Lijit

Here at Lijit, we love finding out about new blog tools that make it easier to discover great content. (Hey, it’s a big part of what we do!) We first met the folks from outbrain at SXSW in 2008, when both of our companies were helping with the b5 Blog Network Camp. Since then, we’ve both grown up a bit. It’s not unusual now to hear both Lijit and outbrain discussed as must-have tools for any blogger.

In the interest of research, I wanted to give outbrain a try on my work blog, I quit for Lijit. It really is a simple one-click install and only took me a couple of minutes to get it up on my blog. I love that I can now get instant feedback and, underneath my posts, I’m recommending other quality content for my visitors to read. For a free service, outbrain rocks. I’m looking forward to checking out the reports that outbrain provides and to find out even more about the people coming to my blog. Who doesn’t love stats?

If you’re interested in an easy blog enhancement, be sure to give outbrain a try. Their widget inherits the look and feel of your blog, making for a seamless integration that can only help your readers. We really like what outbrain is doing and think you will too!

You can read more about outbrain on their blog and follow them on Twitter.

We’re honored to help spread the word about one of our favorite tech sites, Crenk. If it’s tech news you’re looking for, you’ll find it covered on this blog. Whether it’s product reviews, mobile apps, or something software-related, this blog has all the resources to guarantee that you’ll make an informed decision.

Steven, the founder of Crenk, was kind enough to write a post about using Lijit on his site, so it only makes sense that we return the favor. Plus, how can you not love a tech site that has a pink widget? I sent Steven some questions about his blogging experiences and I’m excited that he was game to answer them.

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

I have been blogging for a bit of a year now, since October 2007. I started blogging because I had a keen interest in startups and wanted to voice my opinions.

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

Blogging has allowed me to actually talk about a topic I love and definitely helped me in learning how to express my thoughts correctly.

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

This is my favorite post because it actually has meaningful discussion in the comments.

• What are the top 3 tech tools that you love using and why?

Spotify (great for creating playlists and listening to in the office), Tweetdeck (it simplifies Twitter) and Filezilla (the best FTP program I have ever used).

• How has Lijit helped you as a blog publisher?

Lijit has simplified the search process for my blog. It allows me to easily add a great search tool and not have to worry about quality of search tool, plus allows me to focus on content.

In addition to the wonderful content he provides on his blog, Steven (using the Crenk name) is a poweruser on Twitter. You can follow him here and learn more about his blog here. Many thanks to Steven for helping us out with this interview and for using Lijit on his blog. We appreciate both!

This is another in our series of guest posts written by Lijit employees. In addition to the business development she does for Lijit, Grace likes making lists, laughing, snowboarding, and the lost art of writing letters.

November 15th will mark the two months that I have been Lijit. Now, part of being Lijit isn’t just about having the right ‘tude or rocking MC Hammer balloon pants (okay, bad joke but you get it all the time when you work for a company called Lijit). It’s much more. Let me give you the newbie’s look into what being Lijit is really all about:

–Intelligence: Our team is quick, witty, and good at what they do. We get it. We get our product, our users, and each other. I bet our combined IQ sky rockets our past our office window and over Mount Sanitas.

–Progressive: Speaking of our product, Lijit’s trust-based search is pushing boundaries and not only giving an empowering tool for online publishers, but for their readers. I am Lijit today because I was so impressed with the search and installed it first on my own blog before even realizing they were located in Boulder, the town I had just moved to. Doing business development, I work with hundreds of people in a week from all walks of life and through many mediums. Nine out of ten times, when I explain what we do at Lijit and that our service is free, I can literally hear their jaw drop (yes, over the phone, even on Twitter). Excellence=Free=Lijit=Unparalleled. How Lijit is that, to be able to work for something you believe in while it also is helping people?

–Laughter & Fun: I’m not just saying this to sound cliche, let me explain. There isn’t a day that goes by in our brightly lit, lime green hued office, where laughter isn’t heard. Whether it’s collective over Buck’s Russian accent, an inside joke within the Estrogen Lounge between the Product Evangelist/Biz Development ladies (me, Tara, and Jacqueline), a company outing at the racetrack watching our CEO spin out in his car and come in last, or it’s Friday late afternoon and a few people decide they need to unwind with Rock Band and Billy Joel begins to blare throughout the office. We stay serious and focused but never forget the importance of keeping the mood light, fun, and humorous. [On a side note, I truly think it's a hiring prerequisite that each person has an excellent sense of humor at Lijit.]

–Equality: My previous employment ranged from a non-profit to hierarchical public relations agencies and sometimes a pompous air seemed to creep in from the higher level down to the lowest. That’s not what being Lijit is about. Here everyone makes themselves available for questions, concerns, and each individual’s well-being. We make time for each other and it’s as though we really exercise the notion that each piece is relevant to the greater whole.

So you see, being Lijit requires a balance of laughter, highly-attuned intelligent minds, a progressive and unparalleled product, and a permeating mentality of equality. Sounds like a pretty good medley, eh? I think so.

Last week, the Defrag conference came to Denver. In its second year, Defrag is unlike the standard conferences Tara and I have attended on behalf of Lijit over the past year or so.

Defrag’s tag line “Accelerating the aha moment,” is rather appropriate. I liken it to a dinner where the participants are all highly educated and someone like Professor William Duggan, Columbia Business School and author of Strategic Intuition speaks on where the origins of innovation are in the brain.

Or, there is a rousing discussion around the aggregation and dissemination of content around the web with T.A. McCann, Gist; Tom Keller, IntenseDebate; Daniel Ha, Disqus; Avinoam Rubenstain, my6sense.

Imagine listening to Charlene Li discuss how to harness the implicit value of the social graph?

But, more importantly, because of the small size, interaction increases. I sat down with Howard Lindzon and was able to talk about Lijit and StockTwits at length, which just is so difficult to do at larger conferences.

It was great to have a conference of the quality of Defrag locally, and I am excited to see what Eric brings to Denver next year!

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]

This Wednesday, Frank Gruber and Eric Olson bring their traveling techie road show to Boulder for a second appearance. If you’ve never been to a TECH cocktail before, you’re in for an evening of fun. Imagine a bunch of tech enthusiasts, VCs, bloggers, and entrepreneurs drinking together, watching demos, and sending the geek quotient of the Boulder Theater through the roof. Yes, it really is that good. (And I’m not just saying that because Lijit is a sponsor…)

• Where? The esteemed Boulder Theater
• When? August 20th, from 6:30-9:00 PM (although the TC site says that it’s taking place EST, I wouldn’t bet on that, or we’re all going to be early…)
• Why? Duh…because geeks and beer are a great combination.
• How much? Totally free, but you must RSVP

Last time the boys brought the show to town, we found out that as a sponsor, Lijit was supposed to be one of the demos. We hadn’t really thought about that and, at the last moment, grabbed our homemade widget to bring with us to the party. People loved being turned into widgets, as Frank Gruber can attest…

While we’re not sure if the widget will make an appearance this time, the TechStars are coming out to play and they will be demoing their wares. TECH cocktail will be the conclusion to their day-long investor presentations, so you can imagine the relief these teams will be feeling. The TechStars have been working hard all summer and honestly…the least you can do is to come out and support your local tech community by drinking some beer. Is that too much to ask?

In conclusion…

What more could you want? (Unfortunately, due to the limited supply of Lychee liqueur, there will probably NOT be any Lijitos made at this event.) You can RSVP here and we hope to see you on Wednesday night!

After a lot of work, we are proud to introduce something new for our WordPress.org users. If you like the Lijit search and want it to be integrated on your site in a more, how shall we put it, hijacked fashion, then this plugin is for you.

As everyone knows, you can currently install the Lijit widget on your blog in the traditional, add-the-code-to-your-sidebar kind of way. But now, with this new Wordpress plugin, you can keep the current search bar you have on your WordPress blog, but have Lijit power the search results. It’s like magic.

It looks like a normal search bar, but when you do a search, BAM! Search results brought to you courtesy of Lijit.

Like any other Wordpress plugin, you can find the Lijit Search (version 1.0) in the plugin directory. Or HERE.

Once you download the widget, simply log into your WordPress dashboard, go to the plugin page and activate it. Upon activation, you get to choose whether you want to use your existing Lijit account or you can create a new one inside the WordPress admin console.

You can also choose between the classic widget install option OR hijack the existing WordPress search box and make it Lijit-enabled.

But wait! That’s not all. We’ve also included another super-cool feature…integrated statistics. You love the stats that Lijit gives and now you can see those from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard. Simply click on your Lijit stats and you’ll see all that detailed goodness, telling you exactly what you need in order to keep your readers happy.

Many of you asked for a better way to integrate Lijit search on your WordPress blog and here it is. With a cleaner and tighter feel, Lijit and Wordpress.org are playing even better together than ever.

***This plug-in is only available for those WordPress users with versions 2.3-2.6.***

We would like to thank the great team at Crowd Favorite for helping us to make this happen. And by all means, let us know what you think of the plugin. We think it rocks, but are more excited to hear your thoughts.

Happy hijacking!

The following is a guest post by Bill, a software developer here at Lijit who is leading the search engine team. I thought his post was a great follow-up to the one from our CEO on the company’s recent funding and appreciate Bill taking the time to share his thoughts on how we should spend that cash.

As you may know, Lijit recently received 7.1 million dollars in venture capital funding. This means different things to different people. To the investors, it means they see promise in the company and are willing to take a calculated risk. To the executives, it’s a significant milestone in building a successful company. To the employees, it means we still have jobs, and it keeps alive the stock-option dream. But to the engineering team, it signifies a new phase.

Prior to this, Lijit has been a true startup. Everybody has worn multiple hats: the VP of Engineering does systems administration, the senior architect does configuration management, and everybody doubles as the QA team. This early phase can be very exciting and very satisfying. You get to do a little bit of everything, and the urgency to ‘just get it done’ means that you’re rarely constrained by bureaucracy or red tape. But it’s also a difficult time. Everybody is overworked, you often have to do tasks outside of your comfort zone, priorities and direction can change daily, and progress is often constricted by a lack of resources.

I only joined Lijit a few months ago, so I missed a lot of the early pains. But I got here in time to experience some of it, and I worked with many of the Lijit staff at a previous gig where we went through all these phases.

With the funding, it all begins to change. From an engineering perspective, this can be a very exciting time. In the past couple of months we’ve hired a QA team, built a dedicated Test Environment which mirrors the production system, and instituted a bug tracking process. We’ve brought additional developers on board with specialized skillsets, and organized into teams dedicated to each of our primary products (website, search platform, adserving platform). Not only have we built a talented IT team, we’re hiring a configuration management engineer. We’re adopting agile development methods, and we’re building a product roadmap and release timeline that give us direction months into the future. Across the board, we’re transitioning from a small team with limited process to a larger, more specialized team, with greater resources, and naturally, more process.

If we do this right, we become a more productive and higher quality organization which can quickly respond to business needs. If we do it wrong, we can become mired in process and overhead.

And that, really, is the exciting part–we get to define ‘doing this right’. The trick is to integrate these processes and resources while still remaining nimble. We get to pick and choose the parts that make sense. If it doesn’t make sense, if it doesn’t make us faster and improve our quality, then we don’t do it. It’s easy to get bogged down in all this stuff. But we won’t because we’ve been here before.

Photo credit: noahwesley

I’m proud to share another in a series of guest posts written by Lijit employees. This week we present an installment from Mike, who seemed overly excited about writing and sharing this post.

Hi, I’m Mike Merideth, the Director of IT here at Lijit, and I’m going to talk a little bit about the nuts and bolts of how we do what we do. Over the past year I’ve had the opportunity to design and implement the production network and server infrastructure on which Lijit runs. It’s been a great year of challenges and breakthroughs, but if there’s one key architectural concept that has gotten Lijit to where it is today, it is virtualization. We use Xen for our virtualization technology, which has the advantage of being free Software (both in the “free beer” sense and the “free speech” sense). CentOS 5.1 (a Linux distribution which is based on the market leader RedHat) includes this functionality out of the box, and has performed very well for us.

So why does Lijit use virtualization? There are a number of good reasons:

Flexibility: When you’re launching a new web product, it can be hard to predict what pieces of the application will need more resources than you originally gave them, and which will need less. We’re able to change the amount of memory, the number of CPUs and the amount of disk space a server has quickly, easily and remotely.

Availability: Because we use an iSCSI SAN for most all of our storage, we can move virtual servers between pieces of physical hardware. So if we lose one of our physical servers, we can quickly bring up the virtual servers it hosted somewhere else.

Resource utilization: CPUs today are incredibly fast and powerful; far more so than most applications need. Similarly, RAM has become cheap enough that a server with 16 or even 32 gigabytes of RAM is not particularly unusual, or particularly expensive. Running a simple web server on such a system would be a waste of CPU and memory, and therefore a waste of electricity. If you can run several virtual servers on such a system, however, you can get the maximum return on your investment by making sure you’re fully utilizing all of the CPUs and all of the RAM. Which is all tied to…

Cost savings: Colocation is expensive, and electricity certainly isn’t getting any cheaper. Using virtualization means we can get the absolute greatest value out of the rack space and electricity we’re paying for.

As of right now, we’re running about 200 virtual servers on about 25 physical servers. Just a few years ago we would have needed scores of physical servers consuming thousands and thousands of watts of power to do the work we’re able to do in this relatively modest environment. For a startup that would mean a higher burn rate with a shorter runway, and greater stock dilution for the founding stakeholders because of the amount of capital needed to get the work done. If you’re trying to get a tech startup off the ground, you owe it to yourself to see if you can leverage virtualization in your IT architecture. You’d really be crazy not too.

If you managed to read this post without your eyes glazing over, you may be interested in my new Linux infrastructure blog at http://linfrastructure.blogspot.com. I’m keeping notes on my experiences there, in the hopes that what I’ve learned over the past year can benefit others who find themselves in the same boat.

Photo credit: Leonard John Matthews