Blogged, the blog directory that we introduced last February, has launched a news portal that aspires to hand-pick the most interesting stories from across the blogosphere. The company has employed a team of editors to identify trends and popular stories from around the web, which are presented in categories that include technology, entertainment, politics, and sports.
Unfortunately, Blogged will have to deal with one little problem - there are over one million blogs in its blogging directory, and (by their count) over 100 million live blogs across the web. With a staff of ten editors, there is obviously no way for them to keep tabs on every blog, even if they restrict themselves to the “top blogs” from each category. And the stories that are picked will be subject to personal bias.
This isn’t to say that Blogged won’t be able to keep their news page fresh - they’ll still be able to identify important stories just by watching a few top blogs. They’ll just have a hard time monitoring where the important discussions are occurring, or when the story broke in the first place. And without that, Blogged won’t have much credibility. But for readers who don’t particularly care where they get their news from, the Blogged homepage will work just fine.
There are already a number of well-established blog aggregators, most notably Techmeme, which is generally recognized as the definitive resource for hot stories and trends across tech blogs (the site has similar offerings for politics, sports, and gossip). Techmeme uses an algorithm to track upcoming stories, and is therefore able to effectively monitor many more blogs than a team of humans ever could.
Dutch startup Scoutle marries different networking ideas to deliver what they call an “Automated Social Networking for Bloggers.”
Scoutle operates via webcrawlers they call Scouts. Users create their own personal Scouts, for example one for their blog, another for their Facebook or similar profile, and the scouts “walk through the Internet,” by meeting other Scouts with similar interests or profiles, creating a contact between both.
Results from the Scouts are constantly being compared, delivering a realtime guide that allows users to see which blog on a certain topic, in a certain language or country is most relevant to the user at a specific moment. Users can also create networks based on specific topics or personal groups and see who is best ranked within these networks.
Automation
The interesting thing about Scoutle is not that its another social networking service, it’s the focus on automation. Little input is required from users to make connections, the Scouts do most (if not all) of the work usually needed to participate in any social networking site. Users can sit back and simply choose whether to visit the profiles delivered via new connections.
We’ve seen various link swapping/ promotional/ blog traffic systems before, however Scoutle’s move into social networking is an interesting mix, sort of StumbleUpon based on a shared interests, profiles and widgets. The site launched in beta May 8 and is available in English and Dutch.
Former TechCrunch writer Duncan Riley covers tech, pop culture and penguins at The Inquisitr.
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.
