September 2007

It was an intriguing concept: offer a free widget touted to attract more visitors to your blog. Even better, your headlines would appear on other sites, expanding awareness. But just days after opening, BlogRush founder John Reese is struggling to regain control and undo the label of spammy.

[click to continue...]

The New York Times, the gray old lady of print, is showing us she still has a few moves. Along with dropping the ill-fated Times Select pay-per-view walled garden, NYTimes.com Friday grabbed headlines with a new blog, TV Decoder. The news site is written by Brian Stelter, who the Times snapped up from TVNewser to be their media reporter.

[click to continue...]

Erick Schonfeld, an editor at the old Business 2.0 site and a senior Fortune editor, Wednesday becomes co-editor of TechCrunch. Will it be a clash of titans as Schonfeld shares editing duties with startup guru Michael Arrington? Schonfeld told the New York Times he agrees with Arrington about half the time. The one saving grace: the two will work from opposite coasts with Schonfeld in Brooklyn and Arrington in California. [click to continue...]

Amazon.com Monday launched “Amazon Widgets,” a series of small, visually dynamic and easily configurable widgets that feature products from Amazon on blogs, websites and social networking pages. The widgets let users display their favorite Amazon products and their comments about those products, and select from a set of color and layout themes to match both their mood and website.

Bloggers can make money with the widgets through the Amazon Associates program and when visitors click through their Amazon Widget to the applicable Amazon website and makes a purchase, earning up to 10 percent in referral fees.

“Bloggers and active online social networkers have asked us for a fun and interesting way to display Amazon products on their pages as a way to showcase their favorite things. With Amazon Widgets, they can now do this and make money at the same time,” said Sean McMullan, Manager, Amazon Associates.

Some of the widgets launched today include:

Slideshow: Pick favorite images from the Amazon catalog and present them as a stylish slideshow. Showcase favorite CD cover art, present recently read books, or even reveal favorite breakfast cereals. Slideshow also lets users caption the selected images.

My Favorites: Express yourself by recommending and commenting on favorite products from Amazon.

Wish List: Display an Amazon Wish List on a blog or profile page, and let friends, family, and others know what you want.

Product Cloud: Take tag clouds or word clusters one step further by showing Product Clouds.

Amazon Unbox Video Previewer: Show movie studio and TV network previews for a wide range of new release and classic movies or television shows available from the Amazon Unbox video download service.

Usually, when you read about multi-level marketing or pyramid schemes, audiences tend to grab their wallets and run for the nearest exit. However, a startup company is being greeted with open (albeit qualified) arms by bloggers. BlogRush, the recently launched service by online marketing expert John Reese is being touted as a great way for bloggers to attract more traffic. Is it? Depends, is the answer.

The free service works this way: you place a free widget on your blog that displays headlines from similar blogs. So, if you are a dog groomer, you can list the headlines from other dog-grooming sites. Every time someone views your page, you get a credit that can be used to display your site’s headlines elsewhere. Also, it has multi-level advantages, so that someone who views a BlogRush widget on your site signs up for the service, you gain even more credits.

However, the key here is pageviews. If you have 10,000 pageviews per days, the offer is wonderful. Then again, if you are getting 10,000 pageviews, you don’t need help attracting viewers. For small blogs, it doesn’t pay off so well.

What are the blogs saying about BlogRush?

You are going to have to test and track to see if the amount of traffic you receive is enough to justify the space the widget takes up. Initially you will benefit from viral referrals, but long-term you might be better using the space to generate revenue, and then investing that revenue in other traffic. - Andy Beard, Niche Marketing.

…The BlogRush idea does hark back to “Web 1.0? traffic exchanges. In these systems, you would earn exposure for your site by browsing other sites. However, these services eventually flamed out when they failed to deliver on their promises. Our take: don’t get your hopes up, because this one may not last forever. - Mashable.

What is BlogRush doing with massive amounts of data now being gathered about every blog that has it? Will they sell this data? Is BlogRush the tip of a wedge of other services through Income.com? - Better Blogging With Michael Martine.

One key to how well this will work will be how relevant they can make links to content. In a similar way to AdSense increasing CTR when the ads relate strongly to the content - we’ll see the same thing come into play here. - Darren Rowse, Pro Blogger.

What do you think? Have you tried BlogRush?

Six Apart announced Friday it would replace CEO and Chairman Barak Berkowitz with Chris Alden, who joined the blogging software developer in 2006. Alden headed the professional software arm responsible for TypePad and Moveable Type.

Alden came to Six Apart through the acquisition of Rojo Networks, which he founded and was CEO. Before that, Alden headed Red Herring Communications.

Berkowitz, who was Six Apart’s CEO for nearly four years, will remain as an advisor, according to the company.

What are blogs saying about the boardroom shuffle?

Alden came to Six Apart after last year’s acquisition of feed reader company Rojo, a purchase which some saw more as a play to bring Alden to Six Apart than for the technology behind Rojo. - ValleyWag

Reuters details Berkowitz’ executive past, including spots at Apple, Logitech and Macy’s.

The Six Apart press release quotes Berkowitz saying “…it’s a natural time to make a transition.”

Are you looking for a perfect topic for an upcoming blog? Internet media measurement firm ComScore suggests aiming for the beer - not champagne - crowd. The most-often clicked on ads are for food, beverages and inexpensive items.

Media Post: “More serious categories such as insurance, financial services and pharmaceuticals do not engage blog visitors as well,” says Andrew Lipsman, senior analyst at comScore.

The news comes as ComScore teams up with blog ad network Federated Media.

Marshall Kirkpatrick, after a brief stint as Director of Content at Splashcast, announced Friday he’ll become a full-time blogger at Web 2.0 news site Read/Write Web. Kirkpatrick, previously a lead writer at TechCrunch, will fill a similar slot at R/WW, becoming the site’s third writer. Kirkpatrick explains why he jumped ship from the executive world:

I got into this business because I want to be a reporter and a consultant -not a marketer. I’ve got great opportunities to do the work I most want to do right now - and so I’m going to. I’ve really been excited about writing lately and want to improve my skill at it. Read/WriteWeb will be a great place to do that.

We at Professional Blogging News always like to learn that people view blogging as a full-time career move. Good luck to Marshall and we hope to see more stories like his.

B5 Media is looking for more bloggers, this time to join its sports coverage. “We want bloggers who will not only provide the latest sports news, but also give their passionate opinion about what’s going on in the world of sports,” according to the notice. Bloggers are expected to write six posts per week. Payment is not specified.

Earlier this week B5 announced two new blogs. Chandra Williams will write the Comedy Centric blog covering news of comedy television. William’ kicked off the coverage writing about the fall comedy lineup and nominees for the primetime Emmy Awards.