The Inquisitr » readburner

Any problems today? On Twitter #blamedrewscancer

Duncan Riley — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:44:42 +0000

Drew Olanoff, well known in the social media community through his work with ReadBurner and other startups and sites has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

It’s staggering that such a thing could happen to such a great guy, but ultimately cancer doesn’t discriminate. I had the privilege of spending time with Drew at Gnomedex in 2008, and you couldn’t ask to meet a more affable, interesting and engaging guy. It’s an opinion of him I don’t hold alone, and the world would be a far worse place without him.

To know Drew though is to know that humor can be found in many things, and as such Drew has launched the site Blame Drew’s Cancer. The site encourages people to (as the name suggests) blame Drew’s cancer for all matter of ills via the Twitter hashtag #blamedrewscancer. There’s fundraising as well for cancer research based on the number of tweets with the hashtag.

I’m not a religious person so there’s no god speed from me, but if there is any karma in the universe (and despite being an atheist, I’m convinced on occasion that there is), thousands of puppies will die due to Drews affliction.

If you have any problems today, be sure on Twitter to #blamedrewscancer

Update: Ryan Kuder is running a marathon to raise money for the cause. Details here.

ReadBurner to launch categories tonight

Duncan Riley — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:17:10 +0000

Meme tracking service ReadBurner will tonight introduce categories as part of the rollout of the ReadBurner platform.

ReadBurner’s technology will allow content categorization on an open basis. While the site itself may suggest certain categories, the interesting part is with the Platform, that will allow developers and publishers to utilize ReadBurner sharing data in their applications in thousands of different categories created dynamically from thousands of different sources.  

The Inquisitr was the first partner to sign up to the closed beta program, and we’ll have better access to the platform tomorrow for a more in-depth review, so apologies for being light on detail.

The commitment to offering developers and site owners access to categorized and unique popular link data was shared on tonight’s ReadBurner podcast. The details are towards the end of the show (embedded below).

ReadBurner

A new look for The Inquisitr and a new partnership with ReadBurner

Duncan Riley — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:49:44 +0000

Blog design is in its biggest state of flux since blogging first came of age in the first half of the decade. Expected norms, such as chronological full posts on the front page are slowly being replaced by the rise of “magazine” style front pages.

When The Inquisitr launched in May, we launched with a theme that embraced the magazine style, and although we weren’t the first, variations on the magazine style front page have been adopted by more and more since. They work well, but most are focused on driving additional page views internally, and don’t seek to share that space with others. It makes complete sense from a site owner’s perspective, but it doesn’t always deliver the best experience for the reader.

We’ve always wanted to link out more, but our old style limited our options to posts and the sidebar. Great sites link out lots, and as Publishing 2.0 reported in September, sites that sends readers away with links have the highest engagement.

Introducing a new look for The Inquisitr

Along with a range of aesthetic changes, the new look throws out the expected norms from magazine style front pages, and creates something unique. Alongside our own content, our front page now includes a strong range of external links that delivers a richer reading experience. The front page of The Inquisitr is now a portal indexing popular stories from the web, the latest celebrity headlines, and hot memes from FriendFeed, alongside our own content.

Partnership with ReadBurner + ReadBurner Platform Launch

One of our problems in providing external links was freshness: sites that embrace external links usually have staff who are able to constantly updating links. We don’t have the luxury of a having 24 hour coverage of adding links, so we knew we needed to source links from another site. Enter ReadBurner.

From today, ReadBurner is an official data provider for The Inquisitr. Initially, this means ReadBurner will be supplying most of the links under the “best of the web” section on the front page. We are supplementing this data with manual links, and automatic inclusion of links from a select number of sites, but the majority of the links are coming from ReadBurner.

ReadBurner is announcing the private beta launch of the ReadBurner Platform, a set of APIs that allows developers and publishers to utilize ReadBurner sharing data in their applications, with The Inquisitr as the first pilot partner. Using the ReadBurner Platform, developers can tap into a database that features the most shared content across the Web in thousands of different categories from thousands of different sources.  

We’ll be working closely with ReadBurner in the coming months on how we can utilize their data more to further enrich the external links we provide, and different ways we may be able to value add using that data.

A full copy of the media release for the ReadBurner deal below or more details on the ReadBurner blog here.

Conclusion

We hope you like the new look. We’ve spent months listening to feedback from readers on what they didn’t like and liked about the old design. We’ve done some basic appeal testing in terms of color mix, and we’re confident that the new look is cleaner and is certainly a lot less gray. There will be some bugs on the site (for example I know one part of the front page is broken in IE 6) but we’ll work through those, and we’ll probably tweak some other aspects as well in the coming days and weeks to get it 100% right. Ultimately we want this site to be a great place for you, our readers to visit, and we believe that by linking out more, we not only share some link love, but improve your experience. Embracing this change defines The Inquisitr as unique in the sea of blogs, and supports our motto: “the better mix.”

ReadBurner Inquisitr Deal – Upload a Document to Scribd

Housekeeping: Podcasts, Parties….

Duncan Riley — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:35:34 +0000

Housekeeping: For those interested I’m the guest on this week’s Readburner Podcast. We won’t just be talking about The Inquisitr, Google Trends, Copyright and ReadBurner news is also on the agenda so it will make for an interesting discussion. The podcast starts at 10pm EDT Wednesday (7pm Pacific) and you can tune in live on Talkshoe here. A recording will be available after the show.

If you’re south of the equator, tonight’s MTUB (Melbourne Twitter Underground Brigade) is sponsored by The Inquisitr. We couldn’t afford a launch party, so this is about as close as we’ll get. There will be a tab running so if you’re local join us for a beer or three. The event starts at 5:30pm (AEST) Thursday 26 June at The Workshop Bar, Level 1 413 Elizabeth St (entrance on A’Beckett St). Google Maps view here, and it’s walking distance from Melbourne Central on the City Underground loop.

No related posts.

ReadBurner Adds NewsGator Support

Duncan Riley — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:44:10 +0000

Up and coming meme tracker Read Burner has added built in support for NewsGator products.

The Newsgator integration sees NewGator “clippings” (a bit like shared/ starred items in Google Reader) count towards ReadBurner share counts, meaning the service now meme tracks from a broader number of people, in theory delivering better results.

ReadBurner has also added a “lightbox feature,” so when a user clicks on stories, the story loads in a lightbox on ReadBurner, but notably the lightbox shows the content from the source on the source. It’s a great feature but more importantly it demonstrates a way to deliver an easier, more intuitive user experience without the need to resort to copyright theft. Everyone wins, no one loses.

The thing I like about services such as ReadBurner and competitor RSSmeme (who also is expanding out of Google Reader tracking alone..note I found this link on ReadBurner) is the decentralization of the tracking away from a central short list to a broad cross-section of the community. The real difference is in the results delivered: a broad section, with less dominance by an arrogant few. It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly more egalitarian, and that’s always a good thing.

ReadBurner Gets Digg Like Features

Duncan Riley — Fri, 23 May 2008 17:00:31 +0000

Social memetracker ReadBurner is releasing a range of new features today that delivers Digg style functionality, but without the direct voting.

New section “Climbing” provides a Digg style popular list with stories that reach a certain threshold hitting the top of the page, and then is updated as another, and another story comes along.

“Top” provides a memetracker style service that tracks the most popular stories in the past 24 hours, based on shares across Google Reader and Netvibes, and the new “New” section listing the newest stories to hit the system.

The last new release is a “Breaking News” feature that is focused on highlighting new stories that are getting a lot of attention in a short space of time. When a story has high velocity (a lot of shares in a short period of time) ReadBurner will display a big breaking news graphic (CNN-style) that shows up on every page of the site and links people to the story. In (perhaps fighting) words the ReadBurner team claim that in testing their breaking news feature was listing big stories hours before they hit TechMeme.

For those who haven’t visited the site ReadBurner is a smart service that is leading the way in providing meme tracking using data from next wave 2.0 sites as opposed to blogs alone. Since being acquired by Adam Ostrow and Drew Olanoff in March the site has been overhauled and also incorporates inline support for Google Reader.

Note the new features may be live on the site at the time this post goes live, but if they aren’t they won’t be far away