Zemanta: Content Suggestion Engine For Bloggers
What if your WordPress text editor could analyze the article that you are writing and provide suggestions of images, tags, related articles and content?
That is what the guys from Zemanta are trying to do. The software work as a Firefox plugin, and it supports the most popular blogging platforms (WordPress, Blogger and Typepad so far). It is easier to show than to describe it with words, so check the video below.
Here is some more information from their FAQ:
Where do you get images from?
They are suggested from Wikimedia Commons, Flickr and various stock photo providers (currently Shutterstock and Fotolia). They are suggested based on contextual comparison of your text and the image’s title, description and articles they were used in originally.
Where do related articles come from?
We index around 300 top media sources and numerous blogs of our users.
Why do most of the links point to Wikipedia?
Placing semantically smart links is a hard problem. We decided to give you this tool and let you help us shape the future development. We will be suggesting links to many more sources in the future. Let us know what your expectations are.
Do you care about copyright at all?
Yes, very much. All content that we are suggesting is copyright cleared - either clearly licenced as Creative Commons, or approved by stock providers.
Can you link to my own pictures and posts? Can you link to my friends?
Expect that in near future! Along with the preferences page where you will be able to set it up.
Finally, keep in mind that the application is under development yet, and some users are reporting bugs here and there. Still it should be interested to see the potential of this idea unfolding.
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Yahoo! Buzz Could be the Digg Killer?
The social bookmarking scene is marked by the entrance of new players that aim to revolutionize the segment, but that at the same time fail to deliver on the most important factor: traffic.
That is why Digg is still considered the king of hill: no other social bookmarking or news aggregating tool can rival its traffic (StumbleUpon is getting closer, but with a different approach).
It looks like Yahoo! might finally be able to challenge Digg, though. TechCrunch recently published a post revealing the initial traffic details of Yahoo! Buzz. Salon.com reported over one million visitors to a story that was featured on the front page of Buzz. Confirming that number The Huffington Post claimed that they received around 800,000 visitors from the site as well.
That is a heck lot of traffic.
One point to note: Yahoo! Buzz is still in closed beta, and as a result only a selected number of popular websites are currently getting featured there (which could also mean a strong bias towards mainstream sites and blogs).
Another difference from other social bookmarking sites is that the algorithm that determines what stories get featured on the front page counts not only votes from the users, but also the popularity of related search terms and the number of times that the story has being emailed around.
Finally, I think that that the project has potential, but they will need to create a community around it, and to make the overall system somewhat democratic. Digg has its flaws, but it also has the most democratic core concept around: even a newly created blog could get on the front page if users were to consider its content worth.
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3 Pligg Sites That Don’t Suck
Pligg is an open source content management system that powers thousands of websites. For those who are looking to start their own social media site, Pligg is a popular option. It’s free, fairly easy to use and customize, and it’s probably the fastest way for a new social media site to launch.
Social media sites that are built with Pligg are very similar to Digg in that users submit links and other users vote on what they like and what they don’t. Most Pligg sites look very similar with little customization, and they can usually be picked out as Pligg sites right away. On the other hand, there are some Pligg sites that are much more attractive and, more importantly, they have successfully built a community and an audience around the site.
My opinion of Pligg is neither positive nor negative. I think most of the sites built on Pligg are going nowhere because of a lack of customization and a lack of a community around the site. However, Pligg gives anyone the ability to create a site that would otherwise be pretty complex.
Although it is an easy way to start a social media site, trying to directly challenge the likes of Digg is not a wise decision. Every successful social media site built on Pligg has found something unique, whether it is a specific niche audience or something else, which allows it to thrive without just being a poor Digg rip-off.
Here is a look at 3 successful social media sites that are powered by Pligg. All of them have made some changes and customizations to the basic Pligg look, and each has found an audience that is allowing the site to grow.
Sphinn
Sphinn is a highly successful niche social media site that targets the areas of internet marketing and search engine optimization. Sphinn users are very educated on these particular topics, which has really helped Sphinn to be able to create a strong community around the site. Highly-focused and informative content does well on Sphinn, and some types of content that do well on major social media websites will not do well on Sphinn.
The design of Sphinn really does not resemble the typical Pligg style. In fact, it’s very possible to visit Sphinn and not even realize that it is built on Pligg.
The key to success for Sphinn has been its strong community and the focused content that gets submitted by users. It’s connection with Search Engine Land and Danny Sullivan has also been a huge factor as it was able to gain new users very quickly. Sphinn was also aided by a recommendation from Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.
Design Float
Design Float is a Digg-clone especially for web designers and graphic designers. The content that can be found on Design Float is much more focused than that of a general news site, but it still has a good deal of variety that touches on all aspects of design and topics that are relevant to designers.
While Design Float looks a little bit more like the typical Pligg site than Sphinn does, it has had a great deal of customization and it was even featured in a number of CSS galleries, which provided a great deal of exposure to a targeted audience of designers.
The keys to Design Floats success include an ability to send a higher number of targeted visitors than most other niche sites, as well as the initial exposure that it received from CSS galleries.
BloggingZoom
Unlike Sphinn and Design Float, BloggingZoom is more of a general news site than a niche site. It was started by Courtney Tuttle and Vic, which gave it some initial buzz and helped it to get off the ground. As a general news site BloggingZoom has a different angle for competing against major social media sites. The site is built to rank well with search engines, which will of course ultimately drive more search traffic to the links that are submitted. Part of this is a rule requires users to enter at least a 350 character description, which helps to rank well in the SERPs. BloggingZoom originally banned users from copying and pasting the description in order to avoid duplicate content penalties, but that has recently been lifted.
The design of BloggingZoom was recently changed. Although it looks less like a typical Pligg site than it did initially, the new design has received mixed reviews.
The key to BloggingZooms early success has been its focus on SEO and driving organic traffic to submissions. Although it does not yet provide the burst traffic of a major social media site, it still has significant value in that it can produce ongoing search engine traffic.
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Now You Can Manage Your Ads With Google
Thinking about it now, it does make sense. They already have the largest ad network on the Internet. They have Google Analytics. They have Feedburner. An ad management application can fit well inside all that stuff.
Google Ad Manager will enable you to manage your advertising inventory, target specific visitors, produce reports and more. The interesting thing is that you can integrate banners that you will sell directly with AdSense units or even ads coming from other ad networks, and manage all that under a single interface.
OpenAds announced a hosted ad management solution some time ago, but now they will have some fierce competition. I like to host my ads on my own server, mainly because I am paranoid about load time performance. But now that big G is in the business I might give their service a try. They sure must have some big pipes to make sure that everything flows smoothly.
On a side note, what is left for Google to take?
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Check How Search Engines See Your Website
Ever wondered how Google and its pals see your website? There is a little tool called SEO Browser that can help you here. Basically you just need to type your URL and it will display the information that search engines see when they crawl your site.
This can be useful to see what elements are not being considered, in what order your content and links appear and so on. They also have an advanced analysis mode where you will be able to see several SEO factors from your site, including meta tags, page size, load time, text to page weight ratio and more.
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