Another Blog Aggregator?

For a few months I’ve wanted to get involved in a blog aggregator. I like the idea of summarising the blogging horizon and believe that bloggers opinions in South Africa (and worldwide) are going to be more important in the future.

So I approached some of the other blog aggregators that have recently launched so I could get involved. The self valuations they gave to themselves ASTOUNDED me.

I hate the idea of having to start from scratch rather than adding value, but the bubble burst 5 years ago - and it looks like South African start-up’s missed it last time round, so want to go through it now.

So we’re building our own blog aggregator - taking the best of what we see both internationally and locally.

How Can YOU get involved?

Developers, designers, marketers:

We’ve got financing for the project and we’ve got equity - so if you are a developer or a designer looking for an exciting project, then contact us to discuss.

Bloggers:

If you want to be SURE you’re included in our directory and feeds from DAY 1 and start getting FREE traffic, then send us a mail to BLOGPROJECT@EricEdelstein.com and we’ll send you a mail as soon as we are ready to start accepting blogs.

Investors:

If you want to get into this project from the ground level, then contact us. We already have financing, but lets speak and see if we can work something out.

Everyone Else:

A blog aggregator only works if it’s USEFUL - for bloggers to see what the other blogs are doing and how much traffic they’re getting, AND for the general public to find out about trends and interesting blogs etc.

So I’m going to be updating this project EVERY STEP OF THE WAY, so that we can get input from everyone so we know we’re putting together a site that will be USEFUL for everyone.

So contact us with thoughts, suggestions, ideas etc….

TIME FRAME:

I don’t know to be honest. I know the basics of what I want to develop, and hopefully development will start in a few days (or at maximum a few weeks time). But it’s going to BE QUICK! We might launch the blog directory first, and the feeds later. We might include stats tracking like some of the others or decide it’s not really valuable for bloggers, as they can track their stats with so many other programs.

We want to add value for the bloggers AND for the people using the blog aggregator.

How do we give the bloggers value? Give them lots of free traffic and exposure of their blogs to new markets…

How do we give the average man in the street value? This is the million dollar question and one we’ll be working on really hard in the next few weeks.

A few random ideas on this one…

Sure it’s interesting to see an overview of what’s being discussed on the blogs, but you also want to be able to see all the blogs in an area you are interested in. And see the top blogs in a particular area…So basically provide information which gives an overview of all bloggers thoughts and comments, but be able to cut down to specifics - keeping track of your favourite bloggers, finding new similar bloggers (If Joe likes blog A and blog B dealing with cricket, and I only know about blog B, then I want to know about blog A as well)

There are so many ways of moving forward - and as one of the current blog aggregator guys wrote on my blog yesterday - they’ve only released 25% of their plan - so there’s going to be a lot of developments in the future.

I’m also toying with the idea of making this project open source / non profit - or any profits go to a charity etc.

As this is really BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE, perhaps if we have multiple developers working on it for the benefit of charity (giving a few hours each week) it will be more beneficial for everyone…

But sometimes a project has to be commercial for it to be taken forward, so i’ll have to see which way we want to proceed.

But GET INVOLVED….whether it’s free traffic, a development or other job, a stake in this venture, or simply wanting to give your input, I want to hear from you…

CONTACT US