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Last night Lijit held our annual holiday party at Lucky Pie Pizza in Louisville, CO. With the recent acquisition of Lijit by Federated Media Publishing, it was an honor to have Founder and Executive Chairman John Battelle, as well CEO Deanna Brown in town for the festivities.
Thank you to all the members of the Lijit band that rocked the house last night as well as John Battelle for making a cameo appearance on the drums. Check out his award winning performance here!
Shout out to Lijit rock-stars Manny Puentes, Mike Meredith, Zach Conger, Janessa Ho, Meaghan Kelly, and Zach Miller for keeping us dancing all night long. Rock on.
The holiday party was a great success and a wonderful way to reflect on and celebrate our accomplishments. Check out the photo above of our CEO Todd Vernon going down the long list of Lijit milestones in 2011.
Tags: events, fun, good times, lijit | View Comments
b.media forum: presented by Lijit and Foundry Group
Apr 22nd
by Sonya Caprio in Community, Company, events, industry
Yesterday, Lijit and Foundry Group hosted the inaugural b.media forum. Based in Boulder, b.media brought together the digital media industry’s top entrepreneurs and thought-leaders to discuss consumers, online advertising, and publishing. Click here for a full list of attendees.
The half-day interactive discussion included three panel sessions:
- Consumer panel: moderated by Niel Robertson, CEO of Trada. Panelists included Dave Heal, Tim Falls, Cali Harris, and Casey Finkel.
- Publisher panel: moderated by Todd Vernon, CEO and founder of Lijit. Panelists included Todd Sawicki, CRO of Cheezburger Network; Andy Clurman, COO of Active Interest Media; Kurt Kohlstedt, Executive Editor of Webist Publishing & Misnamed Media; and Jeff Reine, GM of TypePad.
- Advertiser panel: moderated by Seth Levine, Managing Director, Foundry Group. Panelists included Rajeev Goel, CEO of PubMatic; Philip Smolin, VP and GM of TURN; and Jay Ferracane, Creative Director of Angry Bovine Advertising.
There were numerous insights from the forum that we’ll cover in upcoming blog posts. In the meantime, check out our cool b.media video with tons of interesting market stats. And here are some photos below. Enjoy!
Todd Vernon, CEO of Lijit; Seth Levine, Managing Director of Foundry Group; and Jeff Reine, GM of TypePad
Cali Harris, consumer panelist
Our fearless leader, Todd Vernon, moderating the publisher panel
Lijit's Todd Vernon and Walter Knapp walking to networking reception with Lijit Board members Mark Solon and Paul Berberian
Rajeev Goel, CEO of PubMatic, and Alex Vogenthaler, Product Manager at Google
Brad Feld, Managing Director of the Foundry Group
b.media networking reception
b.media networking reception
Last week I had the pleasure of being on a panel at the Forum and Communities conference in San Francisco.
Since the inception of Lijit we have worked with publishers who have amazingly engaged communities of readers. Many of these publishers are in the mid- and long-tail. They have highly niche and conversational sites which encourages readers to engage by returning often, leaving comments, etc. My personal theory is that it’s because blogs tend to surface more of the personality of the author. Over time this personality acts as meta-data that the reader uses to form a bond with the publication, resulting in higher reader engagement. Lijit’s services were designed to help publishers foster this engagement.
Participating in the Forum and Communities conference introduced me to a different kind of publisher. Forums or message boards are places where extreme enthusiasts come to together online to share information about their deepest passions. For example, I regularly browse car forums to find information about the cars I own. I recently dug up some facts on the Camaro5 forum about how to install an aftermarket part. Forums are an amazing wealth of information. Many call forums the original social network.
Forums tend to get a lot of their traffic from Google and other horizontal search engines. That makes sense given all the original user generated content (UGC) that appears on forums. Interestingly, forums tend to receive very few referrals from social network services such as Twitter of Facebook which probably has something to do with their makeup. Forums tend to focus on the community without having a clear central personality. This makes it difficult to leverage a personality-based service like Twitter to drive traffic.
With a little creativity, however, forums could easily leverage these social tools. When I look at sites like icanhascheezburger.com, the CEO Ben Huh has done an excellent job with Twitter serving as a single personality who represents a curated site where content is created by the community. Ben highlights various posts and general information about the site which helps engage the community and keeps readers coming back for more.
I really enjoyed the time I spent with forum publishers and am committed to finding ways that Lijit can work with them to provide the same great business partnership we have with mid- and long-tail sites!
Tags: events, Lijit publishers | View Comments
Come join Lijit at the Forum and Communities Conference in San Francisco
Feb 11th
by Sonya Caprio in Community, events
Are you interested in learning more about how to create and manage online communities?
Then come join us at the Forum and Communities Conference in San Francisco next Wednesday, February 16. Todd Vernon, Lijit’s founder and CEO, will be speaking on a panel titled “Technology and Community” along with executives from eBay, VigLink (a Lijit partner), and CloudFlare. The panel will be moderated by Dan Gill, co-founder and CEO of Huddler.
During this one-day event, a team of experts will provide guidance on how to effectively engage with communities, give tips on how to maximize the value of communities, and offer insights into new services to try and trends to watch out for. Click here for additional details on the event. We hope to see you there!
Tags: events, industry, Lijit publishers, publishers, Todd Vernon | View Comments
Beer Is Lijit – Beer Bloggers Conference 2010
Nov 12th
by Grace Boyle in Community, Company, events, speaking
This past weekend Perry and I headed to the inaugural Beer Bloggers Conference here in Boulder at The Marriott to present about Lijit during their Boulder Tech Session.
Three other local, online/tech companies presented alongside us – our friends, Pete Sheinbaum, Jason Cormier of Room 214 and Holly Hamann of The Blog Frog.
Perry and Grace at the helm, early Saturday morning
When you tell people you’re attending a Beer Blogging conference they might think “Oh yeah, bloggers and beer,” or “Wait, there is a group of people big enough to have a conference about beer blogging?” The latter is true. It’s a strong, niche community filled with passionate bloggers and writers.
The Beer Blogging Conference sold out and 108 beer bloggers from around the United States showed up in Boulder for the conference.
The Chief Beer Blogger for the conference (like: evangelist attendee) was Ashley Routson of Drink With the Wench. Great name, right? Ashley also uses Lijit and part of our presentation in learning more about your readers through our search and stats, was using her blog as a demo.
We didn’t attend the entire conference, but we loved what we saw during the Saturday morning sessions. We followed their #BBC10 Tweets and know they’re a fun group, who thoroughly enjoyed the local Boulder beers and breweries that we have to offer. The conference was a first of its kind and I think it was a great mixture of learning, connecting, enjoying (and of course, drinking).
Some of the enjoying included visiting Oskar Blues Brewery in Longmont, Boulder Beer Company and even ended the event with a Boulder Beer Crawl. To check out the pictures here is a great Flickr Group Set from the conference and if you’re interested in next year, they’re already planning 2011 (it will be in Portland, OR)!
Special thanks to Allan of Zephyr Adventures, the brains behind the conference (they also do wine and food blog conferences!) His team was great and they put together a great event!
Lijit has been heading to Vegas since 2007 for BlogWorld and this year, was Lijit’s fourth show on the exhibitor floor. We’ve been there each year!
A Favorite: As we were setting up our booth and checking in last weekend we were warmly welcomed (you know, we’re veterans) and were told for the last two years the Lijit booth has been the attendee favorite! We like to think we’re fun and do it up but this was an accolade we didn’t know and the numbers confirmed it! Gold star for Lijit.
Giveaways and iPads, Oh My: This year we coordinated a double giveaway (an iPad each day!) as we released our new Lijit iPad Stats app (available for free, to all Lijit users with an iPad-iPhone and iTouch coming soon). Giveaways are all the rave and we had fun not only doing demos of our Lijit search and advertising, but also our sharp and useful iPad stats app.
Check out these pictures to see a sampling of BlogWorld 2010 with the Lijit crew:
Fellow Boulder startup, Mike Lewis of Kapost and Lijit COO Walter Knapp trying a demo of the Lijit Stats iPad App. Keynote speech, Friday morning. Marketing Director, Sonya and Director of Product, Daniel Weiss kicking it at the booth. Part of the expo floor at Mandalay Bay. (Left to Right).
Not only do we meet lots of new blogging companies, applications, products and bloggers but we love meeting our current Lijit publishers (see, Cupcakes Take the Cake, Nichelle Stephens).
This year BlogWorld had a new food track, TECHmunch and we were happy to see many food bloggers (more than we’ve seen before in the past).
In other exciting news, we were next to the Guiness World Record Cup of Coffee (see photo above).
Thanks to everyone who stopped by the Lijit booth, your continual support and to the BlogWorld team! Until next year!
Lijit Is Sponsoring the SavvyBlogging Summit
Jul 8th
by Grace Boyle in Community, Lijit publishers, events
We love to connect with our publishers which is why we find conferences, meetups and events so gratifying to meet face-to-face with bloggers and Lijit publishers.
This weekend Doni, Perry and I will be attending and presenting for Lijit as one of the sponsored partners for the 2010 SavvyBlogging Summit in Breckenridge, Colorado.
What’s buzzing around the Lijit offices, you ask?
Jul 9th
by Tara Anderson in Company, employees, events, fun
In case you were wondering where all the honey bees have gone…look no further.
According to eyewitness reports, the swarm “arrived in tight formation, surveyed the Rio Grande across the street, found it unsuitable and then proceeded to colonize our tree.”
The guy in the white shirt is Bill, a wonderful guy and Lijit employee who alerted us to the swarm’s presence yesterday. After others in the building caught wind of the news, a small crowd gathered to enjoy the spectacle of nature until some do-gooder beekeepers came by to collect the bees a little while later.
A final close-up shot of the swarm, so you can fully appreciate just how Lijit we can bee…
Many thanks to Zach Conger, our resident Systems Architect and honey of a guy for rushing out to document this extraordinary event.
And yes, this does constitute exciting around our workplace. No judging.
Tags: good times, Lijit employees, Lijit office, nature encounter | View Comments
There are four kinds of people that work here at Lijit*: those that race cars, those that run, those that bike, and those that do other things**. I’m of the opinion that bikers make up the second largest majority around the office, being slightly beaten out by the overall geek population. When I got word that there were a couple of self-proclaimed geeks that were riding their bicycles across the US to raise awareness about bike-commuting, I knew they had to be Lijit.
Meet Carlos and Joe, the two geeks behind Real Geeks Ride. They started their cross-country cycling adventure on May 20th and are chronicling their journey via blog, tweets and pictures. We’re honored that they’ve chosen to use Lijit on the official RGR blog but reading about their travels just wasn’t enough. After a few emails (and one phone call he took from the side of the road in Nebraska with big trucks whizzing by), Carlos was happy to answer a few questions for us.
How long have you been blogging and what made you start?
I have been in the blogging world on and off for the past few years. It tends to be event/travel oriented, rather than opinion or news based. I started blogging in high school but dropped it when interest was lost. I picked it up again when I traveled around the world with a ‘worldly singing and dancing group’ to keep my parents and friends up to date.
What has been the greatest thing you’ve received from blogging?
During this bike ride, blogging has given both Joe and I hundreds of people looking out for our safety and health. They ask about us and offer suggestions when we write about our health issues. Knowing that we have moms across the country expecting our safety is uplifting.
What has suprised you on your cross-country bike trip and why?
It is most surprising how different each state reacts to cyclists on the road. We are currently in Nebraska and receive a wave from every other car (not exaggerating). Our experience here is that people give ample room when passing, and are willing to help at any moment. This differs greatly from our experience in Iowa, where we were screamed at, almost hit a few times, and given the finger more times than waves.
What has been the biggest challenge you guys have encountered on your trip so far?
The biggest challenge has been keeping up with the blog. After biking 100+ miles and arriving at our destination at 8 pm, the last thing we want to do is edit photos and write about the past few hours. However, we gain so much push to do ‘work’ when people send us messages of inspiration. It has been the hundreds of messages we have received that allow us to overcome not wanting to post.
How has Lijit helped you to become a better blogger?
Lijit has allowed me to become a better blogger by making it easy to search for people doing similar things. The more I read within a certain field, the more it gives me the ability to see the different writing styles of that field.
If you’re interested, you can follow along with Carlos and Joe on their blog, on Twitter or through their Flickr pics.
Additionally, if you’re in the Denver/Boulder area, you’re invited to meet the guys this Friday, July 3rd, as they make a stop in Boulder. We’ll be meeting up at the Boulder Draft House, from 4-6 pm, to enjoy some happy hour beers with the guys. (Look for us in the back room!) Ride your bike, stop in, and let us show Carlos and Joe just how much we love our bikes around here.
*A very sweeping overgeneralization, of course.
**Other things include: rugby, hiking, parenting, photography, playing video games & tweeting.
Tags: bicycles, community events, Lijit publishers | View Comments
(With all the conferences we are attending or speaking at this year, I am betting the joke of using Lijit in the blog post title might be wearing thin. Or not.)
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the Web2.0Expo in SF as a blog partner. While attending the conference was cool enough, I also got to attend a special blogger roundtable with Tim O’Reilly. We got to discuss government and the internet’s role, including the importance of openness. We discussed all things social media and the power of bloggers. We even discussed the business of publishing real books!
It was really thought provoking session, and certainly the highlight for me.
Luckily, I wasn’t the only person in attendance from Lijit. Both Todd Vernon and Walter Knapp joined me, enabling us to not only connect with many of our Lijit partners in the SF Bay Area, but attend several really informative sessions, such as Beyond Buzz: On Measuring a Conversion and the keynote by fellow Boulderites Jake Nickell and Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Threadless.
Coming on the tail of SXSW, Web 2.0 Expo was a very different conference. There seemed to be more established tech companies like IBM, Novell and Nokia in attendance and exhibiting. The conference overall seemed to be more subdued and relaxed.
Frankly, that made the sessions easier to attend and more enjoyable. There were less parties, although I have to say that Brady did a great job with Ignite SF.
Of the conferences that we have attended this year, Web 2.0 Expo was definitely a highlight. The only thing that could have made it better would have been if I spoke! (Guess I will have to change that next year or at the NYC event…:) Maybe we can get several Lijit folks on the bill?)
Tags: conferences, sf, web20expo | View Comments