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March 27, 2008

A content suggestion engine for blogging? That could work…

Mike Butcher

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Launching in Alpha today is Zemanta, the European startup which has developed a facility for Wordpress blogs to suggest contextually relevant links, pictures, related content and tags using an internally developed semantic analysis engine. Eventually they will also integrate tabs for third parties who provide vertical-specific suggestions (tech or SEO, for instance). The upshot? Start writing a blog post and Zemanta looks at it and then starts to add the most likely links to the text, which you can then edit (something a lot of bloggers would kill for no doubt). It also builds links to related stories. This kind of application exists a lot in academic and enterprise content management systems but hasn’t appeared on the Web very much to date as these tend to be very CPU/resource intense technologies. So Zemanta is a web service API not unlike Akismet in its ability to look intelligently at content and decide what to do with it.

You can now download a demo which works with Firefox and TypePad, Wordpress and Blogger. It’s in alpha material, so don’t expect it to be full-formed.

The Zemanta team emerged out of Slovenia and took part in Seedcamp (a London-based Y-combinator-style incubator) last year and was one of the six selected for funding. They recently announced a $1.5 million seed round, led by Eden Ventures with additional investment from Saul and Robin Klein through The Accelerator Group. The co-founders are Andraž Tori and Boštjan Špetič, both hyperactive, smart young guys who I met at Seedcamp last year. They have since brought in an experienced CEO in the shape of Aleš Špetič, a former O’Reilly author and CEO of an IT integrator in Slovenia. As it happens, the Zemanta story is quite typical of the European startup scene right now - very “London meets New Europe”.


Zemanta Wordpress Plugin Teaser from zemanta on Vimeo.

CrunchBase Information
Zemanta
Aleš Špetič
Andraž Tori
Boštjan Špetič
Seedcamp
The Accelerator Group
Information provided by CrunchBase
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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 3:56 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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    March 27th, 2008 at 7:20 am

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Comments

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  1. Marco Ripanti

    March 27th, 2008 at 4:26 am

    As I told the guys during LeWeb3 .. You have to improve the multilanguage function :-)

    But .. very good job!

  2. Thomas

    March 27th, 2008 at 4:27 am

    It looks cool. Will try it.

  3. diystartupnews.com

    March 27th, 2008 at 4:28 am

    has this post messed up tc homepage. its all over the place for me. the bit underneath the story is where the ads normally are.

  4. diystartupnews.com

    March 27th, 2008 at 4:30 am

    The TC homepage is ok for me in safari but ff2 its a mess.

  5. ntas

    March 27th, 2008 at 4:45 am

    ye..this post has messed up your homepage..it must be the CruchBase widget

  6. Kevin

    March 27th, 2008 at 4:55 am

    demo sucks… never come out of ‘loading’ message ;)

  7. Ryan

    March 27th, 2008 at 5:01 am

    Woah you guys might want to check your s … things are all over the place on frontpage. Maybe forgot to close a

  8. Rosie

    March 27th, 2008 at 5:15 am

    Or you could use Skribit.com. Some friends of mine helped make it during Start Up Weekend. It doesn’t automatically suggest content, users who read your blog submit and vote on what they want to know more about.

  9. Jan

    March 27th, 2008 at 5:20 am

    Zemanta plugin is a great solution for bloggers. I’m proud that they are from my country Slovenia. Go Zemanta!!!

  10. Kunal

    March 27th, 2008 at 5:29 am

    Crunchbase says their funding is $1??

  11. Jon

    March 27th, 2008 at 5:44 am

    The idea is nice… but my concern would be copyright over images and content used through a third party (who gets nailed?)… otherwise, seems like a very solid system!

    Jon
    http://dreamclue.com … get the message!

  12. Sarah

    March 27th, 2008 at 5:53 am

    What a great idea and potentially HUGE time saver! This could really enhance the blogsphere

  13. engtech

    March 27th, 2008 at 6:00 am

    Wow, they could make a lot of money with this.

    All they have to do is accept “pay links” in the recommended links feature.

  14. amitos

    March 27th, 2008 at 6:07 am

    there are a lot of competitors in that area, looks like semantic web is the next thing

  15. Mystery CEO

    March 27th, 2008 at 6:14 am

    I don’t get it, this thing looks useless.

    Why (as a blogger) do I want to put links out to “related articles” and encourage my traffic to leave?

    Am I missing something here?

    Mystery CEO

  16. big

    March 27th, 2008 at 6:37 am

    interest

  17. Bob

    March 27th, 2008 at 6:45 am

    @Mystery CEO: You’re missing that if there is a source much better than you noone would really bother to read your blog anyway. Your readers maybe like your writing style or that you post exactly the things they like to read so they don’t have to check other sources that often… but if there is one source that obivously does all that better than you, then you are only slowing your traffic(you mean readers) down by not telling them about it and yourself by continuing to write your blog. But there probaly isn’t another source that would fill the exact niche that you do, so relax.
    Also, you get to choose exactly which links and images you want in your posts… you could use it for images, tags and wikipedia links to save yourself some time and decide not to link to other bloggers and sources.

  18. Sam

    March 27th, 2008 at 6:52 am

    @2 -> Your website is a cheap mimic of godaddy.com.

    OR

    Am I missing something here!!!?

  19. Jan

    March 27th, 2008 at 6:59 am

    @Jon: everything is from Wikipedia and no-one will get nailed :P

  20. Jure Cuhalev (Zemanta)

    March 27th, 2008 at 7:02 am

    Thanks for all the nice words. I’ll try to address some of your questions:

    @Jon: we treat copyright very seriously. To begin with we try to search only inside Open content database (WikiMedia commons/Wikipedia being one of them), for Flickr we recommend only CC licensed images; for thumbnails from stock photo providers we are following their terms of use.

    While in the end it’s up to the blogger to know if they are allowed to use specific image, we display specific license inside the interface. Also when inserting image there is attribution inserted by default so it’s easy to be a good web citizen.

    @Mystery CEO: our private testing with a limited rang of bloggers showed that their traffic increased after starting to use our extensions and some of them are also seeing higher click-through rates for AdWords. Hopefully we’ll be able to report more about this as more people start using us and give us more feedback.

  21. Martin

    March 27th, 2008 at 7:06 am

    just downloaded it and love the image recommendations

    very cool

    thanks Mike

  22. WPPM

    March 27th, 2008 at 7:14 am

    If the software works well, it could revolutionize blogsphere completely and make blogging a very exciting pastime indeed, instead of a chore!

  23. elvirs

    March 27th, 2008 at 7:18 am

    its a great thing, just checked it out and published an article on my blog http://watersubject.com/compar.....in-sweden/
    would be better to hack it to link only articles from the sites i mention, not entire internet. but tag suggestion is good and picture suggestion gives you great look n feel.
    if someone from zemanta reading this please help if its possible to modify the app to display related articles from specified sites only.

  24. dale boyce

    March 27th, 2008 at 7:37 am

    Some good idea features!

  25. Tom Chi

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:04 am

    Just an FYI, Yahoo already launched this, and has thought a little about attribution of images…

    http://shortcuts.yahoo.com/

    I think it’s excellent that more players are getting into the space. If it means richer, more connected, and well attributed blog posts in the future, then everyone wins! :p

  26. Eric Marcoullier

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:17 am

    @Jon — Jure answered your question, but it’s important enough that I will take a stab as well.

    The best way to build traffic to your site is to write good posts and intelligently link to other people — a few years ago bloggers called this “getting into the conversation.”

    The idea is that you send some traffic to someone else, they see you in your stats and then link back to you (used to be so much easier with trackbacks and pingbacks) sending traffic your way.

    If you aren’t comfortable with sending traffic away from your site, you’re not really blogging.

  27. Eric Marcoullier

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:18 am

    Crap, that was for @MysteryCEO, not @Jon. Too early in the morning ;)

  28. Jure Cuhalev (Zemanta)

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:36 am

    @elvirs: more personalized linking is something we’re looking into. Expect more in this area for further versions :)

  29. Search Engine Optimization Journal

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:38 am

    Wow this could be a great tool if it’s done correctly! Looking forward to checking this out…

  30. Christian Miklavcic

    March 27th, 2008 at 9:57 am

    Hey guys. Congratulations on your launch. I’ve been tracking your project for a while now. It was interesting to see what Slovenians can achieve.

    I think you gave all Slovenian developers and e-ntrepreneurs a boost. ;)

  31. Amanda Fazani

    March 27th, 2008 at 11:27 am

    I’m really impressed with how well this works for Blogger powered blogs. Previously I used Yahoo! Shortcuts with WP but found that to be rather frustrating (if it ever worked at all!).

    Zemanta is working a treat for me with Blogger so far. I look forward to seeing new features and possible improvements in the future too.

  32. Larrian

    March 27th, 2008 at 11:34 am

    I just downloaded it and, when combined with snap, works great on my site. It would be best if “target=”new” could be incorporated so the reader is still on your site when they click on the link…but otherwise, I really like this concept.

  33. Jure Cuhalev (Zemanta)

    March 27th, 2008 at 12:16 pm

    @Larrian: Very good observation. We’ll fix this in the next few days.

  34. Russell Limprecht

    March 27th, 2008 at 12:26 pm

    great idea. Please add support for Tumblr.

  35. Eric Florenzano

    March 27th, 2008 at 3:01 pm

    A similar concept has been around for a while as http://www.arkayne.com/

  36. Nat

    March 27th, 2008 at 3:42 pm

    Looking good and promising, with their knowledge and smart coder,i’m pretty sure the company will go a long time for good.

    Nat
    http://www.workersinc.com

  37. Azeem

    March 27th, 2008 at 4:05 pm

    the blogger demo doesn’t do it justice. Watch the Wordpress one:

    http://www.vimeo.com/479379/

    It looks very promising to me. Making it a firefox extension was a great idea (to reach max number of cms’s/blogging platforms)

    It has alot of promise, read the FAQ on their site it covers copyright issues with images (they will play it very safe) and also hints at features to come (preferring your own links).

    Lets see how much this improves with users jumping on board. I hope there is a drastic improvement due to it becoming ’smarter’ over time.

  38. Azeem

    March 27th, 2008 at 4:13 pm

    @Mystery CEO

    you totally didn’t get it. The related links is the weakest of all the features. The main objective is to make blogging faster. Usually bloggers spend alot of time looking for relevant news link (to hyperlink up alot of their text) to make their posts more informational. Theres a feature on this to hyperlink content too, not just add links on the end.

    Also adding images to content (usually a single compelling image) increases likelihood of visitors actually paying attention to your posts because the images catches their eye. Imagine going on google images and looking for the right image and spending all that time, then saving and uploading or linking. Whereas with this you just click an image and its there.

    On My blog many times I would post an article without an image due to laziness. Sometimes I would be deterred form blogging because all these steps to making a post complete takes alot of time. With this you can spice it up quickly without much effort.

  39. Dash Chang

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:40 pm

    Zemada seems like a good idea, but is the process backwards?

    1. I read and clip related content first. Research before opinion. I post the research as news clips, similar to a reporter’s notes.

    2. When I write, the related content is my research clips. If Zemada makes this step easier, it’s welcomed.

    3. One click image selection would be nice. Recommended tags would conflict with the preset labels for my site.

    My 2cents.

    “Reality Television Comes to Journalism - Thy Name is Blogger”
    (http://adecon101.blogspot.com/2008/03/reality-television-comes-to-journalism.html)

  40. WebDrops

    March 27th, 2008 at 9:05 pm

    Hey all related links are from wikipedia… I can find more relevant links for my site… manually ;)… why need this tool… and yes… the firefox plugin… is useless… m i missing something here… :(… I thought this is going to be fun…. but to be honest… nothing useful … Thanks for sharing though

  41. Samir Shahs

    March 27th, 2008 at 10:46 pm

    I want Zemanta for Spaces and IE!!!

  42. Samir Shah

    March 27th, 2008 at 11:17 pm

    Also a plug-in for Windows Live Writer!!!

  43. Pumpkin

    March 28th, 2008 at 12:02 am

    Last night, I posted a quick post to let readers know about it. Many of my readers are bloggers using WordPress, Typepad or Blogger. Since, I found it useful I figured they would to.

    This morning, I had a comment from Andraz at Zemanta in response to my post. I think that is very professional. I have reviewed other services for my readers in the past and this is the first time someone has came and left a message or even read what I wrote…that I am aware of.

    It shows dedication and commitment to making the product better for the end user.

    I find it a useful tool for me (as is) but am excited to see it grow. Since, it is only in Alpha that means it is going to get even better. :)

  44. Julie Hathaway

    March 28th, 2008 at 10:22 am

    I tried out the demo version and although I like the concept, I think it still needs some work:

    1. ALL the links were to Wikipedia, and some of them were pretty irrelevant.

    2. You can apply the links without even checking to see where they lead.

    3. The tags (some, anyway) were REALLY irrelevant.

    I blogged about it here.

  45. Azeem

    March 28th, 2008 at 1:33 pm

    @Julie Hathaway

    If you put your mouse over the wikipedia link it offers other possible links. I complained to them and told them that is not intuitive, and how are you supposed to tell there are options to other links, when you would intuitively just click on it. They said they would change it if more users see it that way.

  46. Julie Hathaway

    March 28th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

    Yeah, Azeem, I finally figured that out. Actually, like the commenter above me, I was very impressed with how quickly they showed up to respond to my blog post. In my follow-up email I made the same suggestion you did.

  47. Paul Kenjora

    March 28th, 2008 at 11:04 pm

    It looks pretty cool but I’m worried they will run into scaling issues. Either that or the search will become less and less relevant. I’ve worked in this space for ARkayne, its not easy to scale.

    Eric Florenzano’s reference to http://arkayne.com is on the money. This is an emerging space that will be the next wave. Content linking is NOT minor, its going to be huge because keyword searches are getting too cumbersome.

    As for the Zemanta demo of assembling a blog, Arkayne provides an entire portal system ready for download and install. Just give it RSS feeds and you have instant content ready for monetization. Deploy an Arkayne portal around any topic in a few minutes, here is the spec…

    http://arkayne.com/portal/

  48. Adam Gershenbaum

    April 6th, 2008 at 9:44 am

    @Mystery CEO

    A) It makes blogging faster.
    B) Link love builds traffic.

    Search engines put weight on your traffic and assign your site a value and ranking. By building relevant links into your blog posts google pics up on that. Add to that the fact that not only are the links relevant but the links you chose to use were from high traffic threads it helps your blog even more. Add to that when you set those high traffic links in your blog as trackback URL’s then you get added to this posts trackbacks. My blog has gotten a few hits because I trackbacked this very article.

    Just a quick google search and this article can help elaborate:
    http://www.problogger.net/arch.....link-love/

    You ask: Why would I want to send traffic outside my blog?

    It builds trust, people appreciate you sharing tidbits of knowledge.

    The scenario is that most likely the links you place inside your blog post will not get clicked until after they finish reading your entry. they came to ypur page in the first place to read your blog. Secondly the related articles are at the bottom of your entry. Lets say I have 5 readers of my recent post. Great! Lets say those 5 readers click out of my post to a link or related article I included but I tracked back to the article here. So I sent 5 people to techcrunch… but the trackback in their more populated article might send me 10 new visitors. The original 5 appreciate that I can point them towards information that is useful and relevant to them. So now you have built, trust, loyalty, acquired new readers, and shared some link love with a site that might recognize you and link to you in bigger ways.

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