Lijit

Our first release of 2010 is an exciting one. And we’re not just saying that because we worked extra hard on it. However, there’s nothing like a new look and new features to really kick off a new year. Check it out.

Web:

Our homepage is getting a little bit of a facelift. We want to be sure that when people come to our site, they know what we do. Crazy, I know. With this release, we’ll be doing a more effective job of explaining our value to both blog publishers and advertisers. In fact, with a simple click, you can find out why using Lijit can help both you and your blog readers.

This release also brings an enhancement to how you can build out your network within Lijit. When creating your network, you can now add the blogs of your Twitter friends and make those searchable. To see this feature in action, simply log into your Lijit account and click on ‘Network’ at the top. You’ll see a shiny, new Twitter tab. For now, this feature is an all-or-nothing add, which means that you can either add all the sites of your friends on Twitter or none.

Ads:

There is a new zone size available to the publishers using our Ad Services. This new zone size is an IAB standard 728×90 leaderboard. If you’re interested in running this size ad on your blog, simply log into your Lijit account and click on the ‘Ad Wijit’ tab to change existing zones.

Search Results:

In case thumbnail images weren’t enough bling in your search results, we’re now doing more with video thumbnails. We previously supported YouTube and Vimeo thumbnails on your Content tab, but as of today, Viddler has been added into the mix as well. And as before, you can play those videos from within your search results.

This means that if you do a search for ‘cage’ on our CEO’s blog, you’ll now see a Viddler video listed in the search results.

AND? Even cooler is that we are slowly rolling out the ability to see video thumbnails from your blog posts. If you embed videos from Youtube, Viddler, or Vimeo in your blog posts, we’ll show thumbnails for those videos in your blog search results.

Told you this was an awesome release. If you have any questions or feedback about the new stuff, feel free to leave a comment. We love hearing from our users!

We’ve known the guys at Filtrbox for a while. Whether it’s at a major conference or a local event, we really enjoy hanging out with the Filtrbox team. Our two companies have been around for approximately the same amount of time and it says a lot about the Boulder startup community that we’re as supportive of each other now as we were back when.

It doesn’t hurt that Filtrbox has the sweetest office location in town–up above a popular cupcake shop.

But that’s not the best thing about Filtrbox. And I really like cupcakes. The best thing about Filtrbox is what they can help you to do.

They clue you in to what people are saying about you–whether positive or negative. With Filtrbox, you can track mentions of your company, your client or your brand on Twitter, social networks, Facebook, blogs and across thousands of online news outlets. Whew.

We all know there’s a lot of noise. That’s why it’s essential to have a service like Filtrbox. You can set different filters for your monitoring terms, letting your alerts become as focused as they need to be. There are also reports, trending stats and graphs, oh my.

With Filtrbox doing the hard work, you can rest assured that a daily briefing will be delivered to your inbox every morning, preparing you for the conversation. People are talking about you. With Filtrbox, you can know what they’re saying.

And let’s not forget that the Filtrbox team is simply fantastic. Don’t believe me? Check out what they did in Movember, to raise money for prostate cancer research…

How can you not trust guys with 70’s porn staches?

See for yourself how Filtrbox can make your life easier. I’m a happy user and I know there are some freshly-shaven gentleman ready to help answer any questions you might have.

You can read their blog (where they’re using Lijit!) for more information and follow them on Twitter.

Just watch out for this one…

Nice face Ari! Also? This was Defrag ‘07.

Baby Einstein vs. Sesame Street?

The Wiggles vs. Yo Gabba Gabba?

High School Musical vs. Hannah Montana?

In today’s world, with so many options, parenting just seems to be getting harder and harder. And knowing who to trust for parenting advice is probably the toughest decision of all. That’s where the Center for Media and Child Health comes in. They exist to help parents make informed choices when it comes to their children and media use.

The CMCH has not one, but two blogs to help you sort out all of the research and information that is out there on this topic. And fortunately for you, they’re using Lijit on both blogs, making it even easier to find the most relevant search results. Whether you’re wondering if your preschooler should hop online or looking for computer games that are okay for your seven year old, chances are the answers are just a Lijit search away.

Also fortunate is that the nice people over at CMCH agreed to answer a few questions for us about how they got into blogging and how it’s helped them with their mission.

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

We get a lot of questions from parents about how and whether their kids should use TV, video games, the Internet, and other media, so in 2009 we started our Ask the Mediatrician blog, where Dr. Michael Rich answers these questions. He started his career as a Hollywood filmmaker and then became a pediatrician, plus he’s also a parent of four, so he’s definitely got some good advice!

We started the CMCH blog in 2006 because we were regularly sending out email updates about newly published research on media and kids’ health to our own staff of researchers. We figured that other researchers could benefit from these updates as well, so we switched to putting the research alerts into a blog format.

What is the mission of the CMCH and how has blogging helped with that?

The mission of the CMCH is to conduct, coordinate and compile scientific research to improve the understanding of how media affect children’s health in positive and negative ways. Our two blogs help us fulfill both parts of the mission. The CMCH blog helps us connect with the media effects research community to provide updates about research we’ve conducted and compiled, and Ask the Mediatrician allows us to use that research to help parents understand how to use media in healthy ways with their kids.

How has the increase of time spent online affected children and families in general?

As with all media, there are positive and negative ways that people use them. On the up-side, many families use email, social networking sites, and instant messenger to stay in touch when kids go off to college, and some parents even IM their kids when it’s time to come downstairs to eat.

On the down-side, being connected to the online world means families are often less connected with each other at home.  Parents are distracted at dinner by emails coming in on their smart phones, kids spend their free time playing games on the web instead of playing with siblings, and researchers are even looking into the issue of whether there is such thing as Internet addiction. Since having strong relationships with your family is one of the best predictors of kids’ health and happiness, it is concerning that family connections are being replaced by Internet connections.

What do you recommend in terms of media consumption and children?

**Pay attention to content because children learn from what they see and hear. All media are educational; some teach accurate, healthful lessons, while others teach misleading and harmful lessons.

**Pay attention to which media are appropriate for your child’s age. Children see, understand and make meaning of media differently than you do.

**Pay attention to where, when, how, why and with whom your kids use media. These factors can strongly influence whether media help or harm them.

**Pay attention to how often your kids use media. Too much media use (more than 1-2 hours daily, depending on age) may be harmful for your child’s health and development.

**Teach active, critical media use. What we feed children’s minds is as important as what we feed their bodies. Teach children to develop a healthy media diet, and engage them in the process of thinking about the media they use, rather than passively consuming it.

How has Lijit helped to make you a better blog publisher?

We first turned to Lijit to help us with the CMCH blog. With 3 years’ worth of posts, we were always getting that feeling “I swear we’ve written about this topic before…” but we did not have a way to search through all our content. Lijit helped us find out whether we actually had written about topics before or not, and if we had, we could incorporate links to previous posts and then build on those ideas.

Lijit is absolutely critical for Ask the Mediatrician since parents are coming to the website with questions and want to know whether they’ve already been answered. As the publishers, we can then focus on new questions and let people use the search engine to find common questions.

If you’re a concerned parent, both of these blogs should be required reading for you. We appreciate all the hard work this group has been doing and encourage you to follow them on Twitter. As Whitney Houston so aptly pointed out, the children are the future and I thank everyone who is attempting to help make it a better one.

We love supporting our local community.

BlogFrog is a Boulder startup doing something different for bloggers - allowing them to create instant community on their blogs by letting readers connect, interact and share content. BlogFrog is like attaching a social network to your blog.

If you’re wondering where you’ve seen BlogFrog before, the answer be found in the sidebar of your favorite mommyblogger. BlogFrog widgets are all over the place - by initially serving women and mom bloggers, BlogFrog has become the largest network of mom blogs on the Internet. (You do know about these mom blogs, yes?)

With BlogFrog, it’s easy to create a forum where readers can ask questions, post links and extend the conversation beyond a specific blog post. And that’s not all. BlogFrog communities can help drive traffic, generate more revenue and increase loyalty among visitors.

Signing up is super quick and painless. Over on the right there, you can see that we’re rocking our widget in the sidebar and we’d love for you to check out our BlogFrog community. We’re just starting out, so if you have any questions or discussions you’d like to start, we encourage you to help get the party started.

For more about BlogFrog, you can read their blog, check out their community, follow them on Twitter or shoot Holly an email. See what BlogFrog can do for you and your blog readers.

And stay tuned…we’re excited to share one more Boulder company with you before the year is out.

Our VP of Market Development, Perry Quinn, was interviewed at Blog World by Geekazine about the value of Lijit’s service to both blog publishers and blog readers. Enjoy.

And many thanks to Geekazine for posting the video and using Lijit to power the search on your site!

Boulder is normally pretty mild in terms of winter, but recently, we’ve been in the grips of a cold spell. Six inches of snow fell on Wednesday and it’s been bitter cold since then. So cold that it’s been a topic of conversation around the office and complete strangers have been asking “Cold enough for you?”.

In the hopes of torturing ourselves heating things up a bit, I though I’d share some pictures of our publishers in warmer climates. Because I’m pretty sure that we don’t have any publishers in colder climates.*

This is BJ, with Harry and Lhasa, on a summer day in Boulder.

This is Joe, in San Francisco, after riding his bike across the country.

This is Laura, on vacation in Thailand.

And this is Jay, on his fixie and rocking a vintage Lijit shirt in Denver.

Not sure if that helped anyone else, but just seeing people in shorts and Lijit t-shirts gives me hope that my legs might see the sunshine someday too.

Cold enough for you?

*If you’re blogging in Antarctica and using Lijit, then I stand corrected. And I’d like to hear from you!

As a small business in Boulder, we enjoy supporting others in the same space. Trek Light Gear is just one such company. It’s a wonderful hammock operation started by outdoor enthusiast Seth Haber. Now, just a few short years after he launched Trek Light Gear, Seth can boast of global sales and a very popular kiosk on the Pearl Street Mall.

As a small business in Boulder, we also appreciate the work-life balance that Trek Light Gear espouses. Trek Light Gear sells not just hammocks, but also loudly evangelizes the hammock lifestyle and the frequent use of said hammocks. (I’ll give you a minute to envision yourself laying in a hammock somewhere beautiful and relaxing.)

Now that you’re feeling groovy, read on to see what Seth has to say about Trek Light Gear’s company blog, Trek Life, and where he likes to hang his hammock.

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

I started the Trek Life blog back in 2006. Even though blogging had been on my radar and I recognized it as a good idea for the business, I really just needed the inspiration to get it off the ground. Right around that time, I had a good friend named Bret who pitched the idea of taking a ‘Trek Light Road Trip’ around the US. The idea was to put the Trek Light name and logo on a big, blue van and drive it around to various campsites and National Parks, spreading the word about Trek Light while also doing some festivals and expos along the way to make some sales and fund the trip. Bret even managed to build a hammock stand that came directly off the top of the van so he could literally stop anywhere and have a hammock booth with inventory to sell! So right then and there I knew it was time to get a blog going so I could share the story and the pictures with our fans. Unfortunately, the van didn’t hold up as well as we had hoped so the trip wasn’t as long or as vast as we intended, but we got some great blog material and that got the ball rolling. On a side note, if anyone has the makings of a Trek Light mobile and ever wants to recreate the Trek Light Road Trip and pick up where Bret left off, let me know!

How does blogging fit in with your business plan and marketing strategy?

Without sound too cliched, I’ve always believed that Trek Light Gear is as much about lifestyle as it is about the products. When I hand you a hammock, I know that it’s going to have a positive impact on your life. Maybe it makes you spend more time outside, it may reduce your stress and help you to relax, or maybe it gives you the chance to spend more quality time with your friends or family.

Our Eco Totes also have a strong lifestyle attached to them. When you buy a reusable bag you’re saying, “I choose to do something that I know is better for the planet.” I never try to attract just one type of person to Trek Light Gear, because while our products may be great for an ultralight backpacker, a rock climber or even a hunter, they also appeal just as much to someone living in Manhattan who wants to live a greener lifestyle or just hang a hammock on their balcony.

The two biggest media exposures we’ve had so far have been Martha Stewart’s Body + Soul magazine and Penthouse, so that just goes to show how broad of an audience we’re appealing to with just a few products. Blogging is such a great extension of all of that because it gives me a chance to talk about anything and everything that might appeal to that broad audience and bring them all together. I certainly wish I blogged more and I wish people got engaged and commented more, but the community is growing and I know the Trek Life blog will continue to be an important part of my connection with everyone out there who lives the Trek Light lifestyle.

Where is your favorite place to hang a hammock? And why?

That’s a tough question so I’m going to have to give two answers. First, there’s an amazing feeling that comes when you setup a hammock in places that you’d never have expected to before owning a hammock that you can take anywhere with you. Whether it’s hanging between two cars and tailgating at a sporting event or music festival or sitting next to a waterfall on the side of a mountain, you get this feeling of bliss that’s hard to beat. You just know that you’re doing a good job at life when you’re chilling in a hammock somewhere you never would have expected. I’ve had plenty of people tell me that once they owned the hammock it was like seeing the world through a different set of eyes, everywhere they looked they’d find two points and know where they could hang a hammock!

All that being said, my other favorite place to hang a hammock is right at home. I’ve got a hammock setup on my balcony right now and it’s truly hard to beat that spot. I work from home so I can literally just walk out there anytime and grab five minutes in the hammock and I’ll come back in feeling like a million bucks. I waited until now to tell you, but I’m answering every one of these questions while laying in my hammock. WiFi and hammocks are a match made in heaven.

How has Lijit helped you to become a better blogger?

When I describe Lijit to people, I usually begin by saying that Lijit is awesome because it’s something that’s equally beneficial to me and to my readers at the same time. It’s a search tool that gives my audience access to the information they’re looking for but it’s also an analytics powerhouse that helps me be a better blogger. On my end, I’m able to quickly see what’s bringing people to my blog and then on top of that, what they’re searching for when they get there.

I wrote a post about cat hammocks over the summer and all of a sudden, I discovered that lots of people were coming to my blog because of the cat hammocks post. I never expected that and while I don’t plan on ever doing a blog series on cat hammocks, it was a clear indicator that writing very specific content can be a big traffic draw. While many of those visitors read just that one post and left, I had several people that explored my entire site and were clearly intrigued by what they saw.

But as I said, Lijit isn’t just about me, and that’s where the search feature comes in. The ability for my readers to search within my network’s content is huge. Well beyond my blog or my website, people are able to discover our content on Flickr, YouTube, etc. and getting people to discover your content is clearly why we blog and post content online. Lijit rocks and I know that the more I blog and the more I expand my online network, the more valuable of a tool it’s going to become.

Seth, we think you rock too and encourage everyone to give Trek Light Gear a look. The holidays are right around the corner, and if even just for yourself, hammocks are guaranteed to make killer gifts. You can read more about the hammock lifestyle on the Trek Life blog (if interested, you can see a guest post written by a certain someone, ahem), follow them on Twitter and be sure to make time in your busy end-of-year schedule for some crucial hammock time.

In what may be one of the least necessary holiday observations around, today marks International Men’s Day. To celebrate this very special day, we thought it only right to show off some of the best male-oriented sites we have in our network. Well, to celebrate, and to make sure the majority of our company knows how appreciative the women of the office are to have them around. (Is it obvious that I was in dire need of blog content?)

Kicking things off, we have the one of the most humorous and vintage mens’ site around…The Art of Manliness…

which provides guidance in areas ranging from Dress & Grooming to Health & Sports. Also, for those who are just starting out, the site features a whole section devoted entirely to living A Man’s Life and acquiring Manly Skills, including such essentials as how to be a hobo and how to exit a room like a man. I hope you’re taking notes, gentlemen. Or that the women in your life are planning on getting you The Art of Manliness book for Christmas.

For some, however, the true art of manliness can be found in fathers. On the daddy blog, Real Men Drive Minivans, PJ Mullen shares his adventures as a stay at home dad…

where he generously posts everything from his recipes (the butternut squash and apple bisque looks especially good) to his thoughts on fathering in a modern world. You can read even more about PJ and his blog in this publisher spotlight we posted earlier this year. Although smaller in number than their mommyblogging counterparts, daddybloggers the world over deserve nothing but respect. (And maybe their own conference?)

There is a newer site to the Lijit network that is devoted to providing just the basics for men. That site is called Guyism and their tagline really sums it up nicely…

because judging from that tagline, you’d think that Guyism would have posts about things like oxygen, water and shelter. But you’d be wrong. The site actually publishes helpful information like 7 ways to tell if your lady is absolutely crazy and many knowledge-filled posts about the importance of supermodels. Good to know that what guys really need is not always safe for work. (You’ve been warned.)

Because of the global scale of this holiday (it is International Men’s Day, after all), we would hate to leave out any men residing on different continents. Which brings us to…Ask a Frenchman…

…where important questions like Why French Women Do Not Ask Men Out? and Can you explain the Bourgeoisie? get answered. The publisher’s disclaimer may be one of the best parts of the blog. He is very clear in his intentions…

“As no less than the self-proclaimed world specialist on Frenchness and all things French, I will answer any question about anything you’ve always wanted to know and never dared to ask about France and the French.”

The author also wants you to know that there are a few questions he can’t answer…

“French men are individuals and as such have a mind of their own, they do not all think the same things, so no I cannot know what they think just because we share the same nationality.
-And no, I cannot read minds either.
-I’m not your bitch, neither a replacement for your ability to think by yourselves (or lack of thereof), so before asking me a question think twice about whether you can find the answer by yourselves, and about how stupid your question really is.”

And finally, what International Men’s Day honorary tribute would be complete without a shout-out to our gay brothers? No one does it better than Towleroad…

…which proudly proclaims itself as “a site with homosexual tendencies”. Whether you’re in the market for the latest news on gay marriage, gay pageants or gay celebrities, chances are this site has everything you need. Of course, if you’re simply looking for pictures of hot gay men, you’re adequately covered on that front as well.

From all of us here at Lijit, we wish all of you a very happy International Men’s Day!

<requiredsnarkyfemalecomment>Isn’t every day Men’s Day?</requiredsnarkyfemalecomment>

Whatever you do today, make sure you take a moment to think of all those who have put their lives in danger to protect our freedoms. All across the Lijit network, publishers were making their voices heard in posts commemorating Veteran’s Day. Here are just a few that I found…

• Bargain Briana has a post up today with a list of national businesses that are showing their appreciation to all veterans by running special deals or offering free giveaways.

• Like many people, the authors of Silicon Valley Moms Blog had family members that served in the military. Their Veteran’s Day post includes memories of those family members and a touching tribute to all those who have fought for our country.

• Our favorite tax blog, Don’t Mess with Taxes, shares a helpful list of military tax tips featuring valuable information about special tax considerations for those currently serving in the armed forces.

• The Moderate Voice, a hub for moderates, centrists and independents posted a very special cartoon in honor of our veterans today.

• Finally, for something a little different, Screen Rant names the movies that Veterans love…as reported by the veterans themselves.

From all of us here at Lijit and our over 11,000 publishers, we’d like to thank all the veterans. We wouldn’t be where we are without you.

Last night, our CEO, Todd Vernon, and COO, Walter Knapp, were interviewed by Bloggers School on Blog Talk Radio. They discussed the history of Lijit, the business model behind our company and how our search adds value to both the publisher and the blog reader. The majority of the interview centered around questions about Lijit’s premium Ad Network and how we’re making it even easier for bloggers to make money on their blogs. Give it a listen if you want to hear more from the top dogs themselves.