May 2008

Google’s Blogger and Automattic’s WordPress.com were again No. 1 and No. 2 for the most-visited blogs in April, according to Nielsen Online. However, growth of both blog hosts cooled compared to March.

Blogger’s year-over-year growth was 40 percent, registering 38.4 million visits in April. In March, Blogger was growing at 50 percent.

In second place, Automattic’s WordPress.com was still posting impressive rates of growth, partly due to its relative newness. WordPress.com had 16.6 million April visitors, a 160 percent increase over the 6.3 million during the same month in 2007.

Six Apart, which runs the Typepad blog host as well as the Moveable Type blog software, saw something other than negative growth, with a 1 percent uptick in visitors to 10.8 million in April.

Still going strong was political site TheHuffingtonPost.com, which had 3.4 million visits in April, growing 99 percent over the same time in 2007.

Likewise, gadget blog Engadget had 1.9 million visits in April for 23 percent growth.

Losing ground in April were Xanga.com, which fell 33 percent in April. Celebrity blog tmz.com saw growth drop 21 percent. The slowdown wasn’t shared by fellow celeb-watcher Perezhilton.com, which attracted 2 million visits in April for a 12 percent growth rate.

Advertisers seem to be embracing the niche-ready blogosphere with $746 million expected to be spent in 2012 on getting messages in front of Internet users.

Unlike social networks, such as MySpace and Facebook, which present a hard-to-define audience, blogs seem ready-made for online advertisers.

“Like podcasts, blogs tend to appeal to specific audiences. Accordingly, much of the demographic targeting that marketers work so hard to achieve in the mainstream media is already done for them,” writes eMarketer.

The marketing site also predicts 67 percent of Internet users will visit blogs by 2012, up from 54 percent now.

Internet retailer Amazon has unveiled the Amazon MP3 Clips Widget, allowing blogs and other sites to play portions of songs available from the company’s catalog of digital music.

Part of the Amazon Associates affiliate program, the MP3 widget can either display a list of songs or play songs chosen by visitors. The Amazon Associates program gives bloggers up to 10 percent in referral fees whenever a user clicks on and purchases an Amazon product.

“The extensive variety of artists available to download on the Amazon MP3 site makes this a perfect match for us to promote upcoming shows at all of our venues,” said Oscar Sagastume, Internet Marketing Manager, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

Along with the MP3 widget, Amazon also introduced affilliate options for the Kindle e-reader and Amazon’s Unbox video sales.

Internet measurement firm comScore named a new person to its board of directors and announced two nominations to replace outgoing founding venture capital members.

The moves are part of a new strategy “that encompasses multiple media including the Internet, the mobile Internet and digital TV measurement,” comScore CEO Magid Abraham said in a statement.

Jeffrey Ganek, chairman and CEO of NeuStar, Inc., was elected to the board of directors. Neustar, based in Sterling, Va., provides clearinghouse services to the telecommunications industry.

Two veteran board members announced they won’t stand for re-election at the June 4 annual stockholders’ meeting.

Fred Wilson, a prominent venture capitalist and blogger, will depart the board after nearly 10 years as a comScore director. Wilson was one of the first investors when the company was founded.

Tom Berman, from Adams Street Partners, also will not stand for re-election after joining the board in 2001.

“We thank both Fred and Tom for their thoughtful advice and counsel that has helped comScore grow from a start up into a leading supplier of digital marketing intelligence,” comScoreexecutive chairman Gian Fulgoni said.

ComScore will nominate Jarl Mohl, a non-executive chairman of CNET’s board and past CEO of E! Entertainment Television and an executive at MTV and VH1.

The online measurement firm also nominated William Katz, non-executive chairman of the board of directors of Visible World Inc., a privately-held multimedia marketing services provider. Katz was also president and CEO of BBDO New York, the flagship office of BBDO Worldwide, the world’s third largest global agency network.

Internet measurement firm Compete said Wednesday it passed the one million unique visitor mark in April. The news follows the company’s recent one-year anniversary.

“The response to Compete.com has been overwhelming,” said Gregg Poulin, general manager of Compete.com. “We will continue to add new offerings this year to meet this growing demand as marketers look for new insights into consumer behavior online.”

In April, Compete rival Amazon-owned Web measurement firm Alexa junked its reliance on a toolbar to gauge the popularity of sites, overnight changing the ranking of millions of blogs.

Although announced as a way to better reflect interests and habits, bloggers viewed the change as Alexa updating its measurement audience to deal with Compete.

Compete and open measurement company Quantcast used several methods to determine rankings, In April, Compete passed Alexa in traffic.

Matt Mullenweg, Automattic founder and chief WordPress evangelist, is scheduled to appear May 23 on the WordPress Weekly podcast. Mullenweg will answer questions from host Jeff Chandler.

The interview should shed light on a number of issues surrounding Automattic and the WordPress blogging platform, including a status report on Automattic projects, the controversial changes made in 2.5 to the WordPress dashboard and the future of WordPress.

Blogs have been buzzing about whether the free WordPress software might change its licensing, as well as the 2.5.1 update that had initially locked bloggers out. (An error now corrected.)

WordPress Weekly recently gained a wider audience with its inclusion in the Apple iTunes store.

EMarketer Tuesday reduced its expectations for U.S. online social networking ad spending this year. Advertisers will likely spend $1.4 billion, down from $1.6 billion earlier projected.

The marketing firm also cut its prediction for 2011, now saying U.S. online social networking ad spending will reach 2.4 billion, a drop from $2.7 billion previously expected.

“Today’s economy, combined with the fact that social networks are still trying to come up with successful ad models, has led to lowered ad spending projections for the next few years,” according to eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson.

Whether this advertising slowdown will spill-over into blogs or be contained within the sphere of MySpace and Facebook remains to be seen.

Harry McCracken, PC World’s chief editor, said Monday he’ll leave the online tech news site to create his own online tech news site. The announcement comes as PC World celebrates its 25th anniversary.

“I could happily do this job forever–but new challenges are good, too,” McCracken said from a company blog. He said he plans to have the new tech site up this summer.

McCracken, who has been at PC World since 1994, won’t be totally leaving the publication. The editor said he’ll remain as a contributing editor and writer.

WordPress Weekly, the independent podcast produced by Jeff Chandler, is now available through Apple’s iTunes.

Previously available mainly through TalkShoe, the podcast can now be easily downloaded via the popular Apple site that offers many other podcasts.

In a blog post, Chandler thanks Charles Stricklin for help getting WP Weekly on iTunes. Stricklin produces “The WordPress Podcast,” an audio show rated as the most-popular WordPress-related podcast on iTunes.

WordPress Weekly can be heard every Friday at 9pm. The broadcast is hosted at Talkshoe.com, where listeners can download the show after broadcast.