Thursday, December 07, 2006

Improved Guest Post Box

Based on user feedback we have updated our guest post box look and feel. It clearly labels the post as a guest post. The fonts are more consistent in size. The guest post box still uses the style of your blog template to make sure things are presented in the format that you like.

How Guest Blog Box Works

We just edited our site to clearly explain how the guest post box works.

The guest post box is shown only when your audience is looking at the first page of your blog through a browser. The guest post box does not show up when people look at other pages on your blog such as the second page or post specific archives. The guest post box does not show up in your RSS feed.

Furthermore, the post shown in the guest post box will change every time your audience visits. This ensures that there is always something fresh and new on your blog when your audience visits. Your audience expects to see new content when they visit.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Server is back up!

We did a major upgrade on our server, which resulted in some down time this weekend. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Our server is back up and it is robust and fast!

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Officially support wordpress

blogger.com was the first blog platform postreach support. Our team has been working very hard on adding support to wordpress, and we are now done!

We now officially support wordpress! We are excited!

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Tagging helps people find your blog

Tagging is extra effort but well worth it. It makes it easier for people to find your blog via different services on the Internet.

Tagging gives you a means of telling Internet services, such as blog search engines, what your blog posts are about. Before tagging, Internet services would try to guess what your post was about by using text analysis or link analysis. Text analysis isn't always accurate and link analysis depends upon links getting built up....both these methods are approximations/guesses as to what your posts are about. Blog search engines such as Technorati analyze your tags and use your explicit input about what your post is about. This allows blog search engines to show your blog posts as a search result even before you get links pointing to your post. This drives people to your blog that are interested in timely content.

postreach leverages the tags in your posts to make sure your content is shown to a relevant audience. We match the tags that other blogs have requested guest bloggers on. That gets your blog posts in front of the right audience when they are in the mood to read blogs.

Tags are used for many services on the Internet. One example is a service that searches blogs for tags specific to classifieds listings. Many new services that can bring the right people to your content are using tags. If you are using blogger.com we recommend using the new blogger beta that launched in August. It has a feature called labels which is their name for tagging. You can check that out here it is really easy to use. We use it for this blog.

You can learn more about how to tag at Technorati or at microformats.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

postreach beta is launched!

Yes, our beta is launched!

We have been working very hard to get all the key features in this beta release. We are confident that we have the best solution to help bloggers expand their audience and become better bloggers!

postreach is still a work in progress and we are very interested in how we might improve it. Please send us feedback on how to better serve you.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Applying Crowd Knowledge to Wisdom of Crowds


I am half way through "The Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki. His approach is easy to read and entertaining. I decided to take a step back to make sure I'm not drinking too much koolaid. I decided to see if there are any criticism of the book that I should be aware of while reading. Over to Amazon I went for book reviews and decided to skim the negative reviews. It seems that the main complaints fall into three categories:

1) evidence is biased in favor of the thesis (what would you expect?)

2) it is an article/paper turned into a book (common practice for books that are meant to be consumed during a transcontinental flight)

3) a bit light on depth

Some reviews suggested more depth or related content in:

Elliott Wave Principle by Robert Prechter's
Extraordinary Delusions and The Madness of Crowds by Charles McKay

I will report back with my thoughts on the book when I finish and also if I get a chance to read the two recommended books.