Six Apart is finally doing something with its Blogs.com domain. It is creating, well, yet another blog directory. And I do mean that in the early-days-of-Yahoo sense: it will be edited by a small group of about five human editors, and will feature top-ten blog lists from the likes of Web celebs such as Marc Andreessen and Craig Newmark (Michael is still working on his). Â
This is not a comprehensive blog directory like Technorati or even a meme tracker like Techmeme. Â It will launch covering only 1,200 blogs. Six Apart CEO Chris Alden tells me that his goal is not to compete with other blog directories so much as to offer a service that will help blogs in general (because that helps Six Apart as a provider of blogging software).
How good is it? Â We don’t know because we haven’t played with it yet. But judging from some screenshots that we did obtain, it looks like a fairly standard media hub. Â It breaks up the blogosphere into business, entertainment, news & politics, life, technology (shouldn’t that be first?), student life (yawn), and top 10 lists. Â On its homepage, it will highlights posts from each of the categories, as well as one big write-up focussed on the hot discussion topic of the day.. Â
Given that blogs.com generates a ton of natural traffic based on its URL alone, it should provide yet one more way to get a traffic boost for the blogs that are featured. Â (Just don’t expect a massive Yahoo Buzz-type boost any time soon).
Here are the screenshots. Â The home page:
The Entertainment Section: