Search-Powered Web Apps

You would think, that with all the good things happening here at Lijit, we couldn’t want for anything more. While basically true (we’re healthy, have funding, and mostly like one another), there’s always room for dreaming. And after asking around the office, it turns out there a few things that Lijit wants for Christmas. File these under “publishers we want to be using our search” and enjoy the list!

Design*Sponge features the absolute best in home and product design, including product reviews, new designer profiles, trend forecasting, student design and global design shows. Lijit could help Design*Sponge by searching everything they’re doing so wonderfully on the web: their press and accolades, their Flickr photos and featured podcasts, each contributor’s content, and their newest video collaboration via YouTube with the New York Public Library. Not to mention, with design in mind, they can use our WordPress plugin and not change their current blog design and layout.

Alex, the author of Blogsessive, is “obsessed with blogging” and covers all the tips, plugins, themes, coding, etc. that goes along with blogging. His site is a mecca for the blogging expert to the first time blogger, however, the one missing tool he hasn’t featured or tried out is Lijit’s search. We see this as a holiday win-win, because his reader base will learn another Lijit blogging tool while he could increase his reader’s engagement, pageviews and searches done on his blog.

If Geeks are Sexy, then those of us working at Lijit have got it going on. However, we would argue that using Lijit makes you even sexier. We couldn’t agree more with the blog’s mission to provide “up to the minute tech news, reviews, and tutorials.” So why not include Lijit’s search and help out your readership of “IT professionals and computer enthusiasts”? Don’t they deserve a good search option as well? Plus, we know that Yan who runs the blog just loves our “Too Lijit to Quit” style.

Ken Rockwell is a go-to source for reviews on photographic equipment and advice. While Ken is currently using Google’s site search, we’d really love to see him using Lijit, if only to see the valuable information contained in his network! In many parts of his blog, Ken says that he supports his family with his site’s revenue, so he might be interested in ways to increase his ad revenue (Lijit can do that!) and since his site winds up as a destination for many Google searches, we also know he’d see the real value keeping searchers on his site longer (Lijit can do that, too!).

The Talking Points Memo is high on the list of favorite political blogs amongst Lijit employees and has organically grown over the past eight years into something of a blog network. It’s also the epicenter for a lot of original reporting that pushes the mainstream news cycle. All that political coverage demands a better way of searching through it, in order to receive trusted and relevant results. Memo for the New Year, Talking Points: Install Lijit.

We wish Political Wire was Lijit because many in the office consider the site’s author to be something of a political guru. Taegan brings current, up-to-date information to readers on the hour and the site’s breaking news aggregator provides quick insight about what’s going on in the world of politics. Also, with a blogroll like the one on Political Wire, doing a Lijit search of their trusted network would bring back a wealth of information. Here in the office, we’re hoping Taegan will vote for a change…in his blog’s search tool.

We enjoy a good laugh around the office and Stuff White People Like delivers the goods every time. Besides being funny, it’s true. Unfortunately, this blog is hosted on a wordpress.com site, which means that they can’t use Lijit. So, I guess what we really want for Christmas is the ability for bloggers to use our search on wordpress.com sites. (Hear that Automattic, you can make our holiday wishes come true!)

From all of us here, we hope you have a wonderful holiday celebration and that you find all you’re searching for! Also, if you see yourself listed on our wish list, please understand that we mean it as the highest form of flattery and are keeping our fingers crossed that you might be susceptible to a little holiday guilt. Hey, a startup can dream, right?

This is another in our series of guest posts written by Lijit employees. Mike Pritchard is bestowing the honor on us this week and if you like what he has to say, you can find more of his writing (and photography) on his blog.

So, what is a day in the life of Lijit like? My name is Mike “Pip” Pritchard, I’m the tech lead for the ad server team, and if you’re been following the blog here, you’ll realize that we’ve been pretty busy. Crazy busy, in fact, but we’re excited that we’re working on projects that are helping grow Lijit and create revenue for both Lijit and our publishers. And we have some great projects in the pipeline that you’ll get to hear about as we roll them out!

I’ve been at Lijit since October and I came to Lijit from a non-traditional background for a web startup. You see, I’ve come from a strong AI background and have spent most of my career building robots for either the DoD or NASA! Weird, but true.

I’ve built tiny robots, flying robots, crawling robots, industrial robots. So how did I end up at Lijit and why? Well, I love working in the AI field. The more we learn about biological intelligence the more it seems to be incredibly parallel in nature, the human brain seems to be a vast collection of independently functioning systems (structures of neural networks) working together in a fairly chaotic way, with the emergent behavior being intelligence, or at least what we think is intelligence. Almost like if we were to throw billions of computers together all connected to each other something would emerge from the chaos, something very unexpected. Sound familiar?

Well, that is for the future, but for today humanity has created this vast connected mass (or mess) of information and computers that we’re only beginning to organize. Maybe we’re not organizing it, but its organizing itself. Just like many complex biological systems we see in nature, it is perhaps a self-organizing system and it seems to be organizing itself around structures like social networks.

This, of course, is why Lijit is so important. Lijit is the natural evolution of this process, and allows us to search through these social networks in a more meaningful and useful way. This is why its an exciting time, and Lijit is a cool place to be…

(Photo used with CC license courtesy of: Dan Coulter)

A few nights ago, the Lijit crew gathered to celebrate the season. We met in the back room of a local tavern, located just a few blocks from our office. There was food, merriment and poker chips dressed up as drink tickets but it’s safe to say that the highlight of the night was the Lijit band taking the stage. After practicing for weeks, their debut performance was impressive and they easily wowed the crowd with their talent. Thanks to Micah for all the pictures and to everyone at Lijit for the fun!

Despite what everyone else seems to be doing, we’re hiring! Lijit has experienced incredible growth over 2008 and we are now in need of two crucial people to join our team. Read on if you think you have what it takes to hang with the Lijit crew of superstars.

The first position is what we’re calling a Publisher Support Engineer. This job is unique because there are several technical and communication aspects to it, including product support, collaboration with Software Engineers, publisher troubleshooting and a load of creative problem-solving. You can read all the specifics in our job description. One perk of the job is the fact that you get to work very closely with this guy, who is much funnier than he looks here…

And the second position we’re looking to fill is an Advertising Sales Catalyst. This person will be responsible for evangelizing our ad network, building strong relationships with advertisers, and assisting Lijit publishers in selling their ad inventory. In this role, you’ll be able to help establish Lijit as an industry leader in keyword-based search advertising and have the chance to build advertising sales across our network. For more information about what we need, check out the full job description.

If you’re thirsty for a new challenge, please let us know. We are looking for candidates that enjoy the start-up culture and are willing to work hard as part of a successful team. (And, while not required, we do appreciate a good sense of humor…) Our office is expanding, we love what we do and we can’t wait to start 2009 with some new faces. If you’re interested, send your resume to us here today and tell us why you rock!

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed but in the last month Google Alerts has slowly (and now quickly) deteriorated.

Lately I have been seeing people talk about how Google Blog Search has lost its way, and how it’s now returning links from blog sidebars. Now, just a few minutes ago I got my normal Google Alerts report on “Lijit” and it contained about 50 items, most of which are references to our widget in blog sidebars.

Google must have some new crawler code going that isn’t quite as smart as the prior version. Weird.

This past September, Lijit had the pleasure of attending Blog World and meeting many bloggers who were interested in our widget. One of the nicest guys to stop by our booth was Jay Christensen, who realized our value almost immediately and had lots of questions for us about how to install Lijit on his blogs. With his journalistic background and sharp sense of humor, Jay’s sports blogs (The Wiz of Odds and The March to Madness) do a wonderful job of entertaining and informing.

In addition to bringing his readers news of recent coaching changes, he also covers Bowl chances, recruiting practices, and what other reporters are talking about. All this AND a podcast? Fortunately, Jay was able to make some time in his schedule to answer a few of our questions and shed some light on his experiences blogging.

• How long have you been blogging and what made you start?

My blogging experience began in August 2005. Normal people don’t bring work home, but I’m not a normal person. I’m a journalist by trade and blogging was a natural extension to my skill set, so getting comfortable in front of the computer and pounding out a few paragraphs didn’t feel like work. Now that I look back on it, I realize what a fool I was.

My employer at the time was the Los Angeles Times and having worked at four newspapers–three of which had folded–I knew the business was on the decline. So my reasons for starting were part fun, part trying to figure out what the heck I wanted to do when I lost the gig at the Times, which eventually happened in July of 2008 during something called a “workforce reduction”.

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

Working for myself and not somebody else. I get to make the decisions and then take on all the risks and get all the rewards. I’m still waiting for the awards, by the way. Is being interviewed by Lijit one of them?

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

I kept my identity a secret when I started blogging for fear my bosses could use it as a reason to cut me loose (conflict of interest or something like that). But the morning after I was laid off, I revealed my identity on the Wiz.

Best thing I ever did.

L.A. Observed, L.A. Business Journal, The Big Lead, Deadspin and Sports Journalists were just a few of the sites that linked to the post. I became the poster boy for the layoffs and the Wiz had instant street cred.

Yes, it’s true, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

• Since you write about sports, what are some of your favorite teams and why?

Because my sites–The Wiz of Odds and The March to Madness–deal with college football and basketball on a national scale, I’m not a fan of any team. My posts tend to be issue-driven and I try and take an analytical view of each sport. If that fails–usually the case–there is always the humorous approach. If that fails, then I’m out of luck.

• How has Lijit helped you as a blog publisher?

I stumbled on Lijit at BlogWorld in Las Vegas and couldn’t be happier. It was exactly what I was looking for: a customizable search engine that keeps people on the site. It’s fast, offers statistics and is integrating the ability to derive revenue from search results. You must give Lijit a try!

I’ve told countless friends about it and Jacqueline and Tara have always been there to answer my questions. Plus, the operations are based in Boulder, one of my favorite cities. How cool is that?

I appreciate Jay taking the time to answer our questions, for his continued support, and for the kind words. If you enjoy reading about college sports, I highly recommend that you give both of Jay’s blogs a look. With his indepth wisdom and reporting, you’ll have all the team knowledge you need to get you through the season!

(And to answer Jay’s question, yes, being interviewed by Lijit is one of the highest honors that any blogger can hope to accomplish.)

I’m Dave Ferro, the Director of Ad Serving here at Lijit Networks, and today’s guest author for the Lijit blog. Today, Lijit is releasing the latest version of its ad network. The theme of this release is to offer greater value and control for our publishers. In our first release, we provided publishers with the ability to opt-in to our ad network and earn money from the largely overlooked ad inventory of search results pages. It was a solid first step in our product evolution, and now we are taking a second step toward our goal of providing publishers with a transparent, flexible, and manageable search ad offering.

Publishers can now set their own pricing for search ads that advertisers target for their search results pages. Publishers who choose to do so can also sell their own search ad inventory through a link that they can email to advertisers. Because many publishers will prefer the leave the business of selling ad space to us, we will fill all available inventories with ads that we sell directly to advertisers. As always, we will fill the remaining unsold inventory with ads from third party networks like Google AdSense and Yahoo!.

We have also placed a link in the search results pages of our publishers that will bring an advertiser to the ad creation workflow. For publishers who have opted-in, the links will bring the advertiser to a workflow specifically for their publications. If a publisher has yet to opt-in to the Lijit ad network, the advertiser will be taken to the generic campaign workflow.

We are also making it easier for advertisers to target their ads to match the intent stream of the reader. Advertisers now have the ability to search for individual publishers who have opted into the ad network, and to review statistics and pricing information before creating a campaign for a specific publisher’s search results pages. For those advertisers who target individual publishers, they will pay the price set by the publisher. Advertisers also now have the ability to upload lists of keywords and keyword phrases to target their campaigns.

In the coming weeks and months, we will release features and offerings to improve our ad network for both publishers and advertisers. Continuing to add value for our publisher and advertiser partners by providing flexibility, transparency, and control are the fundamental principles behind our decision tree. I look forward to future guest posts where I can announce what we will have rolled out in our next releases.

You can find out more details on our Advertising Network page.

Another in our series of employee guest posts, this time around we’re honored to have Ryan Peterson contributing. He is a software engineer here at Lijit (although he prefers pimp), considers himself a tea connoisseur and can be found at his blog.


On January 21st, 2008, Microsoft announced its upcoming version of Internet Explorer (IE8) would not render Web pages in a standards-compliant way by default, and for the browser to do so, Web sites would need to include a special “meta” tag in its header.

Later, after tremendous outcry, they reversed their position and announced IE8 would render in a standards-compliant way by default.

This blog post is not about browsers or IE8–but an interweb phenomena which I have dubbed “blog events”. These announcements by Microsoft are perfect examples.

Defining “Blog Events”

Despite the likely fact that an academic or established Social Media personality has already observed and named this phenomenon something much more eloquent, I call Blog Events

“Events, announcements, or news that motivates large numbers of individuals from various social media demographics, online communities, or groups to blog and/or comment on the event of interest.”

When Microsoft made their announcements, Web developers and designers had various things to say. Blogs, comments, and forums filled with chatter regarding the issue. People were motivated to discuss the event. Even I rushed to write a blog post on the issue on previous employer’s blog, but another developer beat me to the punch by about 2 minutes, posting his blog post first. My blog post was naturally wittier and more fun to read, but that’s beyond the scope of this blog post.




Other Blog Events

Some other “blog events” I have observed are the recent Motrin advertising debacle, Magpie’s attempt at a Twitter Ad Network, and pretty much any Apple product announcements.

What are some other “blog events” you have noticed or observed, in your online communities or elsewhere?




photo used via Creative Commons courtesy of: davepatten