Blog News Watch

Small announcement to make. As you all know (At least the regular readers) we the 451 Press acquired MobilityWatch few days ago.

Today the acquisition process has been complete. Hard work by Kim, Shickles and Chris made it possible. MobilityWatch is now fully integrated with 451 Press Blog network. That is the reason down bellow in network list you will notice MobilityWatch in our technology section.

Everybody please welcome our new blogger Noel and John over MobilityWatch. Now 451 Press can serve you with more wider coverage on mobile technologies.

BuzzFeed which might be the next hot spot for Digg generation, well might be the slayer of Digg who knows. Last few weeks bloggers were talking about Digg’s effectiveness, as far as I can see Digg loosing its touch. It is not what it used to be. Can BuzzFeed overcome the drawbacks Digg is facing?

BuzzFeed detect new buzz by crawling 50,000 of the very best web sites, blogs, and news sources (well they didn’t mentioned how their algorithm works, I wonder if its aggregation of site’s traffic and page views). BuzzFeed works in three segments-

1. Buzz Detection: Through crawl to their 50,000 top lists (that is a limitation) and using their so called unique algorithm they detect buzz/hot stories. Well they have a team of human buzz detectors too, in case their robot misses something.
2. Editorial Commentary: When a buzz got detected instead of front page it goes to Editors terminals. Editors evaluate and put a quick summary on the buzz and set it for release. I wonder if they look for authenticity or just put summary.
3. Buzz Tracking: Popularity checks actually. After a buzz has been published, they track number of links pointing towards that buzz. As the number of links grows, so is its popularity.

They mentioned in their “Editorial Policy�?—

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Adding dynamic functionality in commenting was somewhat troublesome for social networking sites, in respect of simplicity. But Lev Walkin has an elegant solution to this common feature of the social web, commenting. JS-Kit is an entirely free little JavaScript embed that allows you to add threaded comment section to any web page in one line:-

<script src=”http://js-kit.com/comments.js”></script>

This JS-Kit works by running above mentioned JavaScript code, which combined with the site’s referral, fetches the appropriate comment data from JS-Kit server. The comments are fully customizable through CSS. However though JS-Kit allows for a lot of customization, but still lacks some of the more advanced administrative features of fully integrated comments, such as those of our WordPress blog. My concern is since it is controlling through Lev’s server, if ever in case he abandon the project all will shut down, isn’t it? Did i already told you that this code forward your comment to your e-mail if you provide your e-mail during comment?

Lev gave some tricks to customize your comments looks and functionalities at the bottom of Js-Kit index page. In my opinion this embed code will much useful to photo bloggers or video bloggers, since they can use this to make comments on every single picture/video.

JS-Kit, Lev Walkin, Embed comments code 

If you are reading it probably you already noticed that Blog news watch is looking a bit different then your last visit. Well in fact a lot different look, you will observe it on all over 451 Press network blog.

As our Chrispian H. Burks just role out the new themes for all 451 Press blogs(Teach Boss Kimberly Holmes will be in charge of troubleshooting), things are beginning to change. Now our blog looking slick & artistic (well to me at least). As some blogger are requesting, probably you will notice few color anomaly across some blogs in the network.

Now users will have better access to information’s, especially search and feeds. You will find Archive search at the bottom of the right hand menu bar and the custom search top right corner(Feed is also there.). The network blog list is still down bellow the page just like before, but you will notice some looks change.

Well done Kim.

What is the wildest dream of a journalist? Without a doubt it will be “Pulitzer Prize“. Web 2.0 has been successful and getting enough jealous eye from mainstream journalists, but still was not considered as viable news generation. But looks like web 2.0 will be no more left over in journalism, as the Pulitzer Prize Board has established new rules allowing  to submit a full array of online material such as databases, interactive graphics, and streaming video for its journalism awards.  Quoting from Pulitzer journalism prize categories-

…For distinguished editorial writing, the test of excellence being clearness of style, moral purpose, sound reasoning, and power to influence public opinion in what the writer conceives to be the right direction, in print or in print and online.

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Community Blogging
If your key concern is to creating content or writing blog entries, then solo blogging may seem a bit much for you. That’s why community blogging may be the solution if you wish to endeavor in to blogging professionally. With community blogging, your main focus is on the blogging itself; you don’t need to worry about blog design, control, SEO (not that much), traffic generation, and income stream so many. You can also devote to promotions and other business aspects of your blog, but such things are mostly left to the community sponsor/s and/or the business developers of the blog community.

You can compare community blogging as if you’re writing for a traditional publisher in the printing and publishing industry, instead of self publishing. In terms of getting advertisers/sponsors, it’s easier for a community of blogs to get the right numbers and data to attract sponsorships. Unless you’re a ‘big shot’ solo blogger (or you’re a serious marketing person with a brilliant blog idea), it takes a lot longer to build your site and your readership.

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Good news for novish video producers and bloggers, Break.com have excellent offers for you guys. If you are not familiar with Break.com, it is a Video sharing site just like YouTube with some sophisticated filters and cool features.

They announced that they will gonna pay for posting videos on their site. Actually the payment will come if your submitted video(s) can reach their homepage, i.e. gain enough views/popularities. The payment are-US$400 for each original content video, $2000 for original short film or Flash animation.

They claim to have paid out $300,000 so far. This type of one-off payment might not be convincing if you plan to create original content with a longer lifespan than a few days, when revenue share might be better - but it does give more options if you want to get paid for your content.

The founder says he sees little relationship between payment and the quality of the submissions - what he does notice is that they get a higher volume of uploads, and that these announcements can generate some buzz. Buzz is something that Break.com lacks - they have a decent video-sharing platform, but they’ve largely been overlooked in favor of newer players.

Making video, get paid, Video sharing site 

While I was away last day, interesting twist take place in blogosphere. BlogMedia inc. the owner of Blogherald renamed and transform itself into Problogging Inc. If you go to Blogmedia inc.’s old site(Blogmedia.biz), you will be point towards their new site(Problogging.com).

Apart from serious slick looks and domain change what else changed in Blogmedia Problogging Inc.?  On the home page you will notice they didn’t  list any blogs or their networks. The only thing i found was-BlogNetworklist, blognetworkwatch and Blogherald under their “Our Work” heading. Looks like Problogging Inc. will focus on consultation work rather then maintaining a huge network. As you all know Blogmedia has unloaded few of their top blogs, i won’t be surprised if there will be some more.

In Problogging.com they are offering full scale   -Design, Hosting, Consulting and Advertising services, not to mention all will be focused on weblog. Matt Craven also expressed that there will be some e-books for bloggers (not all will be free) available exclusively at Problogging.com. Read Tony’s interview of Matt Craven for more in depth of this story.

Matt said in coming 100 days we will see a lot of new services and features will be added on Problogging Inc., well lets see where it goes. I was just wondering about those blogs which were under blog Media Inc. network, their future.

BlogMedia inc., Problogging, Matt Craven, Tony, Blogherald 

Fellow bloggers this weekend beginning to look good for bloggers who were accused or held by Gov, in different countries. Remember the blogger who was mentioned in Reporters Without Border for held by Egyptian authorities? Yes I am talking about Rami Siyam. Egypt’s authorities have released Rami Siyam, who was accused of criticizing Egypt’s government, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information has said.

Siyam runs Ayoubel Masry, which is known for serious political criticism. Egypt has been known for its crackdown on opposition, especially the Muslim Brotherhood party. According to different human rights activities, many members of the Egypt’s biggest opposition party, the Muslim brotherhood, are rotting in prisons in Egypt for their speaking against policies of Egypt’s government.

Siyam was accused of running anti government stories on his blog. This is not only the victory of Siyam, but a big milestone for bloggers who constantly getting harassed by Govt. for their criticism.

Source: iol Africa

Reporters Without Border, Siyam, Rami Siyam, Egypt 

Looks like Blogmedia  inc. decided to unload yet another wonderful blog in the process of narrowing down their targated subjects. The blog which is up for bid at sitepoint is a established PR6 sports blog: “Sporty Blog”. The blog was launched nearly a year ago on December,2005.

The details of “Sporty blog”:

• Alexa traffic rank 1,904,034 as of today. There has been 29% drop in visit and 38% drop in page views in last three months. Most probably as usual flactuation nothing serious.
•  Unique hit 9,415/month, pageviews 24,971/month. Not bad at all for a site not yet one year old.
• Site is built on Movable Type v3.1. Sale include existing content, domain and the platform. 
• Total monthly revenueu US$563; TLA-US$163, Adsense-US$2, Private ad sale-US$398.
• One blogger currently blogging, whos contract is non-transferable but can be hired with similar arrangement. Presently he is paid 100% of the first $150 in monthly earnings and 50% of any additional earnings.
• At sitepoint current bid on this blog is US$1,400 and buy it now price is US$5,000

Looks like the top bidder is very fimilier to me:D.