Snooping


After you have established your site, you can use tools to watch who is watching you. Due to the extensive system of linking among blogs, you can use your blog publishing system or separate tools to monitor your site.

Who Is Reading What?

The following sites allow you to monitor what everyone on the Web is talking about or reading. However, these sites are only as good as the authenticity of the information they receive about linking. If you want to be part of the blog conversation, you can register your blog with these sites so that they will track your updated posts and links.

Many blog publishing software systems incorporate the registration system into your account so that you do not have to register separately. For example, Movable Type and LiveJournal let you add the names and URLs of sites that you want the publishing system to alert or "ping" when you publish a new entry.

BlogDex

http://www.blogdex.com

BlogDex is a site that lets you see who is reading what sites. It is similar to the new breed of blog directors such as Bloglines, Blogpulse, Technorati, and so on.

BlogDexter is a component of BlogDex, an MIT Media Laboratory research project that tracks the spread of information through the blogosphere. BlogDex uses links in blogs as a stand-in for the subject of a post. By tagging these links, BlogDex follows the links spread from blog to blog. BlogDex updates its database on a regular basis and collects any new links that it finds. Researchers have programmed BlogDex to create a list showing the popularity of certain topics.

Around the end of 2004, the mainstream began to notice the popularity and power of blogs and triggered the introduction of newer versions of BlogDex.

You can visit the following sites to learn what the hot topics are in the blogosphere.

Bloglines

http://www.bloglines.com/

A special section of the Ask Jeeves.com, search engine tool, Bloglines is a full-service site that lets you analyze blog linking traffic and trends in conversation topics, create and update your own blog, and read and clip articles via news feed subscriptions all in one visit.

Blogpulse

http://www.blogpulse.com/

Blogpulse.com is a relative newcomer to the blog directory scene. A product of Intelliseek, Blogpulse is a search engine that also analyzes and delivers automatic information about trends or topics under discussion that moment in the blogosphere. Using several of the site's tools, visitors can track key issues under discussion, search blogs for specific information, follow a particular thread of conversation on a specific blog, or create trend charts to compare popular discussion topics.

BlogsNow

http://www.blogsnow.com/

BlogsNow is a handy tool that combines the speed of Google News with the blogosphere review functionality of BlogDex. Using BlogsNow, you can track topics or a piece of information spread that instant in the blogosphere.

Daypop

http://www.daypop.com/

Daypop works in a manner similar to BlogDex, but presents more information. Its attraction is the daily publication of lists that rank what the hot topics are in the blog community. Daypop publishes the Daypop Top 40 that lists the most popular links among bloggers around the world. The site also has a Daypop Top News Stories that ranks the top news articles of the day, based on the number of people who link to them as well. Following the new fad for tags, Daypop also has the Daypop Top Word Bursts that serve as an indicator of what the most popular current event topics are. Finally, Daypop can also tell you the most popular conversations in the blogosphere on its Daypop Top Posts page.

Feedster

http://www.feedster.com/

Feedster is an Internet search engine and an indexed collection of syndicated feeds of text from various blogs and other media that is updated several times per hour. Bloggers can use Feedster to publish content from other sites directly onto their own site or review regularly updated information from content delivered via a subscription.

Google Blog Search

http://www.blogsearch.google.com./

Google.com launched a search engine dedicated to searching blogs. You can seek out a blog using the Google's advanced search function to surf for blogs just using an blogger's name or a word or phrase.

Ice Rocket.com

http://www.icerocket.com/

Ice Rocket.com is a search engine that covers blogs and also provides information such as the number of other blogs that link to a particular URL discovered during a search session.

Popdex

http://www.popdex.com/

Popdex bills itself as a website popularity index. Its front page contains a list that changes every day, showing what's on the collective mind of the blogosphere. It's a very stripped-down list, featuring just the URL and name of the site. You can add your site to the Popdex database; every time you update your blog with new posts, that information is transmitted to the program.

PubSub

http://www.pubsub.com/

PubSubshort for publish and subscribeaims to do it all: The service provides an ongoing search for relevant information requested by a subscriber. Its search engine monitors information as it passes through any variety of information resources such as blogs, newsgroups, and web pages. Think of it as your own personal news monitor.

Technorati

http://www.technorati.com

One of the first search engines tracking blogs, Technorati is a real-time search engine that not only helps readers find relevant blogs but also monitors what people are talking about in the blogosphere. Technorati is organized around the belief that blogs are more like conversations than a storage facility. The site provides detailed views and graphs on what topics and blogs attract the most links or quotations.

Who Is Reading You

New tools are available for you to see who is linking to your site or reading your posts. You can alert readers when you have updated your blog with a new post by registering your blog with sites such as Blogarithm and Blogrolling.

Blogarithm

http://www.blogarithm.com/index.html

Manage blogs you read on a regular basis. Blogarithm sends you an email every day with a digest of new posts to your favorite (subscribed) blogs. Provides an easy, efficient way to monitor dozens of your favorite blogs.

Blogrolling

http://www.blogrolling.com

You visit the site of your choice and enter your favorite blog's URL in the registration form. You then submit some identification information such as your email address, a password, and your own blog's URL.

From then on, you will receive a notice via email when the blog you have selected is updated with fresh material.

Notification Tools for Bloggers

As a blogger looking to increase traffic to your site, you can also notify your readers when you have fresh material on your blog. The following tools let you send email notices to readers who subscribe to an email service that pings them when you have updated your site.

Bloglet

http://www.bloglet.com/

Provides readers with an email subscription that sends them newly updated posts from your blog.

FeedBlitz

http://www.feedblitz.com/

FeedBlitz sends daily digests of your updated posts via email to your readers.

Ping-O-Matic

http://www.pingomatic.com/

This handy tool allows you to contact all the relevant tracking and connecting tools from one application.

If you are not sure that your blog publishing system has a pinging service embedded in the system, you can still alert the various blog directories and services with Ping-O-Matic. Pinging informs dozens of services when you've updated your site.



Blogosphere(c) Best of Blogs
Blogosphere: Best of Blogs
ISBN: 0789735261
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 138

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