Blogburst pulled from most Chron.com pages
In 2006, Chron.com was one of the early news sites to announce it would be running BlogBurst content. BlogBurst basically delivers blogger content to relevant sections of news sites. This is how BlogBurst describes its service:
Pluck's BlogBurst network is an opt-in aggregation and syndication service that brings high-quality, topical blogs together with high-traffic web sites. With BlogBurst, bloggers gain visibility, audience reach and traffic through placement on major online publishers and media destinations in real time.
In late February, the Blogburst content disappeared from a number of Chron.com sections.
I emailed Dwight Silverman to ask why Blogburst had (apparently) been dropped, and he tersely replied that there had been some "technical difficulties." I followed up with an email query whether the widgets would eventually be returning to pages from which they were pulled, and he said that was being evaluated.
I had also emailed the Blogburst people, and Rachel Brush eventually replied that there had been some "technical difficulties" but that they hoped to get Blogburst running again soon on the pages where it was pulled.
It's not clear what the "technical difficulties" were, and the folks I queried didn't seem interested in elaborating. Unfortunately, the Blogburst content had declined somewhat in quality in recent weeks, as some bloggers flooded the system with "link post" entries and others had occasional trouble controlling their potty mouths -- not exactly the quality sort of content promised by Blogburst. Maybe that was part of the technical difficulties.
In any case, it's long seemed as though the Washington Post website has a nice approach to outside blog content with the Technorati widgets that appear on stories (linking back to blog posts that reference the story). And USA Today has raised the bar for all online news sites with its launch of features that make its site much more of a social news community. Chron.com may have lots of blogs -- and of course the whimsical linkblog on the editorial page that only Dwight Silverman can update -- but it's starting to lag competing news sites in other cutting-edge web features. Here's hoping that Blogburst makes it back, and features like Technorati widgets, comments on news stories, and Digg-like ratings by users all eventually make it to Chron.com.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 03/04/07 10:33 PM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (4)
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