Archive for the ‘Blogging News’ Category
by Darnell Clayton on May 13th, 2011
Blogger has been down for over 24 hours (rivaling Tumblr’s outage earlier), giving the service a black eye after previously boasting a perfect uptime record.
While BlogSpot blogs are still online, users logging into Blogger are greeted with this screen below:
Google is in the process of restoring posts and comments, although instead of fretting and cussing on Twitter (as that will only stress you out even more) here are a few things you can do until Google grants you access to your Blogger Blog. Read More
Categories: Blogging News
Tags: Blogger, google
by Darnell Clayton on May 11th, 2011
Squarespace (a premium CMS service used by thousands of bloggers) is preparing to launch their long awaited revolutionary platform which they’ve dubbed as V6 (which is short for Version 6).
While the company did reveal that Squarespace’s new features that will “power tomorrow’s web,” their CEO did hint V6 will embrace the Tumblog craze (which has already infected Typepad, LiveJournal and WordPress.com). Read More
Categories: Blogging News
Tags: Squarespace, Tumblr
by Darnell Clayton on May 10th, 2011
Taking a cue from Facebook and Twitter, Tumblr recently launched their official share button to the world, which may appeal to bloggers who prefer not to partake of the Tumblr frenzy.
The Tumblr Button can give you complete control over how your content appears when shared on Tumblr. Not only does this mean specifying an excerpt or summary, but also deciding whether it appears as a Link, Quote, Photo, or Video Embed.
Even better: This can be deeply integrated with just about any publishing platform to add contextual buttons next to things like paragraphs or photos. (Tumblr Staff Blog)
The ability for Tumblr’s to control how they share content upon their sites is huge, especially when dealing with the limited sharing options presented by Twitter or even Facebook (the latter which at least provides thumbnails).
While the button might be a huge win for the micro blogging site as well as the Tumblr tribe, bloggers upon other platforms should consider adding the button for the following reasons. Read More
Categories: Blogging News
Tags: Share Buttons, Tumblr
by Darnell Clayton on May 6th, 2011
Taking a cue from Facebook, Disqus has rolled out @Mentions which may not only help increase the number of quality comments upon one’s blog, but help bloggers reach new users as well.
Before @mentions, commenting threads were an island. There wasn’t a way to reach out to people who weren’t already participating. Now with @mentions, you can call out your friends or friendly social media gurus, and get them involved in the conversation.
To begin using @mentions, just type the @ symbol and then continue typing the name of the person you’d like to mention. As you type you will see a drop down list of suggested users to choose from. The drop down is smart; it will update with increasingly accurate suggestions the further you type. (Official Disqus Blog) Read More
Categories: Blogging News
Tags: disqus
by Darnell Clayton on May 5th, 2011
Disqus apparently has nothing to fear from Facebook comments, as the tiny startup revealed some interesting stats regarding the popularity of their commenting system.
The Disqus network of communities reaches nearly 500 million unique visitors every month. This is across the 750,000 websites using Disqus, with about 35 million users participating on these communities. [...]
According to a recent study by Lijit, Disqus is used by 75% of websites who use a third party commenting or discussion system. (Official Disqus Blog)
Note: Emphasis theirs.
It’s no coincidence that Disqus is currently winning the third party commenting wars as the startup makes installing Disqus as simple as possible upon popular platforms like Blogger and Tumblr (via widgets and short codes, respectively).
Rival services (especially Facebook comments) usually require much more tinkering with the code, which can make installing them more intimidating for users unfamiliar with HTML .
Disqus currently supports every major blogging platform and service available save WordPress.com (the latter who only allows IntenseDebate which is similar to Disqus).
For those of you who have installed Disqus, what features do you enjoy the most about the service? Also what features would you add that you find are currently missing?
Categories: Blogging News
Tags: Blog comments, disqus
by Darnell Clayton on May 4th, 2011
Tumblr has just passed the 18 million blog marker, which is phenomenal seeing as the company only boasted 15 million sites in March.
For comparison’s sake WordPress.com (the most popular blogging service after Google’s Blogger) passed the 18 million mark in March, and currently boasts 19.7 million blogs as of this post.
According to Quantcast, Tumblr’s ranking is officially at 34 (out of the top 1 million sites), having climbed up 6 spots in just two weeks!
Despite Tumblr’s limitations (i.e. one image, video or audio per post) people, businesses and even government agencies are flocking towards the platform who seems to have perfected the “art of blogging” (or at the very least micro blogging).
Although several notable platforms have mimicked Tumblr’s post format features over the years, very few blogging services (if any) have witnessed Tumblr’s incredible growth.
For those of you who use Tumblr to power their personal or professional sites (or who have at the very least tried out Tumblr), why do you think users are flocking upon the micro blogging service?
Categories: Blogging News
Tags: Tumblr
by Darnell Clayton on April 26th, 2011
It looks like LiveJournal (a popular blog platform in Russia) is expanding beyond iOS and has quietly launched an app upon Android.
Get the official LiveJournal app and access LiveJournal wherever you roam. LiveJournal is a vibrant, social journaling platform that allows users around the world to find each other based on common passions and pursuits. Users share thoughts, experiences, guidance, artwork, fiction, and more by posting to journals and interest-based communities. (Official Android Market)
The Android app seems to be very similar to its iPhone sibling, as both allow users to upload images, create polls and edit previous entries. LiveJournal also seems to have mimicked their iOS app’s elegant layout upon Android (which is a rarity upon Google’s mobile OS).
Unfortunately the Android app lacks the ability to upload videos directly to ones LiveJournal blog (just like its iOS sibling), although hopefully they will consider adding this feature in the not so distant future.
LiveJournal has yet to announce their Android app upon their official blog (or even reference it upon their mobile page), although users can download the app from Google’s official Android Market.
Categories: Blogging News
Tags: Android, LiveJournal
by Darnell Clayton on April 21st, 2011
It looks like Tumblr has achieved another milestone as of late, as the micro blogging site is now a top 40 player according to Quantcast, just one spot above the US telecom giant known as AT&T.
In November of 2009, Tumblr stumbled past the top 100 sites and approximately 8 months later they broke through the top 50 sites (and as a bonus stealing the bronze away from Typepad).
Although Tumblr’s unique visitors pale in comparison to rivals like WordPress.com and Blogger, respectively, Tumblr’s users seem far more engaged on the site when one looks at their page views (note: since Blogger isn’t quantified, Quantcast can only estimate their size).
Currently Tumblr hosts over17.2 million blogs, which is incredible considering that the service only boasted 15 million sites in March (which is about 2 million additional blogs in less than 40 days).
With the micro blogging site showing no signs of slowing down, it will be interesting to see if Tumblr is able to catch up WP.com, the latter who currently hosts about 19.4 million blogs (up from 18 million last March).
Categories: Blogging News
Tags: Tumblr
by Darnell Clayton on April 20th, 2011
After spending many months in beta, Melody (a fork from Movable Type) has finally shed its Release Candidate skin with the unveiling of its first professional version.
Although the team behind Melody boasts about the platform’s stability and security (which everyone usually says about their preferred CMS), the blog software might have one advantage when compared against rivals. Read More
Categories: Blogging News
Tags: Melody, movable type
by Darnell Clayton on April 15th, 2011
It looks like Google is once again getting tired of supporting legacy accounts, although this time the fight appears to be on Blogger (aka BlogSpot).
For a number of technical and operational reasons, we’ve decided to finally end our support for all legacy accounts and blogs after June 25th, 2011. So if you have a Blogger account and haven’t logged in since 2007, you will lose access to the account and associated content permanently unless you update to the Google Account system before June 25th. (Blogger Buzz)
Unless someone is totally paranoid about Google Accounts, it’s puzzling why anyone would not upgrade (especially with Blogger offering features like Layout Views and Theme Creator).
Google hasn’t indicated whether they will also delete BlogSpot blogs refusing to upgrade, although I would not be surprised if Google did take them down eventually (especially those that have remained inactive for a period of time).
For those of you still using the archaic login system, you can avoid losing access to your blog by clicking upon the legacy claimer which will associate your BlogSpot blog with a Google account.
Note: For those of you who migrated away from Blogger to another platform, you might want to claim your content (especially if you have links pointing back to yourblog.blogspot.com on your site).
Categories: Blogging News
Tags: Blogger, google
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