DISQUS

If you want to check out some widgets, my partner and I have built some here that will let you search, follow the headlines or get a topic cloud from the blogs in any state focused on news and politics. We're building them to follow a growing number of cities too. http://www.blognetnews.com/widgets

If you want to check out some widgets, my partner and I have built some here that will let you search, follow the headlines or get a topic cloud from the blogs in any state focused on news and politics. We're building them to follow a growing number of cities too. http://www.blognetnews.com/widgets

Nice headline. Wish I wrote it.

That's the greatest apology ever. Politicians could learn from you.

It is a good bet that the reporter knew what city she was talking about and the copy editor, writing headlines for ten bazillion stories got confused.

I think the "joke" was taken wrong BECAUSE the rest of the article was so incredibly detailed and meticulous.

I just noted back on my blog that the mature and upstanding journalists at the Suffolk newspaper have removed all the comments from the editorial including mine and Kat's.

If Scrabulous was intellectual property piracy, the pirates weren't very good.

Pirates don't spend money turning what they steal into a new and better business for the victim. Rather than pirates, the scrabulous guys were more like free R&D and no-risk start-up capital for Hasbro.

These pirates should be getting a medal.

I wasn't impressed when I tried it either. I hope they get the bugs out because I'd like to support them.

You might also check out today's NYTs story: http://twurl.nl/vj0cd0 The essence of the story is how the Associated Press has asserted that 20-70 word excerpts of its stories on blog and citizen media sites are violations of copyright.

Anyway, Buzz Machine, Arriington, Techmeme and many others have weighed in to trash the AP's heavy-handed assertion of copyright in a way that clearly tramples fair use. The fact is that bloggers need broad interpretation of fair use to thrive.

The blogs involved are very successful at making themselves a part of the conversation in the state.
We track political blogs state by state, measuring traffic, links comments etc and then publish weekly rankings of the top 20 state-focused blogs (as opposed to national-focus blogs like Captain's Quarters. As I recall, three were number one in last week's rankings.

Minn. Monitor is currently top 10
http://www.blognetnews.com/minnesota/influence-...

Iowa Independent is currently top 10
http://www.blognetnews.com/iowa/influence-index...

Colorado Confidential is currently top 10
http://www.blognetnews.com/colorado/influence-i...

Michigan Messenger is currently top 10
http://www.blognetnews.com/michigan/influence-i...

We've launched niche competitors all over the country. Some with partners like blognetwork.knoxnews.com (all blogs in and around Knoxville, TN) and many without www.blognetnews.com/iowa (the best state and local news and politics blogs in Iowa) and www.blognetnews.com/autos (coverage of the auto industry from the blogosphere).

Each niche is searchable and loaded with stats on comments, links, number of posts etc.

Sheesh. They still matter. You shouldn't have to work to be able to follow a conversation and besides, unless you're Andreessen making readers work means making plenty of them leave.

More importantly, you shouldn't have to have a blog to part of the conversation.

Ben, Thanks for the kind words about BNN. What you're seeing is version 1.0 -- which is focused on building readership for communities of bloggers. In addition to our aggregated site, we have community-focused search engines that bloggers can use on their sites and we turn the combined RSS feeds of a community into a headline feed widget that all the bloggers can post on their sites to help promote the rest of the community (it is sort of like an automated blogroll of the newest stuff)

The next stages will be later this year and hopefully include some of the ideas you're talking about like discussion forums and tech help guides etc.

Another thing going on is we're using all the data we aggregate to create "influence" rankings within each slice of the blogosphere we cover that will be updated weekly. We hope to use those rankings to get some mainstream media notice for the most influential blogs. That will start next month.

Take a look at www.blognetnews.com/virginia -- this is the prototype site for something we are going to build hundreds of in order to provide networks of bloggers that already interact and share readers with a constantly updated "front page" to help drive readers to the best new content.

We'd be happy to talk to folks who want something like this for their already existing networks. You can reach me at editor@blognetnews.com

Thanks for the link. One minor correction. BlogNetNews.com doesn't just cover Virginia, there are now 21 states in our network including California, New York, Texas, Florida and Ohio. We'll be filling in all the rest in the next few months.

Best,
Dave

For another take on local blog aggregation. Check here: www.blognetnews.com