Blogged Blog

We’ve been pretty busy working on ways to improve Blogged and creating tools to make discovering blogs easier. More on that later.

We can tell you that we have changed the way you rate blogs. Now you can rate a blog in increments of 0.1 instead of 0.5. One of our users suggested this idea and we went ahead and took the advice.

Remember when we showed you our new Blogged shirts? Well, we are looking for ways to give some of these awesome shirts to our users. We are thinking up ways (a contest, perhaps) to give some of these babies out. Stay tuned.

In case you forgot what the shirts look like, here you go:

Alright all you blog owners, it’s time to claim your blog. We’ve added a verification process that allows blog owners to be listed as the author on the blog’s detail page. All you have to do is click on the link provided in the author field.

Once you have been verified as the author, you will be allowed to request changes to the:

Title
Description
Tags
Category
RSS URL

We’ve also spruced up the related blogs section that offers you a thumbnail preview of other blogs in the same category.

We are working on more changes that will make discovering blogs easier.

Ken and I just came back from Austin after spending 3 days at the SXSW conference. It was our first time and we both learned a lot and met some really cool people from the blogosphere. Here are some key learnings I’ll take with me next time I go to SXSW:

1. Do not wear uncomfortable shoes (especially heels) because there was a lot of walking and standing in line involved. I’m serious, you need to wait in line to get into every party at SXSW
2. Check twitter frequently to learn where all the cool people and great parties are
3. Don’t be shy, just walk up and talk to anyone, you’re bound to learn something new

Keeping #3 in mind and with a “little” encouragement from my partner, I went up to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and introduced myself. I told him we recently launched our site and our plan to release our Facebook app. He was very friendly and wished me luck with Blogged.

We also got some very valuable feedback from bloggers on how to make Blogged even better as a blog discovery tool for users. We’ll be working on those improvements and features on our roadmap for the next few weeks. Stay tuned for more.

Gladys

It has been quite a fun ride this past week. After announcing the launch of Blogged, we’ve received numerous compliments, well-wishes, complaints, improvement suggestions and criticisms. One blogger even titled their review of our site “Blogged.com — 1994 Called, And They Want Their Blog Directory Back” which I found quite amusing and witty. Gotta love the creative blogger minds!

But in all seriousness, from the tremendous amount of useful feedback we’ve received, we have added several new features which we’ve recently incorporated. We’ve also received many requests for editorial review and to accommodate this, we’ve added a “request review” link located just under the rating section of a blog’s profile. In the coming weeks, you will see several new enhancements that will give blog owners more control over how their blogs are displayed.

I’m really excited about all the great feedback so far and I hope you’ll keep sending us your thoughts.

Kenneth (Co-founder)

P.S. Gladys (Co-founder) and I will be at SXSW this weekend. We are not going to have a booth or anything but if you see one of us with a “Blogged.com” name tag or T-shirt, please feel free to come by and say hello. We’ll be happy to give you one of our nifty Blogged.com shirts. The shirts are really nice quality too — I wouldn’t want to put our logo on anything less!

It’s been quite a busy week around the Blogged offices. The launch went great and we’ve gotten some great feedback. We want to thank everyone for their support and good wishes.

We are working furiously to improve the site and creating tools to make finding blogs easier. We’ve already added a few new things based on what you had to say:

• You can now subscribe to a blog’s RSS feed (Thanks Michael!) when viewing a blog’s profile page.
• Added an optional email field in the “submit a blog” page.
• Added a link to request a review of a blog
• Improved the related blogs algorithm

Our editorial team is also hard at work reviewing and categorizing blogs. This is a big job since there are millions of blogs out there. OK, maybe not millions.

We welcome and read everything that comes our way and strive to improve our site based on your comments and suggestions. So please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@blogged.com.

This site is all about blog discovery. It’s a place for readers to discover interesting blogs and for authors to discover who their readers are. Blogged goes beyond being a traditional blog directory. We focus on providing tools for bloggers and readers alike. Through our database, readers can discover and explore new blogs. Through our social network, blog authors and their readers can communicate and interact directly with each other.

Our blogs are reviewed, rated, and categorized by our editors, so you won’t have to experience the frustration of filtering through blogs that are either spam or irrelevant. You’ll be able to find blogs that you would have never found through a traditional blog search.

Blogged doesn’t require anyone to own a blog to sign up. In fact, most of our tools are geared towards readers. We offer bookmarking, sharing, and feedback functions. Anyone can review and rate a blog and help it rise in the rankings. With some handy tools at both the site and post level, Blogged is a great place for readers looking to start out their day with a fresh list of unread posts from their favorite blogs.

Blog authors can benefit from knowing how their site is perceived. With easy access to reader comments and ratings, authors can see opinions, suggestions and even criticisms. By being listed on Blogged, owners will make their blog easily available to their specific audience. Aside from a title, description and rating, screen shots are made available to attract readers.

Of course we had to create a blog for Blogged. We’ll keep you updated on what’s going on with the site, in the blog world, and lots of other fun stuff. We’ve gotten some great support so far and hope to continue to grow. Again, welcome and we hope you find the site not only useful, but fun as well.

The Blogged.com Team