Posts Tagged ‘widgets’
With so much content being created everyday online, it can be difficult to find quality writing amongst all the noise. Enter Scribnia, a new startup that features a community built around online authors. After just a little digging around on their site, I’m of the opinion that this is one service that is long overdue.
From their homepage…
“Scribnia is all about the writers. We aim to be the definitive source for people’s opinions about bloggers, columnists, reporters and other writers whose work is available online. Scribnia allows you to rate your favorite (and least favorite) writers and discover new authors that match your unique tastes.“
The beauty of Scribnia is that they’re essentially offering a two-fold benefit. When on their site, you can search for authors, see who has been highly rated and read other users’ reviews. Scribnia’s ‘context ratings’ allow for deep filtering of authors based on criteria you deem important and after you’ve rated a few authors, Scribnia’s recommendation engine will do the work for you. If you’re in the market for a discovery engine, you’ve got the makings of a great one within the Scribnia community.
But wait…Scribnia does more. By creating an author profile on the site, you can also get a widget to put on your blog, asking for feedback about your writing. This means that readers can write public reviews and rate your writing. Other Scribnia members will be able to access these reviews and contribute their own ratings. Sounds like a fantastic way to drive new traffic to your blog…and get a better idea of what people like about your writing.
Scribnia is a free service and their employees will go out of their way to help (I’m looking at you David and Saad!). Since they’re still in beta, Scribnia is asking for any and all feedback about what they’re doing. To learn more, check out the Scribnia blog and follow them on Twitter.
If you’re a writer, I strongly suggest you give Scribnia a look. And if you decide to sign up, I’m tarable over there too.
Tags: Lijit partners, widgets | View Comments
Over the weekend, one of our favorite Lijit users, Fred Wilson, posted his desire to do a blog spring cleaning.
Of course, the first thing I did was rush over to Fred’s blog and see if Lijit had made the cut. Luckily, it appears that we are one of the chosen few.
Thinking that Fred made a good point about keeping a blog clean, I headed over to my blog at Learn To Duck and started whacking widgets.
Last.fm? Gone. Instant Message widget? Outta there.
After the third whacked widget, I began to think about 1) why people should keep Lijit on their blogs (other than its the coolest widget ever!) and 2) what value do widgets bring to a blog.
Widgets, by design, should provide three things:
- No apparent slow down of the blog page itself;
- Real utility to the readers of the blog;
- Real utility to the publishers themselves.
So, how does Lijit stack up?
Page Load Speed:
I asked one of our developers what specifically do we do that ensures that Lijit doesn’t slow down a blog’s load. Andy explained that we cache the javascript for a two hour period, making the javascript call (which is the main culprit in page load slow down – watch the lower left of your browser, you can watch how long it takes widgets to load) much shorter. In addition, we will always display the latest widget to a user, and then cache the javascript in the background for the next user.
Not being technical, I am guessing that means we load more quickly because the site doesn’t have to go get the widget every single time someone comes to the page.
Reader Utility:
Why is Lijit better than standard site search or Google custom search? Two specific reasons:
- We search the publisher’s entire social graph and trusted sources.
- While Google tries to index everything, Lijit just indexes everything that is important to you.
So the likelihood a relevant result is returned through Lijit search should be higher than if the same search was done on any standard search engine.
Also, unlike most widgets, Lijit is built to keep users on your site. Most widgets are connected to a destination site and their sole purpose is to drive traffic to the destination site. Lijit just wants to search your stuff.
Publisher Value:
For a widget to earn the right to live on my blog, it must make me a better blogger. The stats that Lijit provides is a direct example of this. One stat that I use a lot is “Results that returned zero results.” If people are searching for topics, but not finding them, then I need to write about them.
Also, because Lijit is trusted network-based search, relevant content from my blog is surfaced on other blogs that include me in their network. Basically, I get more traffic the more people trust my content, because it appears more often in the network’s search results.
Finally, because more of my social content is exposed through Lijit search, readers are more engaged and consume more content across my site and my social graph.
I certainly can understand Fred’s desire to clean up his blog, and have echoed his efforts on my own blog. Frankly, I wish more people would periodically do a widget clean up and when the time comes to determine which widgets stay and which are round filed, ask yourself three questions:
- Does this widget slow down my blog page load?
- Does this widget provide real value to my readers?
- Does the widget provide real value to me as a publisher?
Hopefully, the answer in Lijit’s case is a clear yes to all three.
Tags: blogging, widgets | View Comments