small signs of blogs reaching the mainstream

Hot Searches is one of my favorite sections on our homepage. It gives me a quick idea of what people are talking about in the blogosphere. I’ve noticed that our community searches on a broader range of topics than the technology/ political and current event posts that we normally see featured in the blogosphere. Today’s hot searches include Ben Roethlisberger (bad motorcycle accident for the Steelers QB), Mariah Carey (she lost a bomb of weight), The U.S. Open and of course the World Cup (GOOOOAAAAAAAAL). Another search that just moved into the top ten for the day is people looking for posts talking about the Garrison Keillor article he wrote for Tribune Media Services. I found this development particularly interesting because it serves as an example of how the blog reader can be (and is in this case) very different from the blog writer. Only a handful of bloggers (4 at the time of this post) have blogged about the article yet it’s surfaced as one of our top searched on terms.

I’m excited to see both trends, more mainstream topic searches and readership interest driving the discussion. It’s not only nice to see other blog topics gaining readership, it’s critical if the blogosphere is going to cross into the mainstream content habit. We’d love to hear your thoughts on what you think will help the blogosphere become more mainstream.

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Sphere and Cymfony partner to enable marketers to understand bloggers impact on their brands

With so many people reading, writing, and commenting on blogs, leading brands realize they need to better understand how the most influential voices in the blogosphere are impacting the opinions of their customers. Identifying those voices on a timely basis is difficult.

Sphere and Cymfony, the leading innovator in combining traditional and social media research and analysis, are announcing a partnership that will expand Cymfony’s service offerings. By being the first to draw on Sphere’s advanced blog search and relevance technology, Cymfony will provide its clients more data and better analysis to gain a deeper understanding of how the messages in social media can change and amplify messages delivered via traditional media. As a result, Cymfony clients can more accurately measure the effectiveness of their communications, identify ideas for new products, isolate issues around service quality and discover emerging trends.

Cymfony will first integrate Sphere’s data about blog link structures, quality, as well as who is linking to whom, and perform analysis of the relative influence of blog posters within an existing conversation. Second, Cymfony will use Sphere’s technology to analyze meta data and establish baselines, including posting frequency, lengths of postings, and other data. Third, Sphere’s advanced spam elimination algorithms will ensure that Cymfony clients get all of the most relevant blogs without the spam. Cymfony will provide an additional layer of semantic analysis of each blog posting to help Cymfony customers identify the most influential voices in the blogosphere.

We’re thrilled to be working with Cymfony with whom we have a shared vision of how the traditional and people media worlds are evolving and converging. Stay tuned as we announce several other partnerships in the coming weeks.

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