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BlogCatalog.com Launches Blog Search Widget

Start-up BlogCatalog.com, a social network for bloggers and a blog search engine, has launched BC 360, an embeddable tool that allows blog readers to do custom searches on their favorite blogs.

“With the BC 360 widget, bloggers can now help their readers search across all of their posts and social networks,” says Antony Berkman, president of BlogCatalog.com. “It not only searches for content across on their blog, but also relevant links in their Delicious accounts, the photos they’ve posted on Flickr, or any number of the social networking sites.”

The BC 360 widget is displayed as a small search box on the blog or Web site where it is installed. Different tabs allow the person performing the search results to view results from the blog. View results from the blogger’s social networks, or the results from all the blogs included in the blogger’s favorites on BlogCatalog.com.

“Some members have been asking for new ways to link to their friends and favorite blogs, and BC 360 does this while adding the power and functionality of a search engine to do it,” said Berkman.

“It’s similar to Lijit, but integrates BlogCatalog features such as the member’s favorite blogs and our social search engine. The result of a blogger using the BC 360 widget is increased page views and depth of site content.”

Akamai Rolls Out Ad Service For Online Publishers

Akamai Technologies has introduced its Insight for Publishers service that helps online publishers develop new ad strategies in order to better monetize their advertising inventory.

Insight for Publishers allows online content provider to identify in real-time and sell their most valuable audiences across their owned and operated properties.

“Akamai is helping our customers act on valuable audience intelligence right away– enabling publishers to provide advertisers with better access to meaningful consumer segments, thus driving increased advertising revenue,” said Mike Afergan, Akamai’s CTO and senior vice president of Advertising Decision Solutions.

“Providing a quick and easy way to gain in-depth knowledge about a site’s audiences, from simple browsing activity to sophisticated custom behaviors, this service provides valuable cross-site audience intelligence for publishers to make smart advertising decisions.”

Insight for Publishers allows customers to use their existing Akamai configuration to package and sell audience segments. This integration of anonymous data with their existing ad logic allows customers to act on behavioral data in real time for instantaneous targeting of ads, increasing their overall cost per thousand impressions (CPMs).

Blogs Playing Role In Purchasing Decisions

Blog readers do not appear to depend heavily on search as a way to find new blogs compared to consumers of traditional online media, according to a new survey sponsored by BuzzLogic and conducted by JupiterResearch.

One in five general blog readers (defined as people who have read a blog in the past 12 months) use blog links to find new blogs. Thirty-eight percent said blog links were the main tool for discovering new blog content compared to 34 percent who cited search engines.

For frequent readers, blog links appear to have a similar impact as trusted recommendation from a person (a response from 39 percent of survey participants).

Half of blog readers say they find blogs useful for purchase information. More frequent blog readers say they trust relevant blog content for purchase decisions than content from social networking sites.

For those who have found blog content useful for product decisions, more than half (56%) said blogs with a niche focus and topical expertise were key sources.

Respondents who said they have trusted blog content for purchase decisions in the past, over half (52%) say blogs played a role in moving forward with a purchase.

“For a portion of Web users, blogs rival search as a navigation tool, which has really interesting implications for advertisers,” said Rob Crumpler, CEO, BuzzLogic.

“Blogs are becoming trusted guides, steering users who are seeking very specific information to places of interest online. Being able to identify where this is taking place across the blogosphere gives us a window into user intent and a means to better target advertising to a qualified audience. This is great news for advertisers looking to maximize value in today’s environment.”

Blogs Closing The Gap With Mainstream Media

Blogging is now ubiquitous and influential and has closed the gap on mainstream according to a Technorati-sponsored survey of bloggers conducted in July and August 2008 by Decipher.

“Blogs are now mainstream media,” said Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati, in an interview with eMarketer. “We’ve certainly seen that with the number of professional, semiprofessional and passion/enthusiast bloggers who are creating real media experiences. At the same time, you’re also seeing mainstream media come the other direction to add blog content.”

According to comScore Media Metrix, blogs had 77 million unique visitors in the U.S. in August 2008, compared with 75.1 million unique visitors to MySpace and 41 million to Facebook.

In July 2008, comScore’s ranking of the top 10 entertainment sites included four blogs. Two of those, OMG and TMZ were ranked numbers 1 and 2, respectively.

The Technorati survey found there was a 2-to-1 male/female ration among bloggers globally.  A further gender breakdown by geography found that bloggers in Europe and Asia were more likely to be male (73%), while U.S. bloggers showed less of a gender gap, with 57 percent males and 43 percent females.

Jalichandra say the gender skew could be partially due to “the type of people that come to Technorati and register.” If Technorati’s users base has more males than the survey results would indicate a bias.

The “State of the Blogosphere” report focused only on adults. Other surveys of blog use among U.S. teenagers reveal that younger bloggers are more likely to be female.

WordPress Developers Buy PollDaddy

PollDaddy has created about 1 million polls and 195 million votes have been tallied.

“Now whenever you do a post you’ll be a few clicks away from having your own poll, and you can have as many as you like!,” said Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress.

PollDaddy features include:

•      A selection of skins to choose from or create your own in CSS.
  Advanced online reporting in real time of your data as it is collected.
  Set paths for your respondents using Conditional Branching.
  Insert HTML directly allowing you to add pictures, video and more.
  Full foreign language support.
  11 question types to choose from with multiple options for each.
  Export your data as XML, CSV and subscribe to your results via RSS.
  Close surveys after a certain date or quota has been reached, and create custom start and finish pages for your survey.
  Create multi question, multi page surveys with ease using our new advanced survey editor.

“We’re also going to be working on a lot more styles and customization of the polls, so you’ll be able to match it exactly to the look and feel of your blog,” said Mullenweg.

“For a year or two now, I’ve been minorly obsessed with polls and surveys as a method of lightweight interaction that engages casual users of your website and also can get you some really fun data to play with.”

“I’ve also mentioned at a few WordCamps that a polling plugin is one of the top 10 WordPress plugins in the world. Polls are really popular with WordPress users.”

Widgetbox Partners With Yardbarker On Sports Blog Network

Widgetbox, a widget community and the Yardbarker Network (YBN), a community of sports blogs has partnered to connect YBN’s 600 bloggers with a single widget.

YBN will power the Widgetbox Sports Channel in the new Widgetbox Blog Network.

Widgetbox launched the Widgetbox Blog Network in September, taking advantage of its reach of over 1.4 million Web sites that includes 200,000 blogs and 68 million monthly unique visitors. Widgetbox helps bloggers get more value for themselves, their readers and advertisers.

Each Yardbarker blogger will receive a personalized widget from the Widgetbox Sports Channel that highlights content across YBN.

“We are thrilled to have the Yardbarker Network, the largest sports network on the web, power the Widgetbox Blog Network’s Sports Channel,” said Will Price, CEO of Widgetbox.

“YBN is the place to be online for sports enthusiasts, and having their high-profile content from professional athletes and fans in the Widgetbox Sports Channel will instantly provide a central hub of the best sports content on the Internet.”

Hackers Leading Users To Fake Blogs

Webroot, a security software firm, said it has detected a new technique being used by hackers to attract PC users to fake blog sites containing malware.

“For the first time, hackers are capitalizing on the top news stories from Google Trends Labs, which lists the day’s most frequently searched topics, which can include news of the Wall St. bail out or the presidential campaign,” said Paul Piccard, director of Threat Research, Webroot.

“These highly relevant news stories and videos are being posted to the hackers’ fake blogs to increase the site’s Google search rankings.”

These bogus blogs contain a number of video links about the news story for which users were originally searching. When a user clicks on one of the video links, they are prompted to download a video codec that downloads a rogue antispyware program designed to get users to purchase an illegitimate program that may put their personal information and data at even greater risk.

Placing malware in video links on fake blogs is not a novel approach,” explained Paul Lipman, Webroot’s senior vice president and general manager of Consumer Business.

“However, the fact that these hackers are now manipulating Google’s methods for relevance to increase the ranking of these sites is new and greatly increases the number of people exposed to this threat.”

Webroot recommends taking the following steps:
1) Always have a current version of antispyware, antivirus and firewall product;
2) Never download free product or purchase them from unknown Web sites and vendors, or peer-to-peer networks;
3) Download videos and other multimedia files only from known and trusted Web sites or blogs;
4) Make sure the computer is up-to-date by always installing the latest Microsoft or Apple security updates; and,
5) Use a credit card that has sufficient fraud protection when shopping and never use a debit card online.

New Blogging App For The iPhone

illuminex has introduced iBlogger, which brings mobile blogging to the iPhone.

iBlogger works with most blogs including WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type, Drupal, and ExpressionEngine, allowing bloggers to post from the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Bloggers can take photos, add their thoughts, and add tags, categories, and a geotag link.

iBlogger is based on ecto, the blogging application for the Mac. “We didn’t want to simply build a blogging application for iPhone, we wanted to build the best blogging application for iPhone. ecto, the popular blogging application on the Mac, is the heart of iBlogger, and it purrs like a V8 motor.” said Gary W. Longsine, illumineX CEO.

iBlogger features include an easy to configure blog, automatically saves posts, categories and tags to promote a blog, customizable standard signature and a one-touch geotag location link.

BuzzLogic Launches Ad Network For Bloggers

BuzzLogic, an online social media ad firm, has launched an ad network aimed at bloggers.

The company’s Conversation Ad Network includes 500 sites in a variety of categories including entertainment, politics, technology, fashion and sports.

Bloggers are invited into the network or can apply to join and receive compensation based on the influence ranking within BuzzLogic’s system. Determining factors are subject matter knowledge and linking relationships.

To deliver campaigns, the Conversation Ad Network uses BuzzLogic’s Conversation Ad Targeting platform. The platform matches campaigns from the company’s advertisers to relevant sites to reach the appropriate audience.

“We’ve seen a strong correlation between campaign effectiveness and the quality blogs our technology is able to surface since launching our targeting platform last year - now we’re expanding our targeting approach to our own network of sites,” said Rob Crumpler, CEO of BuzzLogic.

“In this fragmented media environment, it has become clear that a popular site isn’t necessarily influential when it comes to niche subject areas. Many lesser-known blogs have the capability to deliver great advertising results, they’re just not getting paid for it - our technology helps correct that imbalance.”

BuzzLogic says that unlike vertical networks that target based on category, its Conversation Ad Network targets ads based on relationships formed between blogs focused on specific topics, along with each blogger’s credibility on that topic.

“We’re at an interesting tipping point right now because these influential, yet often hidden, blogs are becoming less hidden every day,” said Crumpler. “With the launch of the Conversation Ad Network, we’re helping advertisers tap into this influence in a scalable way, and hopefully putting more money in bloggers’ pockets in the process.”

Google Buys Korean Blogging Platform

Google has purchased Korean blogging platform Textcube owned by TNC (Tatter and Company) for an undisclosed amount. It is the first acquisition for Google in Korea.

TNC CEO says the company is like a Korean Automattic “that develops a cool blogging platform that’s favorited by the nation’s A-list bloggers, and also works closely with the open source community.”

The company provides an open - source blogging software at Textcube.org and has also launched hosted blogging platform at Textcube.com.

Textcube heavily integrates blogging with social networking. The platform attracts 400,000 users in Korea and host 65 of the country’s top 100 bloggers.

Kim Chang Won, CEO TNC wrote on his blog that as part of Google, TNC will focus on increasing Google’s market share.

“Of course, Google isn’t entitled with God-given right to become number 1 in every region it operates in, just because it’s Google,” he wrote. “It’s actually more about the Korean web industry than about Google. I think the Korean web industry needs a player that can, as a balancing force, provide more options to the users and help create a more open web.”

There are just a handful of countries where Google is not the market leader in search including South Korea, China, Russia and the Czech Republic.