publishers

Webjam offers Apple-like simplicity for site building

Earlier today I had a great demo with Webjam, a do-it-all publishing service that launched at the Le Web conference in late 2006. In many ways it was ahead of its time with a platform that lets you create your own social network, blog, online shop, or iGoogle alternative.

Like Ning (which picked up $60 million in funding last month), it lets users build pages out of various components without needing to know any coding. The twist is that if you come across someone else's design of modules that you dig, you can copy the entire thing to your own page and make it your own. The same goes for individual modules, which can be ported over to any of your Webjam pages, complete with whatever feeds or standalone content they contain.

Co-founder and CEO Yann Motte, formerly of Yahoo Europe thinks his platform's got what it takes to rise above the noise of other platform services, social networks, and blogging tools because it can do nearly all of those things nonexclusively. "[Users] don't have to split their activities between several Web sites," he says. "It works for you and me, and other people in this industry, but it does not scale for the average user." Does that mean he wants people to give up their Facebook profiles? No, but Motte believes that Webjam offers the average user more possible combinations to post and discover quality content than the competition.

The service has already seen accelerating growth in the U.S. over the past few months. Motte says the site has been growing 10 percent a week and is seeing users spend more than 12 minutes on the site (according to Compete), something I think is due to the page creation tool, which is really well done. If you've ever used Netvibes or Pageflakes it uses the same system; you simply have a bunch of different boxes you can drop down onto a blank editing canvas, which can be skinned and re-arranged to your liking. Motte says that in many ways his system is like Facebook's except more open because you get more control over the privacy controls of each box, as well as the data that goes with it.

These extensive privacy settings might be one of the most complex bits of the service. Each module has its own settings for viewership and editing. Users who visit your creation can become members, and in some cases co-contributors to the content that gets pushed out for others to read. Motte's example was to show me a page where a Webjam user had two different versions of a blog--one for everyone in the world to see, and a member's-only version.

One thing I'm not sold on is that people would pick Webjam as a blogging platform over a more established service like WordPress or Blogger. Motte acknowledges that Webjam's blog editor does not offer as many tools or the same level of community interaction, but comes back to say that if you decide to change the focus of your site later on it's not limited to being just a blog, and that's not a freedom most users are used to having. One service that took that idea and ran with it was Tumblr, which lets people change course if they get tired of writing things, and simply lets them republish photos, videos, audio, and IM conversations.

When it comes down to it, I found Webjam's creation tools and skinning to be far easier to use than the ones that come with Ning. I think the results looked a little better too, at least with some of the themes you can apply which are on par with some of the really simple and beautiful ones on iGoogle. What's not as established as Ning is the business model, which for now is simple text ads. The good news for power users looking to potentially get a little cash off of the hosted sites is that the service is rolling out a premium plan in July, which is currently being offered for free until then. Premium members get all the usual perks of services like this, with domain mapping and the option to remove or place banner ads.

To see some examples of popular Webjam pages you can go here. You can also check out a quick demo of the site maker in action after the break. … Read more

Dries Buytaert crowned one of the Businessweek's top technology entrepreneurs

It's very cool to see Dries Buytaert, co-founder of Acquia and founder of Drupal, listed on Businessweek's list of the world's top technology entrepreneurs. The story of Drupal - started by Dries in his spare time - is amazing, and testifies to the power of open source.

Great work, Dries. You deserve it.

Citizen news site under fire for proposed ad-policy changes

The first rule of building an active online community? Don't tell people they need to be active.

Helium.com, a hub for citizen journalists and writers, drew hundreds of heated--and sometimes snarky--comments from its membership over the weekend after the company said it wanted to change its payment system to reward the most active participants, and slough off the dead weight.

Helium pays a portion of its advertising revenue to people who write the most widely read stories on the site--popularity that is based on user reviews from members. But the company suggested that its new system would … Read more

Gawker Media slims its blog network

This post was updated at 8:46 a.m. PDT.

New York blog czar Nick Denton, founder and publisher of Gawker Media, is selling three of the new-media company's properties: Idolator, Gridskipper, and Wonkette.

In an internal e-mail obtained by CNET News.com, Denton explained the sale: "To be blunt: they each had their editorial successes; but someone else will have better luck selling the advertising than we did."

When asked via instant message to comment on prices, Denton replied with "Nope!"

Music blog Idolator will be sold to Buzznet, the pop culture social-media site … Read more

Yudu Freedom hosts your PDFs, makes them SEO friendly

Yudu Freedom is a new entrant to the world of online document publishing. Like Scribd, it lets you take PDF files from your hard drive and host them online for free. The files can be viewed a little faster than with Adobe's Acrobat reader, and it runs entirely in Flash with that neat page turning effect you might have seen in other document hosting services such as Issuu and Idio.

Yudu promises that any document you upload will be search engine optimized, making it show up in Google, and so on. There's also a built in search tool, … Read more

Courts chip away at Web sites' decade-old legal shield

For more than a decade, Web site operators have enjoyed a broad legal shield against lawsuits filed over material posted by their users, which has let user-driven sites like YouTube and MySpace.com flourish.

But a pair of recent rulings by federal district judges have chipped away at that protective shield. If those decisions are upheld on appeal, and if more judges follow suit, Web site operators and Internet service providers may find themselves compelled to police what their users post--or face the unsettling prospect of being held liable for the contents.

"We fear these cases might inspire a … Read more

Hearst Magazines acquires relationship advice site

Publishing giant Hearst Magazines announced on Wednesday plans to acquire Answerology, a New York-based start-up that offers a question-and-answer service for relationship advice. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but PaidContent reported that it was in the seven figures.

Matthew Milner, Answerology's founder, will be brought on board Hearst as vice president of community and social media in the conglomerate's Hearst Magazines Digital Media unit.

Answerology's schtick is that it allows users to ask anonymous questions about family, marriage, dating, and other heated subjects pertaining to relationships, and those questions can be targeted toward select … Read more

Two sides in ESPN's Web advertising broadside

MediaWeek has the scoop on a brewing revolt being orchestrated by ESPN against the use of ad networks. The report says that ESPN cut ties with Specific Media and other unnamed ad networks. If the story's accurate, you can bet other Web publishers will follow the sports giant's lead.

Publisher grumbling about advertising networks is nothing new. The critics will tell you that they diminish the value of their brands, and I suppose there's a measure of truth there. Algorithm-based ad selling isn't going to be for everyone. Of course, that hasn't stopped Internet publishers … Read more

Battle of the comment add-ons: 6 services compared

Commenting can play a major part in making an author's blog post deeper, and more interesting to read. It's like having a discussion in real life versus simply hearing someone speak--there are details, and alternate angles that can come of making ideas go two ways instead of one.

When creating a personal blog or one for business, there are the standard comment systems that come with your blogging platform, as well as a whole new breed of third-party tools that can add extra functionality, and potentially a deeper level of discussion to your site. So which ones are worth installing?

We've picked six of the major players in this space, and talked about what makes them more useful than the ones that come built-in to popular hosted blogging services like WordPress and Movable Type. Even if you're not on one of these two platforms, several of these solutions will work on a site you've built from scratch.

CoComment lets your readers subscribe to comments on a blog post, and share that thread with other CoComment users. It scrapes people's comments from threads they've replied to, so they can monitor and access the responses for multiple sites in one centralized location.

Adding CoComment to your site doesn't involve replacing your current commenting system, but it means you're signing up to be part of the CoComment network. If your users are active members of this community you might get new people discovering your content and taking part in the conversation--which could translate to site growth and prominence. The two things that turned us off to the service were the sometimes slow service and distracting ads that take are found on CoComment's main service.

Co.mments is a plug-in for blog owners, as well as a simple browser bookmarklet that lets you (or your readers) track conversations regardless of whether or not the stock commenting system offers such a feature. It works similar to some of the Web commerce price trackers we've looked at before, and will notify you if there are changes. Commenters can keep an eye on all the conversations they're tracking in one spot, and quickly browse through them like an river of news with a full list of keyboard shortcuts.

If you like Wordpress' built-in comment system and Askimet spam-catching plug-in, and don't want to ditch it for some completely different system, then Co.mments is a simple way to add tracking services for your readers so that they will know when to come back. However, it doesn't offer some of the advanced functionality of the others, and is mainly for helping your users keep track of what's going on with various threads on your blog--not making them more advanced. Several other services we're profiling offer subscription features of their own, but we liked Co.mments' in-box that lets you go catch up on multiple conversations in one place.

Continue reading to find out the other four services and which ones we picked out of the bunch.

Q&A: Battelle talks blog roll-ups, Google, and Federated Media's future

John Battelle knows tech booms and busts. He's been at the forefront of them for nearly two decades.

In 1993, he co-founded Wired, a print magazine that set a standard in technology coverage and spawned popular sites like Hotbot and Suck in a move to build an online Condé Nast--before its time. (Condé Nast now owns Wired.) Then in 1998, he co-founded The Industry Standard, a clubby tech publication that grew much like the overvalued dot-coms it covered, and it eventually imploded with the pack.

A longtime journalist, Battelle turned his attention to the zeitgeist in 2003: … Read more