This week we added a “Blog Explorer” to Lijit. We’ve done a lot of cool stuff here at Lijit, but I think this might be the coolest thing yet! What is it? Basically, it’s an animated interactive way to surf around the blogosphere, seeing how blogs link to each other.

It’s funny that social networks have been around for years now, but all the major networks still show your friends in boring lists. We’re pretty excited about the Blog Explorer because it represents a giant leap in graphically showing relationships between people.

Here’s a screenshot of it in action:

I’ll describe the three colored zones below, but you can probably figure it out just by playing with it. Click here to try it now.

You can launch the Blog Explorer from the Lijit Search Wijit on any blog. Look for it at the bottom next to the Lijit logo.

The three sections around the center blog show how the blogs are related.

Blogs in the green zone at the top are friends with each other; they list each other on their blogrolls. In the screenshot above you can see that I’m friends with Ben Casnocha. I have Ben in my blogroll and he has me in his.

Blogs in the blue zone to the right are on the blogroll of the center blog, but not vice versa. For example, I list BoingBoing, but they don’t list me. (Maybe someday!)

Blogs in the orange zone at the left are blogs that list the center blog in their blogrolls, but the center blog doesn’t list them. They are fans of the center blog.

Below the center blog is a detail box showing the URL of the blog, and accounts that the blog owner has on other services. In the screenshot above you can see that I have accounts on Delicous, Twitter, YouTube, and MyBlogLog.

This is our first version, so there are a few limitations to what you can do. Right now the system only knows about blogs that are within 2 degrees of Lijit users. “2 degrees” means that we include blogs that are on the blogroll of Lijit user blogs, and also blogs on those blogrolls. If your blog doesn’t show up, sign up now. Also, we show a maximum of 21 blogs in each zone. We’ll allow you to show more blogs in future versions.

But don’t worry, a lot of good things are in the pipe for future releases. Most importantly, we’re beginning a crawl of the entire blogosphere. We also will be inluding additional relationships besides blogrolls. First up will be your social networks from Delicious and MyBlogLog, with Twitter, Facebook, and more on the way.

We hope you enjoy playing with our new toy. And of course, let us know what you think. This is just the beginning of a whole new way to navigate and use social connections on the internet.

Color customization of the wijit was the number one thing that users kept requesting. We pushed an exciting release on Wednesday night and now, that question becomes easier to answer. Feeling a little blue?

Or maybe you are one of those people that cannot think without pink?

What if you don’t view the world in black and white, but in shades of grey?

Whatever your style, you can now pick a wijit to match. Not to mention, the newfound ability to match your wijit to the color theme of your blog. And, if you are one of those people who wants even more control, we’ve added something special in the drop-down menu of the wijit style options. You can now choose to “style your own wijit”. By choosing this option, you can use CSS on your blog to make the wijit of your dreams.

To access all the color goodness, simply log into your Lijit account and click on “my search wijit” along the top. You will see the wijit configuration page with lots of new options. Besides changing colors, you can also change the size of your “popular searches” cloud by choosing how many terms you want displayed.

There was one other big addition to our latest release. I’m only going to touch on it lightly because I know that Stan has a BIG post about it in the works. If you look at the shots of the wijits above, you might notice a little something different about them. Do you see the Explore button located under the wijit? Feel like exploring the world within a blog and seeing a visual representation of that blog’s relationships with others? Well then, what are you waiting for? Click the Explore button on any blog’s Lijit wijit and watch in amazement….

Today is BlogDay, the day set aside for celebrating blogs. (Although really, isn’t that every day?) From the site…

“BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest…This way, all blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.”

We here at Lijit love blogs of all kinds and encourage you to do your part by participating in BlogDay. Barney posted his contribution, Daniel gave his thoughts, and I wrote a little something for the event as well. If you have the opportunity today, try to read a blog that you normally wouldn’t. To paraphrase Ferris Bueller…It’s a big blog world out there and if you don’t stop to look around once in a while, something may just pass you by.

Scoble has a great couple of podcasts today on Social Graph based search. He talks about how new social based search plays are resistant to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and are eventually going to kick Googles ass.

This is exactly the basis of what Lijit was founded on. The idea of social trust being the major driver in judging the value of content is spot on.

Scoble talks about how Mahalo is a social graph based search because they have content editors that are part of their social graph. I think the example is a little broken in the Mahalo case in that the graph is not really naturally occurring. In other words the graph as selected based on social popularity, who wants the job, etc. perhaps not actual expertise in a specific domain. He also suggests Facebook is in a great place to capitalize on their large social graph to revolutionize search. I agree, however Facebook is still a walled garden of content. If Facebook would extend their social reach (and content reach) beyond their walls they would be in a great position.

Lijit is using the naturally occurring networks that already exist out on the web to create powerful search from the ground up. We don’t hire content editors and we don’t force editors (publishers) into any specific social network. Lijit uses the networks you have to build the world’s most powerful foundation for search.

Great post Robert, we agree.

There are all kinds of measures of success in the business world — revenue, customers, market share, and so on. While those are certainly important for little startup companies like Lijit, other measures of success can sometimes be more meaningful to teams at this stage. At Lijit, we recently achieved something that none of us has ever achieved before in our working lives and we’re pretty sure few, if any, other startups have EVER achieved EVER.

Oh yes, friends, Lijit has its own cocktail.

We have our own drink. We have tried it. It is tasty.

Many thanks to our wonderful user, Jonas, who authors Drink of the Week, for creating our namesake concoction and helping Lijit achieve a very memorable milestone in our company’s life. So go ahead, give the Lijit a try. And for bars in the greater Boulder metropolitan area, you’d better study up on that recipe, because everyone’s surely going to start coming in and ordering rounds of Lijits.

Some evenings I don’t get any Lijit-related email messages on my BlackBerry. Other evenings I get a question or two from users. But last night was a particularly special email night, because I got the most wonderful email message from our CEO, Todd. All it said was, “We won”.

Each year the Boulder County Business Report hosts the IQ Awards event to recognize “innovative and creative business leaders from throughout the Boulder Valley”. Lijit was one of three finalists in the Internet category. The other finalists, Collective Intellect and Me.dium, are companies we respect very much and whose employees we count amongst our friends. We are honored to have been judged against these great organizations and have been chosen the winner.

Needless to say, today’s a great day to be Lijit.

Do you look like this?

Well, you may look like that in Lijit, but we’re pretty certain you don’t look like that in real life. (…but if you do, please send us a picture, because that would really be something.) In a release we launched last night, you can now easily update your Lijit user picture to look like the real you. You can select from pictures we automatically discover from the other services you use, or upload a brand new one to use specifically within Lijit.

So c’mon, show us the real you…visit your Profile page in Lijit and click on the “Edit picture” link underneath your user picture. You know you want to.

You might also notice with this release, along with the last couple of releases we’ve done, that everything seems to keep getting faster. The pages within Lijit display faster, the Wijit loads on your blog faster, and so on. We’re doing an awful lot of work behind the scenes to make sure Lijit is not only fun and interesting to use, but works well and fast, all the time. So if Lijit seems faster — no, it’s not just you — it really is faster. Enjoy!

Okay, okay….it’s true. We do have a small quantity of iPhones in our possession that we just can’t wait to give away to some of our lucky Lijit users. (Blame it on the recent funding burning a hole in our pockets.) In case it wasn’t glaringly obvious from the title of this post, this is not a contest or a sign-up promotion. We are just looking to reward some of our Lijit users and let them know how much we appreciate them.

Greg has been with us since we were a company known by another name and his loyalty has won us over. Besides that, his user name is Greggles and quite frankly, that makes Leslie giggle. Two good reasons right there. We sent him his new toy last week and he was kind enough to post about it. His blog post about opening the box from Lijit is funny and he captures each precious moment with a picture. A big thanks to Greg, who has been Lijit for over a year! Enjoy the iPhone buddy.

One down….six to go. Who will be the next to receive an iPhone? Do you have the golden ticket what it takes? Stay tuned for more details. And if you should happen to get an email from me in the next month, I would strongly recommend you not deleting it and giving it a read. I may be trying to give you an iPhone….

(This was cross-posted at I quit for Lijit.)

It was recently announced that Lijit has been nominated for a Boulder County Business Report IQ award. We are extremely honored to have been recognized for our innovation and achievement, especially by our peers in the local community. Although we are up against some stiff competition in the Internet category, we are excited to be included amongst other companies that we support and admire. The ceremony in which results are announced will take place on August 15th and tickets are still available. Any good thoughts (or vibes, for that matter) that you could send our way would be greatly appreciated!