Blogged Hopes to Become the Yelp of Blog Directories
Erick Schonfeld
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Today, yet another blog directory launches. Blogged has blog ratings and reviews in many categories, including technology, entertainment, business, sports, culture, and politics. Its own staff rates and reviews the top blogs, and that is combined with reader ratings and reviews, similar to how Yelp combines staff and user reviews of restaurants and stores. (After a blog gets more than 10 user reviews, the user ratings override the editor’s rating). For instance, here are the top blogs in technology (TechCrunch is No. 2), and here are the top blogs in crafts (Angry Chicken is No. 2). Blogs are ranked both based on number of votes and reviews. Each blog gets its own profile page with a rating, tags, recent posts, and a list of “related blogs.” But that last item is pretty random. Therelated blogs change with each refresh, and Blogged seems to think that TechCrunch is related to Blogger Indonesia and another one called Select Camera Phone. Try again.
It is a decent enough directory if you need a starting point from which to explore the myriad and confusing world of blogs, and the site gets points for a clean, efficient design. But it does not offer anything you cannot already find at more established services including Technorati, Google blog search, Bloglines, or MyBlogLog.
You cannot even search for posts about a particular topic. Blogged only returns entire blogs as search results. to be fair, it is not trying to compete with Technorati or Google Blog search as a place to help you find the latest posts about a hot topic. Rather, it is aiming more to be a place where people go to discover new blogs. But even Technorati already does a pretty good job on that level. And reader voting is also nothing new. Technorati allows users to sign up and vote for their “faves,” as does Yahoo’s MyBlogLog. If Blogged can figure out how to attract the most informed blog reviewers and somehow keep itself from being gamed by spam votes, it could become a useful filter for people trying to sort through the blogosphere. But there is no shortage of blog directories, and competition is stiff.
The site is self-funded by founders Kenneth Yeh and Gladys Kong, who until recently were employees at Snap.com.
