Comments are the lifeblood of blogging and JS-Kit becomes the latest company seeking to cash-in, according to reports Saturday. JS-Kit, maker of a number of comment-related blogging widgets, took some of its $4.8 million in venture funding and bought competitor coComment.
The deal, yet to be confirmed, may have been done after the Swiss-based coComment burned through $5.6 million from Zurich and Japanese investors, tech venturing funding blog alarm:clock wrote Friday.
The coComment service lets blog users track their own and others’ comments on blogs and other social networking sites.
“But aside from a few low-brow ads on their site, we don’t think the company was even close to making serious coin,” according to the site.
The straw that broke coComment’s back may have been lack of success in getting a second round of funding. Along with the inability to earn money from blog comments, investor SwissCom was also have money trouble, the report said.
As a result of the reported deal, coComment’s U.S. employees have the choice of either working for JS-Kit or unemployment.
The commenting arena has become a focus of heated competition. Prior to snapping-up coComment, JS-Kit acquired this summer commenting service HaloScan for an undisclosed amount. Blogging giant Automattic also acquired IntenseDebate, who’s commenting technology will be rolled into the upcoming version 2.7 of the WordPress blogging software. In October, Automattic pulled the checkbook out again, buying Irish PollDaddy.
Micro-blogging service Twitter is seeking candidates for a director of strategic partnership and business operations executive.
In a blog post, co-founder Biz Stone wrote that “things are moving as fast as ever and we’re growing six ways from Sunday.” The company Tuesday posted six new jobs it hopes to fill.
The director of strategic partnership will be responsible for “helping define partnership strategy,” “seek key partnerships and close business deals” and assess potential partnership opportunities. Twitter has been criticized for lacking a clear strategy for monetizing the popular communications platform.
Stone also announced Twitter is looking to fill a vice president of business operations position. The job duties include “working with the CEO and the rest of the management team to define strategy and direction,” according to the post’s description.
In October, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stepped down, explaining there was a “need for a focused approach from a single leader.” Co-founder Evan Williams assumed the leadership position.
Perhaps more to the point was CNET’s explanation.
“Translation: It’s time to get real,” wrote Caroline McCarthy.
Earlier this year, Stone called talk of monetizing Twitter a “distraction.” In August, Stone said he had bigger fish to fry.
“At this point, given that we have plenty of money in the bank, it makes a lot more sense not to distract ourselves with trying to put the finishing touches on a revenue plan,” Stone told Portfolio’s Sam Gustin.
In May Twitter received $15 million in venture funding.
Quaint. Boutique. Professional. They are descriptions anathema to most bloggers, but increasingly appropriate. Like basketball and the Olympics, blogging is just the latest past-time to involve amateurs in name only.
“The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge,” Valleywag’s Paul Boutin writes in today’s Wired News.
Today, professional bloggers, paid by corporations crowd out individual writers. The New York Times, Huffington Post, TechCrunch and Engadget top Technorati and other lists.
The future, argues the Wired article, is micro-blogging Twitter, which encourages brevity, and video and photo sites.
We cannot maintain the aura of blogging as a refuge for independent voices if they are crowded out by corporate flacks. Even WordPress.com, the free Automattic-owned blog host, encourages premium users, such as CNN, Giga Om Media and others.
The future of blogging is not in the amateurish - they will flee to Twitter, MySpace and the rest. No, we must foster the ideas that cannot be encapsulated into a 140-character Twitter blast or a video clip. The amateurish, slap-dash cannot compete with the slick well-heeled professional blogs. Instead, blogs must compete on quality. Think of blogging as PBS, the refuge from the dreck spewed on network television and cable.
What do you say? How can blogging be saved?
Google outscored WordPress in the UK as media measurement firm comScore reported blogs have become “part of the essential fabric of the Internet today.”
The Google-owned Blogger.com ranked as the most popular blogging platform in Britain with 9 million UK visitors during August. Automattic-owned WordPress.com was second place with 4.8 million visitors. Six Apart attracted 2.7 million visits, according to comScore.
In September, Blogger.com registered 24 million visits overall, according to Compete.com. The Google blog hosting service grew 1.1 percent in September compared to 8 percent growth by rival WordPress, which Compete.com said had 20 million visitors in September.
For individual blogs read by UK Internet users, Engadget ranked highest with 243,000 visits for the month. Rival gadget site Gizmodo.com was second with 223,000 British readers in August.
(Photo: Richard Carter/Flickr)
Tony Schneider, CEO of WordPress company Automattic, will join an Oct. 29 panel discussion on “How to manage your startup in the downturn.”
Schneider in 2002 crashed and burned when the dot-com bubble burst then in 2004 sold Oddpost for $35 million to Yahoo.
The Automattic leader will be among other CEOs and venture capitalists at the Venture Beat-sponsored conference. Other participants include Jason Calcanis of Mahalo, who wrote 50-80 percent of venture-backed startups will “shut down or go on life-support (i.e. 3-4 folks working on them) within the next 18 months.”
[click to read more…]
Are we on the edge of big changes for blogging? A number of interesting opinions are making me think the blog of tomorrow will bear little resemblance to today’s. Here’s why:
[click to read more…]
There is a flood of opinion on how bloggers should cope with the economic crisis now befalling the globe. The latest voice to be heard is Six Apart CEO Chris Alden.
Alden told Portfolio’s Kevin Maney that the current economic uncertainty is a boon for blogging.
“When you don’t know where else to invest, you invest in yourself.” Alden said. (Note that Portfolio-owner Conde Naste is a big Six Apart client.)
Echoing the decisions of many professional bloggers, Alden said blogging thrives during downtimes because it gives people an impetus to strike out on their own.
Six Apart is celebrating an anniversary of sorts, having launched in September, 2001 - a time of another historic U.S. moment.
There’s some speculation what might have prompted the deal between Automattic and popular blog poll service PollDaddy. The latest theory comes from blogger Mark Evans.
Evans believes the Ireland-based polling company was a prime example of the fatal flaw in ‘freemium,’ a concept that says you give away a basic product with the hope people will buy premium add-ons.
“If you’re willing to live without customer support and a few small wrinkles, you can create as many polls and surveys as you like,” says the blogger.
In PollDaddy’s case, they were charging $200 and $899 per year for those things plus the ability to offer polls that handled more than 1,000 responses.
Federated Media, the San Francisco-based ad network, has created its Conversational Media Toolbox, offering marketers data from Google, Yahoo, Twitter and others.
The CM toolbox provides a view of user behavior specific to social media. FM will track Twitter mentions, blog post numbers, widget downloads and bookmarks in addition to traditional click-through and ad impression measurement.
[click to read more…]
Adbrite, the blog advertising network, recently laid off 40 employees, or 40 percent of its workforce. The job cut is just the latest reaction to a warning by venture capitalists to get costs under control.
Marketing VP Paul Levine and Finance VP Bob Feller are among the casualties.
CEO Iggy Fanlo and Levine said trimming its workforce allows the San Francisco-based company to regain profitability and stem cash losses, according to TechCrunch.
Sequoia, which funded Adbrite and others, earlier this month told companies belt-tightening was needed to survive the economic downturn. The VC summed-up its message with this Powerpoint slide:
“Get Real or Go Home.”
Adbrite, which says it earned $32 million in 2007, ranks among the top five advertising networks, according to Comscore.
