BlogBurst Can Save Big (print) Media

Pluck demo’d a new product called BlogBurst at our party last night. The service is live but Pluck has not pushed it out for publicity yet.

BlogBurst is a service that takes topical content from pre-approved blogs and provides it to publishers (online newspapers, etc.) for republication. Blogs that apply and are accepted are categorized (TechCrunch would be “science and technology”. BlogBurst editors choose great content from those blogs for republication. For more information on how BlogBurst works with publishers, see this page. Bloggers must provide a full text RSS feed to participate, with no included ads in the feed.

Participating publishers have “workbench” tools to map content to specific areas of their site. Integration is “via simple JavaScript calls or robust SOAP or XML APIs“.

BlogBurst charges publishers for this service. They do not share revenue with bloggers, although each post has a byline and attribution/link back to the blog. For most bloggers, this extra traffic and attention will be very welcome.

BlogBurst already has a number of top publishers signed up, including the SF Chronicle, Washington Post, Houston Chronicle and San Antonia Express-News.

Disclaimer: I am an unpaid advisor to BlogBurst, and have done paid consulting work for Pluck in the past.