the DNC:

All Spin Zone

African American Political Pundit

BAGnewsNotes

Beliefnet’s God-o-Meter: God, Faith and Politics

Casting Stones: A spirited conclave on politics

Blue Jersey

Burnt Orange Report

Calitics

culturekitchen - fresh dissent served daily

DALLAS SOUTH

Fired Up! Missouri

Georgia Politics Unfiltered

goodCRIMETHINK: Baratunde’s blog

 

HispanicTips

MichiganLiberal

MOMocrats

Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Scholars & Rogues

TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime

Democrat Taylor Marsh blogs politics

Iowa Independent

The Seminal

The Utah Amicus

Think Youth

Towleroad

VivirLatino

According to the National Journal:

Four years ago, Republicans credentialed about a dozen bloggers, and Democrats registered a little over 30. In 2008, Republicans expect to host as many as 200 bloggers in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Image Courtesy of Flickr: Dan PattersonUnfortunately, the Republican National Convention coordinators have not released the full list of credentialed bloggers for this year’s convention. Research indicates that RedState.com, Hot Air, TownHall.com, TechRepublican, GrizzlyGroundswell.com, TheNextRight, JoshuaTrevino.com, JohnFeehery.com. NewsBusters, Arkansas GOP Wing, The American Mind, Wonkette, Bearing Drift, and The Dead Pelican were among the many selected to provide active coverage.

If you were credentialed for the 2008 RNC, give us a shout in the comments section below.

Some nice words about Blogburst

Published by Dock on August 8, 2008 in Blog Industry News, General, Placement Opportunities and Promoting Your Blog. 3 Comments

Howdy folks-

Looks like we got a nice write-up about Blogburst from impNERD.  It is always nice to be appreciated, and in particular I truly think that the piece places the correct emphasis on the value of Blogburst.

Indirectly, the SEO value is amazing. The more eyes that view a post the better. If your post is picked up, you have the potential of tens-of-thousands of eye balls glaring at your post. A few of them might own blogs. They might also click-through to your website and link to it.

The true objective of Blogburst is to get exposure for the everyday blogger. There are certainly some nice knock-on effects, and it never hurts to get some extra quarterly cash if you’re a top performer in our system, but the core purpose for Blogburst is to get a blogger out in front of as many people as possible.

Having this purpose recognized, and reinforced, is a pleasant event. Furthermore, we are always looking for new publishing partners and methods with which we can syndicate and distribute the content within Blogburst - content that we believe to be of high quality, and worthy of distribution.

Kudos to impNERD!

Blogger’s Influence on Print Media

Published by Daysha on July 30, 2008 in Blog Industry News. 6 Comments

According to study conducted by media research analysis firm Cision, the mention of blogs in national magazine and newspaper publication has increased more than 16-fold over the last five years. Of the top 20 publications reviewed, blogs and bloggers were mentioned more than 13,000 times during a one-year period ending June 2008.

Image courtesy of Cision

From Cision’s press release:

“This stunning growth in blogger influence magnifies the importance of employing common sense when contacting bloggers,” said Peter Granat, Cision Executive Vice President. “Knowing the blogger and his/her focus is the critical element in a successful blog relations campaign. While many blogs are highly visible in their own right, the growing influence with the mainstream media elevates their importance.”

A recent survey conducted by public relations firm Brodeur Partners found that 57% of 178 journalists contacted read blogs at least 2-3 per week. 18% read blogs on a daily basis.

The PRWeek/PR Newswire Media Survey revealed that nearly 40 percent of the participating journalists employ blogs to find topics for stories, 30 percent use them to find experts, and nearly 58 percent use them to measure sentiment.

Click here to read the full article.

Bloggers Code of Conduct

Published by Daysha on May 15, 2008 in Blog Industry News. 5 Comments

Per a recent post at The Editors Weblog, a study reported by the law firm DLA Piper reported that 46% of internet users are in favor of a code of conduct for bloggers and online commentators. Only 32% of bloggers indicated that they would support the initiative.

Image Courtesy of C4Choas on Flickr

“According to Duncan Calow, a DLA Piper media law specialist, there is a “dangerous perception” among web users that user-generated content is “immune to the law.” Three-quarters of users who had posted comments or blogged online were oblivious to libel law, while only 1 in 3 had actually read the terms and conditions of the sites they frequent.”

A press release on DLA Piper’s website yields a wealth of statistics (aggregated from a survey conducted by UK-based YouGove Plc) about blogger and commentator awareness surrounding legal issues:

  • Only 5% of bloggers and commentators are clear on their rights.
  • 77% of bloggers don’t know where the law stands.
  • Online 33% of internet commentators have read the terms and conditions of the forum they are using.
  • 42% of Internet users feel bloggers should be held to the same legal standards as journalists.
  • Only 27% of bloggers feel they should be held to the same standards as journalists.
  • 46% of Internet users think a code of conduct should be created; Only 36% of bloggers are in favor.

Click here to read more about the study, including some of the legal pitfalls associated with blogging and online commentary.

So, what do you think? Are you in favor of a bloggers code of conduct? Should bloggers be held to the same legal standards as journalist?

Image Credit: Flickr ~C4Chaos

Take my PDA. Take my magazines. But don’t touch the chocolate.

Published by Daysha on May 9, 2008 in Blog Industry News. 3 Comments

According to an article published at The Center for Media Research blog, more than 36 million women work their way around the blogosphere each week, with more than 15 million women publishing content on a regular basis and more than 21 million reading blogs and engaging in comment conversations.

Of the more than 6,000 women surveyed by the BlogHer community, more than half would give up alcohol or their PDAs to keep the blogs they love. More than 40% would give up their iPod, newspapers, or magazines. Only 20% would give up chocolate. A survey to surface the number of women that are blogging about chocolate was not conducted.

Click here to access statistics and read more about the study.

[Image Source: Epromos]

Bloggers and Journalists form an uneasy alliance

Published by Tina on January 22, 2008 in Blog Industry News and General. 5 Comments

A new survey of US journalists found that nearly 70% check a blog list on a regular basis and the majority of journalists surveyed said blogs were having a significant impact on news reporting in all areas tested except news quality.

Perhaps I’m biased, but that sounds a little disingenuous given that three-fourths of those surveyed cited blogs as helpful in giving them story ideas, story angles and insight into the tone of an issue.

Check the Center for Media Research for the full story and more stats.