DISQUS

Totally great ideas! thanks!

Personally, I think all the hub bub last night was ridiculous. If a startup is waiting for an anointing by you or other folks, they are focusing on the wrong things. So their websites suck? Who cares, if you look at the list of services above, many of them have gone through several revisions of look and feel, but all of them have two things in common:

An intense focus on the value they bring the user and an commitment to listening to their user base.

That is my gold standard. And the question I ask, is can I describe what the startup does in no more than one sentence. If I can do that, then I can make an intelligent decision as to the value of the product to me.

My favorite from the above list? Twitter, Friendfeed, Tumblr, Automattic (I use them several times every day). Vimeo, Qik, Viddler (first place for video). Threadless, Zappos and PleaseDressMe (keep me looking hip).

And I wouldnt be a complete self-promoting bastard if I didnt mention Lijit.

You were right to question the startups at DEMO (as I am sure you will do with the TC50 folks). But at the end of the day, quality and value trumps everything.

Rahsheen, given the great integration of Lijit (let us know if you need anything) and the intro to Ubiquity, thought you might find this post by one of our developers interesting. http://www.techniqal.com/blog/2008/08/27/ubiqui...

Let me know what you think!

Details about the sushi eating contest are here: http://learntoduck.com/micah/one-more-than-you

Time: 6pm
Place: Hapa on Pearl
Date: Monday, August 18, 2008

@mack I certainly respect your point of view. At Lijit, given our value proposition is trusted search, clearly trust is something that we value above all else.

You are correct in that the feature is not self-evident. As Todd said, we have heard your concerns and the concerns of others, and while we thought we had been completely transparent and upfront, your reaction clearly indicates that we have not. We will take that into account during our redesign, and I would love to hear your thoughts as to if it was "enough."

Also, a point of clarification, the re-search feature can be turned off, but, for now, the ads within the feature cannot. Similarly to the ads on the search results (much Google's search results when Google Custom Search Engine is used).

I hope that our efforts win you back as a publisher, if they dont, I hope that our efforts here at least won back some of your respect.

All the best,
Micah "Asshat" Baldwin ;)

Hello Chris and all.

So it appears there has been some confusion about ads in the lijit widget.

1) We have always had ads in the search results themselves. There is no sudden change or fluke there.

We have been testing several different ad platforms lately (Google, Yahoo and other ad networks) in an anticipated launch of the consumer interface and revenue sharing. Perhaps this had made the ads more visible.

2) The image you have displayed in the post is actually a feature of lijit, known as re-search.

If you come from a search engine, an "intent-based" related content box opens suggesting other posts and content from the publisher.

In the example above, someone (probably you, Chris) did a search on a search engine for "chris brogan," and that triggered the resulting re-search box. All the of the links are to your content or trusted sources (other than the ad at the bottom).

As the example shows, we have begun to test placing an ad within that box. This box is opt-in or opt-out (just turn it off or on within your settings in your profile.)

I will say, most people get between a 1-2.5% click through rate on the results (not the ad), driving higher reader engagement.

3) All of this is in test mode. I welcome any comments or suggestions you might have about our ad placements (or the results, or the features, or our name, or anything). My email is micah@lijit.com and my cell phone number is 720-231-7120.

Chris, if that is not agreeable to you, I will contact you tomorrow, and we can discuss a couple of alternatives. You have always been a friend to Lijit (and me), and I would hate to have you disappointed in a tool that has been so useful for you.

(Frankly, that offer stands for anyone, I just wont play will play Metallica in the background like I will Chris. Just shoot me an email or call me, and we can discuss it.)

@Michael - you clearly dont know how much I love to win.

@Izzy - you guys should make the theme music for the sushi eating contest.

For all you talkers. Practice up. You will all end up crying in your mommy's apron strings and calling me daddy.

Yes, I went there.

@kevin - practice now. Its not hard. Find a picture of me. Gaze at it longingly.

@devin - did you need a specific invite? I assumed you always showed up where you could pick up a free beat down. ;)

Basically, the thought is that a couple of minutes between pieces is enough. We will have a ref that will warn, then disqualify folks if they eat too slow. Cool?

@izzy well, we all know you can beat your dad. He cant handle the sushi! And you are quite the podcaster. Love the music too.

@geekmommy I am not sure if there is a better word. We are trying to work on behalf of the publisher to create a better search experience, provide value, etc.

Would love to hear your thoughts on a better word...

Thanks Devin. I am hoping to make it better over time.

..and thanks for the intro, of course. ;)

Right here, Chris! Where most people are each morning, reading your blog, and the comments.

Friendfeed is a wonderful service, which is known as a social aggregator, and is, by definition a destination where you can go and see the collected feed information for you and your friends. It has a great search functionality, and it pretty much real time.

Lijit is not a desination site. Think of Lijit as a filter for all the information that FriendFeed collects. So, with Chris, for example, his Lijit Network consists of his blog, his online content (like friendfeed), and a list of other trusted sources (some are other Lijit users and some are not). So, if I wanted to know what Chris has written about "personal branding," I could do that search in the Lijit search box on the left side of Chris' blog, and the results would return posts that Chris has written, but also posts from Dan Schawbel's personalbrandingblog.wordpress.com.

Do I know Dan? Nope. But, because Dan is connected to Chris, my trust in Chris is transferred to this result. I have now discovered new content that I may not have found otherwise.

And, its that application of trust, plus the fact that Lijit is a publisher plugin versus a destination site, that, IMHO, makes the two services highly complementary, but different.

Hope that helps, Feel free to email me at micah [at] lijit [dot] com if you have more questions.

@nixta

I use a custom URL (http://www.micahbaldwin.com) and Lijit works fine. Partly, because the variation in Tumblr themes, sometimes the description box gets a bit wonky.

But, you have the widget installed correctly. I did search for "magical occasion your childhood dreams" which is unique content on your tumblr, and a result returns. It also found older content with this search "poking fun at those affected by the recent underwater cable cuts."

It sometimes takes a little while for everything to index, so maybe that was it?

Tim,

It appears that your custom CSS has driven the search box all the way to the right of the page (scroll over to the right). I have asked one of our developers to see if they could provide you with a CSS hack to make it work. It should work with any of the default themes (even if you play with the colors).

Check your email shortly, I will send you the CSS hack when I get it. In addition, I will post it here.