Search-Powered Web Apps

As one of only a few Lijit designers, Mike Bucks has a hard time around the office. He has to defend his design sensibilities and indulge his creative side via falsetto leads of Rock Band songs. When I talked to him about doing the standard profile I’ve done with everyone else, he was somewhat offended but suggested a better idea. Why not video, he asked. So I’m proud to present our first video installation of the Get to know Lijit series…and hopefully not the last. (Also, I tried out both Vimeo and Viddler because Lijit supports both as content providers and I wanted to do some “compare and contrast” testing.)

• What is your Lijit contribution?
• What is your favorite color and why?







• What turns you off creatively and why?




• What is a profession, other than your own, that you would like to attempt and why?




• Something you’re guilty of…

And that, my friends, is your video introduction to Mike Bucks. If you want more, check out his blog for even more awesomeness.

After last night’s release, you’ll see a new tab along the top of your profile page.

What’s that, you ask? How can Lijit possibly give me even more cool stuff? Well, we’ve managed to do it by partnering with two fantastic companies, JS-Kit and ShareThis. These two widget companies offer complementary services, so that if you need a commenting system, a way to display polls, or a way to let your readers share your posts with others, you can find it all on this new page. Consider it one-stop shopping for all your blogging needs.

We’re excited about this opportunity to co-promote some other widgets and give our users more tools to make their blogs even better.

There were also a few tweaks made last night to insure better relevancy and faster display of the search results we bring back, two things that we’re continually working on improving. If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it.

When our widget showed up on the blog Screen Rant, we couldn’t have been happier. Movies and television are something we have no problem discussing in the office (unlike our times on the race track). Whether it’s information about your favorite TV shows or behind the scenes gossip about movies soon to be made, you can count on Screen Rant to bring you the scoop. There are lots of sites out there covering both topics, but few do it with the intelligence and humor that the authors of Screen Rant do. Fortunately, when I reached out to the main man behind the site, Vic, he was happy to indulge me with some answers about his blogging history.

• How long have you been blogging and why did you start?

I’ve been blogging for almost 5 years now. I started Screen Rant just as a learning experience–my first attempt at this new thing called “blogging”. I decided to pick two related subjects that were near and dear to my heart: movies and television.

I called the blog Screen Rant because the original purpose of the site was a place to vent about many of the seemingly idiotic decisions made by Hollywood in their approaches to, and choices made when it came to movies and TV projects - bad casting choices, bungled remakes, misleading marketing, etc.

• What has been the greatest thing you’ve gotten from blogging?

A sense of connection to other people who are as passionate about film and television as I am, and a sense that I’m not alone in my strong opinions. I love the discussions on the site between both new and regular visitors. Through moderation, my own comments and those of my authors in response to visitors, I think Screen Rant has the most intelligent and civil conversations of any movie site out there.

• Of all the posts you’ve written, what has been your favorite and why?

Oh boy…that’s a tough one. I’ve written well over a thousand posts and many are my favorites since the vast majority are written from an editorial point of view. I’d have to say that some of my favorites are posts that generate the most discussion long after I published them. Here are probably my 3 favorites after a quick look back:

I wrote an article about the animated kid’s film “Barnyard” asking WHY the bulls in the movies had udders. Two and half years later that post is STILL getting comments from people wondering the same thing.

Then there was the post where I asked Hollywood to PLEASE not make a third “Alien vs Predator” movie. The discussion was so heated (even on the comments that were not outright insulting) that I finally decided to disable comments on that post.

Finally, I wrote a piece asking how radical the redesign of the U.S.S. Enterprise might be in the upcoming “Star Trek” movie by J.J. Abrams. I took readers through the evolution of the venerable NCC-1701 and speculated on what the “reboot” version of the ship might look like in the new film.

• Since you write about movies and television, what are some of your favorites and why?

Even though my site doesn’t explicitly state it anywhere, the focus is mainly on Sci-Fi, superhero, fantasy and action films - all my favorite genres. My all time favorite film would have to be “Aliens”, the second film in that franchise, written and directed by James Cameron. I’m also a huge fan of the Sci-Fi/Western “Serenity” and the TV series that preceded it: “Firefly”. “Stargate SG-1″ was also a long time favorite of mine, and of course classic “Star Trek” with Kirk and company.

• How has Lijit helped you as a blog publisher?

Lijit has increased the number of searches on my site significantly, and gives easy to access and clear stats on search trends, latest searches and even searches that return no results. This helps me determine what movies or TV series should perhaps be given more coverage because people are looking for information about them.

If you want the latest news on movies and television, give Screen Rant a read. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for, give Vic’s Lijit search a try. Whatever you do though, make sure you’re caught up on the Battlestar series BEFORE you read the spoilers about the final episodes.

This is a guest post by our Senior Director of Products and Operations, Leslie Osborne. She was kind enough (read: I forced her) to write a post about our recent company outing.

Don’t get me wrong, golf is a fine sport. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it (save for the sketchy use of plaid in golfing ensembles). It’s just not the sport for me. Never has been. Not even since that special couple of “elective curriculum” golfing days in seventh grade gym class.

I’ve always worried about this slightly during my career, wondering if my lack of golfing skills would ultimately impede my ability to climb the corporate ladder. (At one point, I was concerned that my lack of karaoke skills would impede that climb, but we’ll discuss that some other time.) So just imagine how happy this driving enthusiast was when the sport chosen to celebrate Lijit’s recent round of financing was high-performance go-karting. Yay!

So off to The Track we went on a gray, October afternoon. We dutifully donned driving suits and driving gloves and helmets and neck braces (safety first, folks) and had an amazing couple of hours flinging ourselves around a fantastically entertaining, kart-scaled road course. Some of us were fast, some of us were not so fast, but we all laughed and cheered and had a great time.

Which brings me to the thing I love most about Lijit–yes, even more so than the selfish alignment of automotive interests–is that we all genuinely enjoy each other’s company and have a lot of fun when we’re together, be that at work or at play. I think this gives Lijit, as an organization, a distinct personality (a positive one) and I’d also like to think it translates (again, positively) into everything we do. My hope is that when you visit our site, sign up for our service, install a Lijit Search Wijit, do searches, see your stats, run an ad in our new Ad Network, get an email or comment from us on your blog, or what have you, you can feel a little bit of this company’s tremendous personality shining through. And if not, well, you’re clearly dead on the inside, but we’ll keep doing good work for you anyway.

It was fun to have the opportunity to share an interest that’s near and dear to my heart with my co-workers. (I hope they all think I’m less nuts for attending high performance driving schools now.) I’m glad everyone kept the “shiny side up”, as we like to say, and enjoyed their well-deserved afternoon of offsite celebration.

I guess now all I have to worry about impeding my career aspirations at Lijit is whether or not I continue to beat Todd and Walter…

(To see even more pictures from our day at the races, check out Lijit’s Flickr photostream!)

If you’re looking to spice things up this season, why not coordinate the color of your search results with your widget? After last night’s release, we’ve made that possible. Now, if you are choosing to have your search results pop up over your blog, you can match the color of that box with your widget’s look.

If you didn’t already know, on the ’search wijit’ page within your Lijit account, you can choose how you want your search results to display. If you’ve chosen the ‘on my blog’ option from the drop-down menu, you’ll notice a new box previewing what your search results will look like…

If that’s not enough lovely eye candy, check out the customization options we’ve made available. You can choose your color palette and pick what color you want every aspect of your search box to be…

At this time, these options only exist for the slim, rectangular widget style, but we encourage you to have some fun and play around with different colors. Enjoy the more unified look of your search results and please let us know if you have any feedback around what we’ve done.

Because of publishers like you, Lijit continues to grow in new and exciting directions.  We’d like to tell you about our newest one right now:  During 2008, Lijit has been developing features that allow advertisers to present your readers with highly targeted ad placements in search results.  But that’s not all – we’ve also developed features that allow YOU to share in the revenue from these ad placements!

The beta release of the Lijit Ad Network will be open to advertisers and publishers like you starting October 8^th, 2008.  In this release, publishers will be able to opt-in to the search-based ad network and begin receiving a share of the revenue for ad units displayed in your search results.  As a thank you for your patience while we’ve been developing and testing these features, your account will be pre-loaded with a credit for estimated revenues based on your search history during this period (a minimum of $5).

We’re not done yet!  In the near future those publishers who have opted in to Lijit’s Ad Network will be able to sell their search based ads directly to advertisers with whom they may already have relationships, targeting just their own publication and making even more money for themselves.  This is going to be big!

To start capturing your share of revenue from the Lijit Ad Network, log in to your Lijit account and at the top right of your profile page, click the “Start Now” button.  (If you don’t want to participate in revenue sharing, you certainly don’t have to and can continue using Lijit as you do today.  We promise to use your share of the ad revenues wisely.)

Our new publisher FAQ answers all the questions we could think of during development and alpha testing of this cool feature, but if you can think of one we haven’t covered, please email us at support@lijit.com.

We look forward to working together with you to help you monetize your search results. It’s an exciting time to be Lijit and we welcome any feedback you may have. Thanks again!