Washington Post launches 'blogroll' for traffic-hungry bloggers

Hey, bloggers. Disappointed by the single-digit number on your FeedBurner tracker? Embarrassed about how few Technorati trackbacks you have? Don't worry. The Washington Post wants to be your friend.

Traditional media's forays into the online world, as we all know, have a tendency to be kind of awkward, and The Washington Post's has been no exception. (Case in point: the Ben Domenech kerfuffle.) But now the D.C. paper has announced a new program that aims to reach out to the further corners of the blogosphere--an advertising network in the form of a blogroll.

In the traditional sense, a "blogroll" is a blogger's own set of links to other blogs, often displayed in a sidebar. It could be considered a form of advertising--oftentimes a small-time blogger will add a link to a slightly more-established blog to his blogroll in the hopes that the blogger for the latter will subsequently return the favor and drive more traffic to the smaller blog. The "I'm going to link to you, um, can you link back to me?" process can be pretty awkward, echoing of middle-school inquiries about sitting at the popular kids' lunch table.

The Washington Post's new network, which it calls the Sponsored Blogroll--brainchild of Jeff Burkett, head of Sales Development at Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive--aims to promote a corporate version of the same business model, minus the awkwardness (they hope). Bloggers can opt into an agreement whereby they display advertising on their blogs and in return receive a link in the "Blogroll" section of the Washington Post's online content. Revenue from the ads displayed on members' blogs is split between the Post and the bloggers.

To start, the Sponsored Blogroll has partnered with three blog networks--entrepreneur-oriented AllBusiness, travel blog hub BootsNAll, and general-interest Creative Weblogging. Interested bloggers, however, can toss their names in the hat and participate in the early phase of what Burkett calls "an experiment" in new-media advertising.

It's too early to determine how successful the program will be, especially considering many bloggers' hesitance to display advertising on their TypePad or WordPress creations. But it could be a hit, especially considering the number of D-list bloggers out there who have naively asked a blogosphere bigwig for a link back...and gotten burned.