Lijit

I spent a lot of time traveling and talking to publishers and publisher networks about the value of Lijit.

“Oh, you are the social search guys.”

“Um, no, we are not social search. We are trusted search.”

“Whats that?”

Social search is often defined as search results that are improved by the input of the community. Chris Sherman, of SearchEngineWatch, writes a great article (albeit a bit dated) about social search and its importance. Even Marissa Mayer of Google, talks about the importance of social search. Mashable, about a year ago, listed about 40 social search engines.

Given all the buzz around social search engines, why do I make the differentiation?

Lijit is focused on providing great results, not from the interaction of the community, but as defined by the publisher. In addition, Lijit is not a destination website, while most search engines, including social search engines are.

Instead, Lijit allows the publisher to be the center of their universe.

The two specific ways that occurs:

First:

Algorithmic and social search engines attempt to index all digital information, and either programmatically or through a community effort, provide relevant and quality results.

Therefore, the assumption is that the indexed content is not trusted, and either needs to have a technical or “cloud” solution applied to them so they can “earn” the right to be included.

Lijit takes the opposite approach. Because its the publisher’s defined content, and the search results are centered around that publisher, the assumption is that the publisher and his created content is trustworthy, and should be included in the results.  The content “earns” its place in the index by default.

Second:

Algorithmic and social search engines are constantly consuming content. Google, for example, considers it their mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Most destination search engines take on a similar mission to Google.

Instead, Lijit believes in the concept of the Social Media Starfish.

Lijit is built on the concept that you are at the center of all the content you create online, and that if someone comes to your publication and does a search, the publisher provides context and trust, and the results should reflect that.

In essence, the publisher’s online brand becomes searchable.

image used by permission. Darren Barefoot of Getting to First Base.

Take my blog as an example.

If you do a search (using the default Lijit widget) on my blog for “billie,” I provide the context, and you will see posts, Flickr pictures and YouTube/Viddler/Vimeo videos of my dog.  The fact that I have dogs, and am a bit obsessed with them, is part of my online brand, and is evident in the Lijit results.

You want a more useful example?

Do a search (he has integrated Lijit into his TypePad default search box) at Fred Wilson’s blog for “kozmo” a famous internet company from the “dot com bubble” of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

In the returned results you get this post entitled Web Services The Cater To Both The Publisher And The Reader (while Lijit isnt really a web service, I do think we focus on providing a service to publishers that help both them and their readers), you get two great flickr photos of Kozmo swag, and in Fred’s network section a fantastic photo of Seth Goldstein with Lee Majors (who was in the first Kozmo commercial. Lee Majors, not Seth Goldstein).

In both cases, the reader learns more about the publisher.  The level of trust the reader has for the publisher’s content and trusted network grows, as does the publishers online brand.

In this case, I favorited pictures of the Kozmo swag and Seth & Lee (since I worked there in 2000 in San Diego), and friended both Fred and Seth on Flickr.

By allowing the publisher to be the center of his universe, Lijit allows four things to occur:

1. More relevant results;
2. The reader learns more about the publisher because he is discovering all of his generated content; this, in turn, allows the reader to
3. Completely trust the results; and
4. Discover and trust content that he would not have found using algorithmic or social search engines (case in point the Seth & Lee photo).

For the publisher, being the center of your universe allows you to better engage your readers, by providing them more relevant and trusted content. (Not to mention the search specific stats Lijit provides publishers.)

As a publisher that spends a lot of time and care on the content I create (I know, the surprise is overwhelming) and the personal brand I am building, it is important to have tools that support that effort.  I think thats why I run business development at Lijit versus a social or algorithmic search provider.

Or, it could be that I just like being the center of my universe.

The Lijit team spent last weekend at the Blog World Expo in Vegas. In addition to speaking with bloggers, answering questions, and thanking our current users, we had the opportunity to debut our new trade show booth. While this may not sound exciting, it represented a big deal because it’s the first real booth-like thing that Lijit has ever had. We put a lot of heart into our trade show presence last year, but we put a lot of money into it this year and it made a difference.

Armed with the popular Lijit swag of small laptop stickers and uber comfortable t-shirts, we decided that we needed something more. We wanted to provide even more value and functionality to the bloggers attending the conference, so we decided to help people clean up their search. And their hands. (Don’t forget what a dirty city Vegas is…)

Besides spreading the joy of hand-sanitizing, we also helped to spread the word of our search. The beauty of Blog World is that everyone there is passionate about what they’re doing, so from wine bloggers to mommy bloggers, we had the chance to talk to people about what they love doing and to show them how Lijit can make them even better at it.

In addition to hearing feedback from blog publishers already using Lijit (big thank-you!), we also had the chance to convert some new publishers to our search goodness. Welcome…

Quickrelease.tv
Volleyball Voices
Vino Las Vegas
MoneyNing
Frugal Upstate
John Hawkins Unrated
Don Nozzle
The Wiz of Odds
Money Making Scoop

While we didn’t have much time to walk around the trade show floor, there were a few companies that caught our eye, including MindTouch, Zemanta, Woopra, JS-Kit, Photrade, ContentRobot, and BlogCatalog. This represents just a small sampling of the many Blog World exhibitors present and we only wish there had been more time to find out about all the companies in attendance.

We loved having the chance to co-sponsor some giveaways with b5media, because they are always such a fun group to be around. In addition to the poker chips they were handing out for the game in their booth, we got to see some of our favorite b5 bloggers, like Mary Jo…

Lijit was mentioned in a few other Blog World recaps. John Andrews, Senior Marketing Manager for Walmart, was impressed with us (as you can see in this video clip) and we sold Ben Koo on the up-and-coming Boulder tech scene. David called us some of his favorite naggers, which he meant as a compliment (I believe) and Carlton liked our Purell swag so much, he blogged about it. Additionally, Lijit captured Greta’s interest and managed to make an impression on Karen again this year.

The entire Lijit team worked hard while at Blog World and must thank all those who stopped by our booth to say hello! We appreciate your interest and support in making this year’s Blog World an even bigger success than last year. See you in Vegas next year!

[photo credit: carltonreid]

This post is by our very own Derek Greentree, who visited the Yahoo! campus for a field trip. In addition to using his business cards for the first time while on this trip, he was also very excited about being the recipient of developer swag. And he was nice enough to share it with the rest of us in the office.

Two weeks ago, I flew out to sunny California to attend Yahoo! Open Hack Day, an interesting developer event periodically held by Yahoo!. Attendees get access during the event to up-and-coming APIs (and other technology) in development at Yahoo!, and are given a challenge to create a mashup or other interesting hack and demo it at the end of the event. You can find information about the hacks that were demoed at the hack day blog.

If you’ve never been to the Yahoo! Sunnyvale campus, you probably won’t know quite what to think, as it’s filled with purple carpet, exclamation points on the walls, and emoticons everywhere. It’s interesting to see a very large corporation try to promote a youthful and exuberant appearance at a corporate headquarters with security guards, a cafeteria, fountains, volleyball courts, outside dining, and multiple buildings. I arrived Friday morning and was also surprised at how organized the event was; after entering, I was always greeted with friendly faces willing and able to help me find what I needed.

The theme of the weekend was APIs and openness. First, I’m happy to see that Yahoo! is getting behind OAuth, an open standard for API authentication. I wish everyone supported this simple mechanism (*cough* Facebook *cough*), as the various APIs offered by services out there desperately need to settle on a single, well-understood mechanism for allowing users to grant access to private data.

The second most exciting thing demoed (for me) that weekend was YQL, which will be a single URL that takes a SQL-like query and returns data from many Yahoo! services–like Flickr, mybloglog, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Mail, and others. Currently, each of these services has a different API and a different authentication mechanism, which means that supporting them is a pain. Having one mechanism for authenticating to the Yahoo! API (OAuth) and for querying any data within it will greatly simplify the code base we use here to interface with external services.

Next was Yahoo! BOSS, a search API. Many services (like Google and even Yahoo!, using yet another API) expose search services to external users, but BOSS is special. The problems with all the major existing APIs out there is draconian usage restrictions. Many of them, for example, don’t allow you to:

• Reorder search results
• Change the display of search results
• Use the API more than a certain (low) number of times per day
• Inject advertising of your own into search results

This is a mistake: allowing services to use your search data in unique and interesting ways is a win-win for the service and the search provider. With BOSS, on the other hand:

“BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is different–it’s a truly open API with as few rules and limitations as possible. With BOSS, developers and startups now have the technology and infrastructure to build next generation search solutions that can compete head-to-head with the principals in the search industry. BOSS will grow and evolve with a focus on providing additional functionality, tools, and data for developers.”

I attended an excellent presentation by Vik Singh, a member of the BOSS team, on some example usage. He’s also developed a very cool Python library called the BOSS Mashup Framework that lets you whip up interesting mashups using Yahoo! Search with simple, elegant code. If you’re a developer and into this stuff, you definitely should check things out.

Perhaps most importantly, the weekend made me think about APIs that Lijit wants to offer (or could offer) to the outside world. We have access to a lot of interesting and unique data here, and I’ve seen more than a few startups that would benefit by having access to the work we’ve done. Look for more on this in the future, but I think providing access to Lijit’s data via a set of APIs could produce some very interesting mashups, and help Lijit grow in cool and unique ways.

[Photos found on Flickr and used via CC license: freshelectrons, Jinho.Jung, and bluesmoon]

Lijit develops search-powered applications for online publishers.  In our efforts to build a lasting enterprise, we have always viewed ourselves as the publisher advocate, delivering measurable value to each publisher in our network and providing the utmost transparency about Lijit as a business.

Our service is a unique and powerful offering that Publishers utilize to aggregate their online content making it searchable, and thus increasing engagement between publishers and their readers in a real and measurable way.

Lijit is always open to feedback, comments, and suggestions for improvement.  It’s for these reasons that we were surprised and dismayed by the actions of a former Lijit employee, Mr. Barney Moran and P.U.B., a for-profit entity we understand is owned and controlled by Mr. Moran.

Mr. Barney Moran worked for Lijit for approximately 7 months, starting in late 2007. Mr. Moran’s employment was terminated by Lijit on March 3^rd, 2008.

Shortly after Lijit terminated his employment, on behalf of P.U.B., Mr. Moran sent a lengthy questionnaire to our COO requesting detailed and confidential internal financial information.  Given the confidential nature of the financial data requested and the unusual nature of such a request, we attempted to further identify the nature and legitimacy of P.U.B. We were only able to find a one page web site with a single post referencing only Lijit.

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Moran began posting comments on publishers’ sites that mentioned Lijit.  Mr. Moran largely posts a canned statement drawing into question Lijit’s business practices and data gathering motivations.  It is our belief that these comments are designed to create an air of concern or mistrust around the delivery of our service or the use of private data from our publisher’s sites.

Data collected by Lijit is constantly and in real-time fed back to publishers in their analytics dashboards, and in fact, is a significant value proposition to the publishers themselves.  Our privacy policy, publisher agreement and terms of use available online from our site clearly address issues Mr. Moran calls into question.  From time to time we update these policies to reduce ambiguity and we strive for complete clarity in regards to our service. We monitor best practices in the industry and believe our practices are consistent with these practices.

Recently, we received an unsolicited email from Mr. Moran, sent to our CEO that requested a large sum of money as well as shares of Lijit capital stock.  In this email Mr. Moran states:

“I’m prepared to sell P.U.B. for $25K and 4,000 undiluted shares of Lijit at this time. I am in process securing a TradeMark for P.U.B., and have press releases and marketing spots for P.U.B. scheduled to begin appearing in September. When the trademark is secured and the marketing starts for P.U.B., the valuation of P.U.B.  will be higher.”

In a separate phone call with our CEO, Mr. Moran indicated that if Lijit were to purchase P.U.B., Mr. Moran would no longer work for P.U.B. or make references to Lijit.

Given these facts, we are asking the same questions you may be asking yourself. If P.U.B. is indeed a union that intends to serve the best interests of publishers, why has it sought to target only Lijit? If it is a “public watchdog” why is it a “for profit” entity and why would it be for sale to Lijit? Why would Mr. Moran want to own equity through the sale of P.U.B. in a company that provides a service that he has recommended publishers not install?

We do not intend to purchase Mr. Moran’s company. We have considered taking legal action against Mr. Moran, and we continue to hold this out as an option. In any case, we intend to provide publishers with the best service we can and be responsive to our loyal user base.

As always, please send us any feedback or comments to: info at lijit dot com.

Today, we successfully launched Lijit search on BlogHer.com. Of all the publishers I have helped to add Lijit to their sites, I am most excited about BlogHer.

There are plenty of reasons, BlogHer’s mission, the number of BlogHer bloggers that I have met personally and respect, even the ability to not speak for two days during the BlogHer conference, but the truth is, I am excited about BlogHer because it so closely matches the mission of Lijit.

We aim to bring trust to search.

Can you trust standard search engines, of course you can. Mostly. Some of the results are spammy. We know that, and we deal with that. Sometimes you dont find what you are looking for because the search engines have deemed the content inappropriate to include in their index.

Lijit takes the opposite approach. BlogHer has identified more than 2,000 publishers that write on many varied topics, but that are all trustworthy. We trust BlogHer and therefore have included all of those publishers’ content in the Lijit index.

That way, when you go to BlogHer.com and perform a network search, you will discover publishers whose content you can trust. You may have never heard of the blogger, but more often than not, you will find a publisher that you will probably continue to read over and over.

For example, if you do the search “gluten free” on the BlogHer.com Network, the first result is Gluten Free Mommy (imagine that!) talking about gluten free recipes. The same search on Google returns GlutenFree.com, a shopping site, which really provides very little information about gluten free diets. Which would you rather read? I know which one I would return to.

We are very excited to welcome BlogHer to the Lijit family, and look forward to the continued growth of our relationship.

We are gearing up for our trip to Sin City later this week for the second annual Blog World Expo. To prepare, we started looking at the agenda of speakers and were pleasantly surprised to find so many that use the Lijit widget on their blogs. We knew that the following folks are smart (you have to be to qualify as a Blog World speaker), but seeing Lijit on their blogs makes them even smarter…

Nic Adler
Doyle Albee
Stowe Boyd
Chris Brogan
John Chow
Brian Clark
Jason Falls
Louis Gray
Daniel Ha
Tris Hussey
Guy Kawasaki
Paul Kedrosky
Jim Kukral
Howard Lindzon
Jake McKee
Scott Monty
Jeremy Pepper
Darren Rowse
Jennifer Satterwhite
Jeremy Schoemaker
Robert Scoble
Brian Solis
Dave Taylor
Robyn Tippins
Jim Turner
Erin Kotecki Vest
Denise Wakeman
Des Walsh

We’re looking forward to hearing the wisdom these speakers have to share and maybe, just maybe, giving them t-shirts!

Update: One of our favorite ladies, Wendy Piersall, was inadvertently left off the list. Sorry about that…

Not to gamble all of our new funding, but to attend the second annual Blog World Expo. We were there for the first one last year (in fact, it was our first time having a booth at a BIG show) and had so much fun talking to bloggers that we had to make plans to return this year.

There will be some changes to the Lijit booth this year. Now that we’re not a baby startup anymore, we have to kick things up a notch. There will be a new booth design and some new faces.

This also means that if you’re heading to Vegas with the desire to be turned into a widget, like this guy…

You’re out of luck. Our homemade widget will not be making the trip to Vegas with us. But we will have lots of Lijit swag, including shirts, stickers, and a little something-something to help you clean up your current search. Guess you’ll have to stop by our booth to find out more!

In addition, our VP of Business Development, Micah, will be moderating a panel on Widgetizing your blog for Profit, so if that sounds like something you might want to hear about, don’t miss this informative session.

And if you’re heading to Vegas next week, let us know. We’re excited to see friends from last year as well as to meet new publishers who have yet to discover our search goodness. Be sure to say hi and go “all in” for us, mmmkay?

You can read more about our exploits at the Blog World Expo last year in my four-part series, which isn’t nearly as long and tedious as it sounds…

Part One: Lijit Users

Part Two: Lijit Wijits

Part Three: The Players

Part Four: The Miscellaneous

This is another guest post in our series written by Lijit employees. Shawn makes up the majority of our QA team and once she was hired, a collective sigh of relief was heard around the office. She was kind enough to share her thoughts on what she thinks about working at Lijit.

A short time ago, colleagues, friends, and family told me I was crazy for even thinking about working for a start-up company where nothing is ever certain. But growing up, I was always told, “You’ll never know until you try”.

So I tried, and two start-ups later, look at where I landed!

The intrigue, adrenaline rush, and personal satisfaction of working for a start-up far outweigh any disadvantages there may be. Here at Lijit, the people really make this place go. I knew it from the moment I was told that Lijit was looking to build their QA team and the Software Engineers were driving the need. Could such a place really exist, where Software Engineers and QA Engineers work in tandem to get software to the market? Why, yes it can!

There is a core group of folks here that have successfully worked together at other companies. They provide a solid foundation for Lijit. Combine these folks with the rest of us and we all bring life and career experience into a collaborative environment where we take pride in reaching for and obtaining the same goal–getting it done quickly and getting it done to a great degree of publisher and investor satisfaction. How and when we get it done can be both challenging and exhilarating but well worth the effort.

We are continuously in motion to improve upon and formalize the processes that work well for us as well as being open to processes and procedures that will help us continue to improve and grow.

This is another in our continuing series of guest posts by Lijit employees. Jacqueline is a community catalyst who spends her days taking care of Lijit publishers and in her spare time, enjoys exploring what Colorado has to offer. She was kind enough to share her thoughts about a recent trip to Denver.**

A few weeks ago, Lijit went on a field trip (sans parental permission slips) to the Democratic National Convention. It was an opportunity to witness history in the making in Denver. History always transcends politics and we saw that firsthand. Generational and racial barriers fell to the side as people from all walks of life embraced themes portrayed throughout Obama’s campaign. It was inspiring to see.

A call to action within the Democratic Party was interpreted through an artistic lens at the “Manifest Hope Gallery.” The gallery was comprised of contemporary political art, with its star, none other than Senator Obama. Talented artists from around the country used their art as a voice in order to amplify and motivate the grassroots movement surrounding the Obama campaign. Progressive politics through art captured the core values of Obama’s campaign, “hope, progress, change, unity, and patriotism.” The art displayed has made a huge impact in the visibility of the Obama campaign.

Walking around the gallery provided a personal sense of patriotism. Collectively and individually each piece of art addressed the current challenges and struggles felt under the Bush administration, and how Senator Obama will bring about the change that is so desperately needed. The artwork captured strength, power, and intelligence as the brush, paint, and artist worked together to give Senator Obama a place on the canvas. Portrayed as an iconic symbol, it truly is an Obama nation.

As the end of the day drew near and things ended, the Lijit team headed home. Lijit has publishers from all different walks of life with different political beliefs. Today, we were lucky enough to meet and speak with some of our publishers. They expressed their opinion of the candidates and the issues important to them in this election. Separated from Denver by thirty miles, Lijit felt extremely fortunate to be a part of the Democratic National Convention and represent not blue or red but, our own color, Lijit green.

**As with all of our guest posts, Jacqueline’s views are her own and do not necessarily represent those of the entire company.

We released some new features last night and in order to take advantage of the improved functionality, you need to know about it. Away we go!

Invitations. You don’t have to make them by hand, fortunately, but you now have the ability to invite friends to join your searchable network within Lijit. From your Lijit ‘account’ page, you’ll see a new section underneath your account information. Click on the link under the header ‘Invite your Friends’ and you’ll get to the page that allows you to manually enter email addresses or import them from the contacts in your address book. (Don’t worry…we’re tied in with many email services!)

If your friends already have Lijit accounts, they will be automatically added into your network upon accepting the invite. (And if they don’t have Lijit accounts, they will be added in once they set up their account!)

New Re-Search options. In the past, if you wanted to utilize Re-Search on your blog, you only had the option of displaying results on top of your widget or at the top of your blog. We are proud to announce that you can now show that Re-Search goodness either above or BELOW your content. So, if someone comes to your blog through a Google or Yahoo search, they will get even more of your related content with the blog post. Using Re-Search allows random searchers to stay on your blog longer and to allow them to discover even more of your knowledge!

For example, if you do a Google search for ‘winamp itunes plugin’, the first result you get is a blog post from Daniel, one of Lijit’s finest. If you click on that result, you’ll be taken to his blog where you’re met with even more of his content, easily found underneath his blog post…

To change your Re-Search settings, simply log into your Lijit account and click on the ’search wijit’ tab. Scroll down to where you see Re-Search listed and pick your option out of the drop-down menu. Remember to save your new wijit settings!

Better integration with Vimeo and Viddler. We’re now serving up thumbnails from your Vimeo and Viddler content, meaning that searchers can now watch videos from within your search results. What could be cooler than a more multimedia approach to search results?

For example, if you search for Boulder on my blog, you’ll now see this doozy in the results from my content…

More robust search results. With the release last night, you’ll begin to see better search results from content sources like Flickr, Twitter, Delicious, YouTube, Tumblr, and MyBlogLog.

Please let us know what you think of the new additions and send your feedback our way. We love hearing from our publishers and it’s important to know what YOU think about what we’re doing.

[Photo credit: zakwitnij via CC license]