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The Death of Blog Search

Death of the A-list blogger? Not exactly. Is blog search currently on life support? Yes. Does this affect blog traffic? Yes. Is anyone analyzing this situation holistically? Uncertain.

Over the past several months:

1) Technorati has “redesigned” in such a way that other content, especially mainstream media content has become more prominent.

2) Sphere has done much the same thing and it’s widgets seem to favor mainstream media content.

3) Live.com and Yahoo! don’t currently have blog search at all.

4) Ask.com blog search is on the homepage but few know about it.

5) As written previously, Google has a decent blog search but has not yet put blog search on the home page.

Based on the increase in traffic when Google moved Video to the front page, I firmly believe that a change to Google’s home page to include blog search would yield an immediate increase in blog traffic – regardless of social network sites.

Is Google on the side of the mainstream media or the average blogger? Time will tell by their action or lack thereof. Can we revive blog search?

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Kijiji Falls Short

As much as I’d like to see something replace the aging Craiglist, the US version of Kijiji 1.0 announced yesterday, isn’t it.

There are too many things to list from a user standpoint, here are just a few:

1) No resume posting section in the jobs section. The reply to blind ads system in America is completely broken, why build another one? Why not create some unique value.

2) The user interface to reply to an ad is not good. Manually entering a bunch of data on a screen with a captcha is just plain brutal.

Improve and refine the data categories and user interface and then please try again. Thank you.

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Mossberg: Ask.com Takes Lead In Designing Display Of Search Results

Interesting read – you should check it out.

Here is the cliff notes version:

“Both of the new systems are designed to spare users the extra steps needed in the past to view different types of content related to the same search term. But Google combines these different types of content into one list. Ask puts them on one page in separate sections, which I find to be the superior approach, because each type of result is displayed more effectively; it’s easier to see at a glance what you have.”

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Jason Alba Shares Blogging Secrets as Gifts

Jason Alba is a unique blogger and friend who just had his one year blog birthday. I had previously met him on Linkedin. Jason has many other things in common with me. Amazingly, I only met him in person for the first time recently at SOBCon 07 in Chicago. What I’ll remember about that is he actually seemed more excited to meet me than I was to meet him! And trust me it’s awesome to meet a web friend you’ve known for a long time.

Here are Jason Alba’s 5 blogging secrets post series:

Day 1 – Relationships

Day 2 – Branding

Day 3 – Abundance Mentality This is one of the best posts I’ve seen on the subject though it applies to much, much more than blogging

Day 4 – Build Community

Day 5 – Be Wary of Technology

Congrats Jason! Thanks for the gifts. 🙂

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Chicago Tech Entrepreneurs Aza and Jono Eat Cicadas

At BarCamp Chicago, I became aware that Jono and Aza of Humanized had dined on cicadas during the recent cicada brood XIII emergence! While I didn’t ask if they checked with an allergist before dining and eating cicadas as is recommended by many experts, Aza did share the following about the cicada eating experience when he sent me a follow up roasted cicada picture:

I’ve attached the picture of Jono with skewered Cicadas. We prepared them by marinating them in white wine before roasting them over smoldering coals. They tasted like freshly roasted peanuts, but with a slightly bitter aftertaste. If you closed your eyes, you wouldn’t know that you were eating a cicada except that the legs scratched a bit on the way down.