WebProNews

Tag: Blogs

  • Why You Need a Killer About Me Page

    Why You Need a Killer About Me Page

    Your about me page is, statistically speaking, one of your top 10 pages on your site. It’s right up there with your home page, your most popular articles, and your “call to action” pages.

    We’ve put together 4 specific reasons you need to invest time into building your about me page, and we’ve got a guide that walks you step by step how to build an about me page.

    1. You need to establish yourself as an authority in your industry

    Think about this. Why are you reading this article? It’s trust. You believe what I’m writing to be truthful, factual, and best of all: useful. You have an opportunity to build this trust on your about me page.

    2. You need to differentiate yourself from your competitors

    There are 1.26 million results for “marketing blog”. So how do you make yourself stand out? You tell a story. And you can tell your story on your About Me page.

    3. It will Inspire your readers to take action with your ‘why’

    Why are you on this site? Are you here to be passive and never engage? Or do you want to learn, network, and build your business? You can establish why your audience should be on your site on your About Me page.

    4. Your About Me page will help you close ‘warm leads’

    If someone is visiting your about me page, they most likely already know your name. They could have seen a tweet you sent, a comment you wrote or an article you guest published. So now that they’re on your About Me page, then this your opportunity to convince them to buy from you.

    about-me-info

    Editor’s Note: Andrew Wise dives deeper into this subject in a post here.

  • WordPress.com Gets Refresh With New App and Features

    Automattic announced the launch of a new version of WordPress.com, which it has built from the ground up to let you update pages and respond to comments from a desktop app, manage all blogs and sites from one spot on any device, spend less time on administration/uploading, and find “the best content” people publish with WordPress.

    The new WordPress.com includes previously launched features like the new editor, improved stats pages, and a new reader, but now there’s also a new Mac app.

    “Use the desktop app to focus on your content and design with no other browser tabs to distract you — or to keep your sites sidelined but accessible,” writes Michelle W. on the WordPress.com news blog. “Build your site anywhere, in whatever way helps you get your best work done: the app is powered by the same technology that runs WordPress.com, creating a seamless experience for publishing and browsing whether you’re in a browser, a mobile app, or the desktop app.”

    “And all of WordPress.com, app included, is built with new technologies that are faster and smoother,” she adds. “Use the time you save uploading photos or configuring menus to focus on your magnum opus instead. WordPress.com should be nimble enough to keep up with you, today, tomorrow, and ten years from now — and now it is.”

    Apps for Windows and Linux are on the way. You can sign up here to be notified when they become available.

    In addition to the new app, the Jetpack plugin now provides self-hosted sites with access to the new publishing and site-building tools and app.

    They also open sourced the whole codebase on GitHub.

    There’s also a new “Discover” feature in Reader to help you discover new content published with WordPress.

    Images via WordPress.com

  • WordPress.com Gets New High-Speed Editor

    WordPress.com Gets New High-Speed Editor

    WordPress.com announced that it now has a new editor that’s faster and cleaner. According to the people behind it, it’s fast, responsive, and lets you create posts and pages more quickly both on desktop and mobile.

    According to WordPress.com, the new editor includes instant saving and quick sharing. You can easily manage posts regardless of if you have one or multiple blogs and authors. You can access draft posts in a single click, and content is saved automatically.

    You can drag/drop photos, music files, documents, and videos into the post or page. There’s also a revamped post calendar to make scheduling easier.

    The new editor is available for self-hosted WordPress.org sites as well. It just requires a Jetpack download.

    Images via WordPress.com

  • You Can Now Hide Your Tumblr Blog from the Web

    You Can Now Hide Your Tumblr Blog from the Web

    Though many bloggers are looking for more eyes on their content, some might be looking for fewer, if they have a tendency to be the target of abusive trolls.

    Now, Tumblr is adding what it calls a “simple layer of privacy to let you better control who gets to see your stuff and who doesn’t.” Starting today, you can choose to hide your blog from the web.

    “We’ve built a new toggle for you, Tumblr: Now you can choose whether or not your blog is viewable on the web. If you switch it off, your followers will still be able to see your posts in their dashboards (and like them, and reblog them), but anyone who tries to visit your blog at its URL will just get a big fat 404 error.”

    That’s right, Tumblr is giving users the option to make their content only viewable within the Tumblr-sphere.

    “Pairs nicely with the block feature,” says Tumblr.

    Of course, Tumblr is touting this move as a bonus privacy feature, which to some extent it is. But we’re talking about the same Tumblr that doesn’t let users make their main blogs private.

    And I’m not sure that taking people to a 404 error page is the best way to go about this. When I see a 404, I think broken, not private. Right?

    Image via Tumblr

  • WordPress.com Gets A New Action Bar

    WordPress.com Gets A New Action Bar

    WordPress.com has a new action bar, which makes it easier for readers to follow blogs of interest and for bloggers to make changes to their own sites.

    If you’re a blog visitor, and you’re on a WordPress.com blog that you’re not yet following, you can click the “Follow” button that appears in the bottom-right hand corner so new posts from that blog will appear in your WordPress.com Reader. If you click on the three dots that appear on the button, you’ll get more options such as the ability to add the blog’s theme to your own blog, copy the shortlink, report the content, or manage the sites that you follow.

    follow

    following

    options

    If you’re on one of your own pages, you’ll have “Customize” and “Edit” options. You can use these to go to the customizer where you can adjust your site’s appearance, change themes, change settings, etc, or go to Edit to make changes to your actual content.

    The action bar will appear on the desktop, tablets, and smartphones. You can minimize it if you don’t like it.

    Images via WordPress.com

  • Facebook Looks to Be Updating Notes

    Facebook Looks to Be Updating Notes

    Do you remember Facebook Notes?

    Believe it or not, you can still write notes on Facebook. A relic of the past, Facebook notes have pretty much fallen out of favor with the social networking crowd. This might be the first time you’ve even thought about them in years. Go try to compose a new note on Facebook. Trust me, it’ll take you longer than it should to figure out how to do it.

    But it doesn’t look like Facebook has given up on people using the site for longer-form compositions. Notes appears to be getting a revamp.

    Check out this post.

    Compare that to what Notes has looked like for years:

    Screen Shot 2015-08-17 at 11.25.03 AM

    The new Notes looks a lot better – and a lot more modern. Medium, anyone?

    The new looks for Notes is not available to all. What do you think? Given its updated look and feel, will people want to blog on Facebook? Status updates can already run up to 60,000 characters – so there’s already some long-form stuff being published on Facebook every day.

    But for users that already have a large friend or follower list, Facebook updating a very old feature could provide a new way to get their long-form content shared.

    [Dave Winer via The Next Web]

  • Julianne Hough Gives Back With Her Blog

    Julianne Hough is giving back. Her career has been about stardom, fame, fortune, but now she is using her blog as a platform to share what works in her life with others.

    “Being in the world of entertainment, as selfish as it sounds, is about me and my dreams,” Julianne Hough says. “But my blog is not so much about what I can take from the world but it’s about what I can give to the world. I want you guys to know my personal stuff and what little things and tricks I like.”

    Her blog has a mission.

    “I wanted to design a space where I could connect with fans and friends about the things I’m most passionate about,” Julianne Hough writes. “Here we can share recipes, workout tips, talk about style, beauty and home décor. I’m especially excited to talk to you guys about things that matter most, like ways we can all be rock stars in our communities and tips to become the best versions of ourselves.

    Her blog is divided into sections that cover the bases of all those things she is most passionate about.

    “My stuffed peppers are so easy to make, super healthy but also super filling, which is awesome,” Hough says about a recipe she shares on her site.

    “I love finding ways to be creative with chicken, fish and vegetables,” she says. “Cooking at home and putting music on and dancing in the kitchen—that’s like my favorite thing.”

    “There’s been a couple times I’ve tried to get the brussels sprouts to be just perfect and crispy on the outside and definitely burnt those suckers,” Hough jokes.

    Her blog is not just about food, but healthy living in general.

    “I just want to eat things that are actually nutritious and nourishing for my body rather than just something that tastes good and has no nourishment,” Julianne Hough says.

    She also shares beauty, home decor, and fashion tips.

    “My readers really like when I do braids and hair tutorials,” Julianne Hough says. “I have to do more of those.”

    It isn’t just a one-way street. Hough invites comments and involvement from her readers. After one frugal beauty tip, she encouraged readers to send her more.

    “Who else has a game changing beauty trick? I need to know!”

    She also introduces crew members from her current tour, such as Jason Glover who is Dance Captain on the tour.

  • WordPress Has ‘Reinvented’ Its Video Feature

    Automattic announced a big update to VideoPress, its service that powers videos on WordPress.com and Jetpack-connected self-hosted WordPress sites.

    It describes the new generation of VideoPress as “dynamic, responsive, and lightning fast”.

    “Out of the box, the new VideoPress is lightweight and responsive for beautiful playback on any screen, from smartphones to desktops,” explains Guillermo Rauch on the WordPress blog. “VideoPress works on all modern browsers and devices, and gives blog and site authors the power to engage their audiences no matter where they are. Not only do videos look amazing on WordPress sites, but you can also embed your videos anywhere on the web — other websites, social media, chat services — by using a permalink or a snippet of code.”

    According to the announcement, VideoPress is optimized for speed, taking up far less space. Posts with video content should laod faster, and that should only help blogs in SEO. Search engines do like fast sites. It should help mobile users a great deal too, particularly when their connections aren’t running as well as they’d like.

    “The new VideoPress puts your content front and center. The player is ad-free and unbranded to ensure your videos look and feel like an integral part of your website or blog, not like they belong to a third-party video platform. Unlike other video hosting services, VideoPress starts and ends on your video, keeping traffic on your site and giving you full control over the content to which your visitors are exposed.”

    There’s also a new feature called “Seek” that lets you skim through videos:


    They’ve also made it easier to share and embed videos with new options, including starting playback at specific times, looping, and autoplay:


    VideoPress is available under Premium and Business plans.

    Image via WordPress

  • Gigaom Is Coming Back Under New Ownership

    In March, the tech news industry was shocked by the news that one of its most prominent blogs, Gigaom, was shutting down after revealing it was unable to pay its creditors. On Tuesday, it was announced that the site will be back. It just won’t be the Gigaom that you knew.

    In other words, the domain will be there, along with its archives of content, but what the new content that comes with the relaunch consists of remains to be seen.

    Gigaom.com was purchased by entrepreneur Byron Reese on Friday. His Austin-based startup Knowingly plans to relaunch the site on August 15. In the meantime, you can visit the site and see it basically as it’s been without any new content.

    In a press release, Reese described Gigaom as “second to none in what it does,” adding, “We are excited to be a chapter of the Gigaom story and look forward to continuing its mission of ‘humanizing the impact of technology.’”

    “We live at what I believe is the great turning point of all of human history, and that is being driven in large part by the technologies we are creating. This new world we are making will not just be more prosperous, but it will be more fair and more just than any time in the past,” he said. “Gigaom will continue documenting this transformation and the technologies which are driving it.”

    Still, it’s going to have to do so with a different staff of content creators. The former reporters have been hired away. Fortune hired Stacey Higginbotham, Barb Darrow, Katie Fehrenbacher, Mathew Ingram, Jeff John Roberts, and Jonathan Vanian. Variety hired Janko Roettgers, and Signe Brewster joined Backchannel.

    Om Malik (pictured) launched Gigaom in 2006, and left day-to-day operations in February of 2014. To our knowledge, he has yet to publicly comment on the site’s acquisition.

    Image via Olivier Ezratty, Wikimedia Commons

  • Gigaom Shuts Down, “Unable to Pay Its Creditors”

    Prominent tech blog Gigaom is shutting down, after it revealed it “recently became unable to pay its creditors”.

    Here’s what Gigaom management had to say Monday evening:

    Gigaom recently became unable to pay its creditors in full at this time. As a result, the company is working with its creditors that have rights to all of the company’s assets as their collateral. All operations have ceased. We do not know at this time what the lenders intend to do with the assets or if there will be any future operations using those assets. The company does not currently intend to file bankruptcy. We would like to take a moment and thank our readers and our community for supporting us all along.

    The site’s founder, Om Malik, says that his company “is winding down” and that its assets are controlled by the company’s lenders at this point.

    “It is not how you want the story of a company you founded to end,” he writes in a blog post.

    “There will be time for postmortems, but not today. Today, I want to thank all the people who make (and have helped make) Gigaom. Their role in this journey was what really made it all worth it. They are great people and they will all do great work wherever they go. I want to thank our investors who believed in the business long before it became fashionable. And most importantly, I want to thank you dear readers for coming along on this trip of a lifetime,” he says.

    Om Malik launched Gigaom in 2006. He left day-to-day operations at Gigaom in February of 2014.

    Image via Olivier Ezratty, Wikimedia Commons

  • Google Isn’t Banning Porn on Blogger After All

    If you post your own sexually explicit content on Blogger, Google’s gonna let you do you. Just don’t use blogger as a hub for commercial porn.

    Google has reversed a decision it made earlier this week to ban adult content on its Blogger network.

    “This week, we announced a change to Blogger’s porn policy. We’ve had a ton of feedback, in particular about the introduction of a retroactive change (some people have had accounts for 10+ years), but also about the negative impact on individuals who post sexually explicit content to express their identities,” says Jessica Pelegio, Social Product Support Manager at Google.

    “So rather than implement this change, we’ve decided to step up enforcement around our existing policy prohibiting commercial porn.”

    In 2013, Google cracked down on blogs that monetized from adult ads, but allowed bloggers to continue to post adult content as long as it was marked as such. But earlier this week, Google announced that it would ban “images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity” effective March 23. It would do this by making all that content private on old accounts, and disabling new accounts that posted adult content.

    Apparently, after thinking this through (and likely receiving some unhappy feedback), Google has decided it best to let people express themselves on Blogger.

    You do, however, still need to mark your blogs as “adult” if necessary.

    Google product forums via The Verge

  • Google Bans Porn on Blogger, Effective March 23

    If you like to post sexually explicit content on your Blogger blog, you might want to think about making the switch to Tumblr.

    Google has announced that it is banning “images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphic nudity” on its Blogger platform, effective March 23. According to Google, if you operate a blog with sexually explicit content, your blog will be made private on March 23. Google’s not going to remove your content, but your blog will only be viewable to you, other admins, or users you share it with specifically.

    If you want to keep your blog from going private in a few weeks, Google says you need to start cleaning it up. Any blogs created after the March 23 cutoff will be up for removal if they contain adult content.

    There is one exception to this – and it has to do with the context of the nudity.

    “We’ll still allow nudity if the content offers a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts,” says Google.

    Of course, this will no doubt lead to some bickering between Google and its bloggers, as the line between pornographic and artistic is rather undefined at times.

    In 2013, Google cracked down on blogs that monetized from adult ads, but allowed bloggers to continue to post adult content as long as it was marked as such.

    This decision could drive bloggers elsewhere – most likely Tumblr. If you’re not familiar with Tumblr, it’s a porn free-for-all. As long as your Tumblr blog is properly marked as NSFW, then you can “go nuts, show nuts, whatever” (those are Tumblr’s actual words).

    At one point a couple years back, Tumblr was accused a removing adult content from blogs – but it turned out the site wasn’t really removing content, just changing search settings and making it a little harder to find.

  • LinkedIn Has Only Seen A Million Member Posts

    Nearly a year ago, LinkedIn opened up its publishing platform to all members in the U.S. in English, enabling the average Joe to write posts as if they were Richard Branson.

    During that time, however, there have only been a million posts made. That’s the milestone LinkedIn just announced. According to the company, members publish over 40,000 posts per week, on average.

    To put that into perspective, WordPress revealed earlier this week that there were 555,782,547 blog posts created on WordPress.com blogs in 2014. That’s over 1.5 million per day. I don’t think anyone would have expected WordPress-like numbers from LinkedIn’s first year as a publishing platform, but the comparison illustrates how wide that gap really is.

    Of course LinkedIn’s platform has been much more limited in terms of markets, but that’s about to change. The company is now opening up the platform to all members in English-speaking countries, which it says accounts for 230 million of its 330 million members. The rest will get access in all languages LinkedIn supports in the coming months.

    In other words, while I still wouldn’t expect WordPress-like numbers, next year we should be talking about a much larger number of LinkedIn member posts.

    “Posting on LinkedIn is a powerful way for members to underscore their expertise in their respective fields, extend their professional reputations beyond LinkedIn, and have valuable conversations with the largest group of engaged professionals ever assembled,” says LinkedIn’s Akshay Kothari.

    “Now, these members will have the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of their peers – people like Tom Stevenson in the UK, who shared How to Negotiate Like Harvey Specter; India’s Avinash Murthy, who analyzed the ALS #IceBucketChallenge social media phenomenon; Paul Petrone in the US, who articulated The Genius of Wearing the Same Outfit Every Day; and Emma Hill in Australia, who provided experience-based advice on the recruiter/hiring firm relationship,” adds Kothari.

    Here’s a look at some best practices for LinkedIn publishing:

    LinkedIn’s publishing tool got a makeover a couple months ago.

  • Guess How Many WordPress.com Blogs Were Created In 2014

    We may be nearly a week into January, but there are still some interesting year-in-review posts coming out from major Internet companies. On Monday, Amazon gave us a look back at third-party seller performance in 2014, for example.

    Now, Automattic is sharing some numbers for WordPress.com blogs, and they’re quite “Im(Press)ive” as the company puts it. There were a total of 18,300,771 new blogs created throughout the year. That’s up 12.5% compared to 2013. In case you’re wondering, that works out to nearly 50,000 new blogs per day.

    Wow.

    Now just imagine how many posts there must have been on WordPress.com blogs in 2014. Actually you don’t have to, because they gave that number too. 555,782,547. That’s over 1.5 million per day with 47 million published from mobile devices.

    WordPress also gives us a 24.5 trillion bytes of data per hour stat.

    “Those bytes aren’t just little packets of code winging around the internet’s series of tubes (at least, they’re not just that),” writes Automattic’s Michelle W. “They carry stories. Memories. Voices. Relationships. Experiences. They’re your essays, your photos, your poems, your drawings. Every time a piece of what you’ve created pops up on someone’s screen, you expand someone’s universe, just a little, and they expand yours — which is the real power of WordPress.com, and of the internet.”

    She also drops some additional stats: “Behind everything Automattic does are 301 Automatticians: 66 Happiness Engineers responded to your requests for assistance 365,212 times; Every one of our 134 developers worked on the improvements and enhancements we’ve been rolling out over the past few weeks; 9 systems engineers kept everyone’s sites running fast and secure; 8 editors shepherded over 22,000 of you through Blogging U. courses; 24 themers made 96 stunning new layouts and dozens of customization improvements available.”

    As reported earlier, Automattic has launched a new in-person event series for WordPress.com bloggers, where they can learn from WordPress experts.

    Image via WordPress (Facebook)

  • Here’s What 2014 Looked Like On Tumblr

    Earlier, we looked at Yahoo’s year in review for 2014. The company is also sharing some review lists for Tumblr.

    “For the second year in a row, Tumblr presents its own Year In Review with more than 100 categories of top blogs and posts from 2014,” the company said. “The compendium of content comes as a result of analyzing millions of blogs, billions of posts and notes according to a number of factors — total volume of posts and tags (original and reblogged), web traffic, follower growth over time, and more.”

    Top 10 Most Viral Blogs on Tumblr in 2014:

    1. Taylor Swift – taylorswift.tumblr.com
    2. Ghost Photographs – ghostphotographs.tumblr.com
    3. Will It Beard – willitbeard.tumblr.com
    4. Literary Starbucks – literarystarbucks.tumblr.com
    5. Crying New York – cryingnewyork.tumblr.com
    6. Jerry Seinfeld Skeleton – jerryseinfeldsskeleton.tumblr.com
    7. Museum of Selfies – museumofselfies.tumblr.com
    8. Sochi on Tinder – sochiontinder.tumblr.com
    9. If They Gunned Me Down – iftheygunnedmedown.tumblr.com/
    10. B4-16 – /b4-16.tumblr.com/

    “One of the most shocking reveals from the Tumblr community comes from its fervent music fans,” Yahoo said. “The Australian pop rock band, 5 Seconds of Summer usurped 2013’s favorite, One Direction for most blogged about musical act on Tumblr.”

    Top 10 Most Reblogged Musical Acts on Tumblr in 2014

    1. 5 Seconds of Summer
    2. One Direction
    3. Beyonce
    4. Fall Out Boy
    5. Lana del Rey
    6. All Time Low
    7. Justin Bieber
    8. Taylor Swift
    9. Kanye West
    10. My Chemical Romance

    You can find even more here.

    Image via Tumblr

  • Disqus Sponsored Comments Go Programmatic

    Disqus Sponsored Comments Go Programmatic

    Disqus, the blog commenting product that appears on sites all over the Internet (including this one), announced that it’s launching programmatic ad buying for its Sponsored Comments product.

    Disqus launched Sponsored Comments back in April after testing it for a bit. Here’s what they look like:

    Disqus is now working with WPP’s Xaxis to give the latter’s clients the ability to buy and place these ads across the Disqus network, which again, is all over the place on the web.

    “A Sponsored Comment can use all types of media to get the point across, just like any other Disqus comment,” writes David Fleck on the Disqus blog. “But they’re not part of the discussion happening on that page. Comments to the ad are driven to a separate landing page just for that ad. This keeps the core commenting experience uninterrupted and publisher communities just as they were. That’s the best of both worlds. Since those pilots campaigns, we’ve been working on two key things: targeting and brand safety.”

    They’re implementing semantic keyword targeting at the discussion level, and targeting against the topics of articles.

    “It’s a new way of thinking about targeting and a more effective one I think,” says Fleck. “It sounds simple, but as an advertiser, you want to reach people that are interested in your product. There’s a difference between your hypothetical target audience and your actual product audience. In other words, the difference between what surveys might tell you versus what actual individual consumers are interested in.”

    The targeting capabilities are interesting, but comment sections aren’t exactly known as a great place to find helpful links to click on. Typically if there’s a link trying to sell you something in the comments of a blog post, it’s spam. This is obviously different, but it’s hard to imagine that many Internet users don’t simply tune out links in blog comments unless they’re specifically relevant to the discussion.

    Either way, Disqus says it can target over 1,000 topics, and can easily add new ones to meet brand needs and trends.

    Image via Disqus

  • Google Blog Search Goes Away (Kind Of)

    Google Blog Search is no more – at least as a standalone offering from the search engine. Search Engine Land points out that if you go to its previous home – google.com/blogsearch – it simply redirects you to the Google home page.

    You can still search through blogs specifically with Google’s search tool from Google News. For example, if you search “SEO” from Google News, it will bring up a list of articles. You’d then go to the “Search Tools” box, and click the drop down where it says “All News”. From there, another option is available for blogs.

    At this point in the Internet’s evolution, I’m not sure how useful the feature is. There’s a lot of gray area when it comes to distinguishing blogs from other sources. In the end, it’s really more about who’s writing the story. Strangely enough, Google just did away with authorship in search results – the best indicator that. Go figure.

    I doubt many will miss the Blog Search destination Google previously offered. There was a time when it was helpful, but there’s really just not much need for it anymore. Still, you might say the Google News feature is even less helpful, as it is limited to news.

    Image via Google

  • Pinterest Launches ‘Pin It’ For Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress & Wix

    Pinterest Launches ‘Pin It’ For Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress & Wix

    Pinterest announced that launch of the “Pin It” button for Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress.org, and Wix.

    “We talk about the Pin It button a lot around here, and that’s because it’s a pretty big deal,” says Pinterest’s Bill Rastello. “It’s what Pinners use to save things they find around the web, an easy-to-add tool that gets your business on Pinterest.”

    “These new integrations will make adding the Pin It button to your site a snap,” he adds.

    To add it on Tumblr, you’ll need to add a JavaScript line. Go to “Customize,” then “Edit HTML” Find the code here.

    For Blogger, the button is now one of the default sharing buttons. It will automatically pick up the first image in the post.

    For WordPress.org, there’s a plugin to install.

    For Wix, the button is now native to the page editor. It will create a Pin based off the image and description you specify, and will link back to the page of the site you’re on when you click it.

    Pinterest says it will be adding more integrations in the future.

    Image via Pinterest

  • Disqus Is Now Including Sponsored Comments

    Disqus announced that it has been testing Sponsored Comments for the past month, and that it’s now expanding the new ad unit so that “it’ll be more likely that you come across” one. Here’s what one might look like:

    Disqus ads

    If you use Disqus, but have ads turned off, you don’t have to worry about them appearing.

    This follows another ad format Disqus launched earlier this year called Featured Comments, which let publishers highlight things at the top of a thread.

    “Because Disqus now helps websites make money from engagement and discussion, a natural question came up – can we use the concept of Featured Comments in order to allow brands to reach specific audiences? This was the idea behind Sponsored Comments,” Disqus says in a blog post.

    “Sponsored Comments let businesses deliver a message to the people they need to reach,” it adds. “A Sponsored Comment can use all types of media to get their point across, just like any other Disqus comment. But they’re not part of the discussion happening on that thread or community itself. That’s too disruptive. So instead, they’re pinned to the top of the discussion environment where things are just getting started. It’s like movie previews. It’s not the thing you came for, but if done well, it adds a little bit to your experience without being intrusive. We’re testing whether or not we can make this true.”

    Early reaction to the ads is generally positive. Users seem to appreciate that they respect the sites that turn off ads. People are interested in targeting options and potential clickthrough rates.

    Image via Disqus

  • Re/code (The New All Things D) Introduced For The New Year

    Back in September, The Wall Street Journal and its tech site All Things D announced that they were parting ways, and now with the new year, we get to see both the new Wall Street Journal tech section and the new All Things D.

    The new All Things D is not actually called All Things D at all, but is a brand new site called Re/code, which operates under a brand new company called Revere Digital, which has launched with backing from NBCUniversal News Group and Windsor Media. Revere Digital will host news sites and apps as well as a series of conferences called Code Conference.

    Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg (the two All Things D / re/code leaders) explain the new company, site and conference in a New Year’s blog post.

    Re/code brings the same All Things D team along for the ride. This includes: John Paczkowski, Peter Kafka, Ina Fried, Katherine Boehret, Liz Gannes, Lauren Goode, Arik Hesseldahl, Mike Isaac, Bonnie Cha, Jason Del Rey and Eric Johnson.

    Swisher and Mossberg write:

    Why have we chosen Re/code as the name for our new creation? Simply put: Because everything in tech and media is constantly being refreshed, renewed and reimagined. And this is the reinvention of ourselves.

    While we are presenting an improved new face, we promise that, if you liked what we were doing at All Things Digital and the D conferences, you will love what we are now planning for Re/code. We pledge to bring the same energy and standards to our news, reviews and events, with the plus of adding in even more talented staff and resources to the mix.

    The first Code Conference will take place from May 27th to May 29th. More events with partner CNBC are planned for “throughout the year”.

    The Wall Street Journal website has redesigned its Technology section. You can take a look at that here.

    Image: Re/code

  • Tumblr Search Gets Smarter, NSFW Content Easier to Manage

    Tumblr has just announced a big improvement to their search function, one that they say will help users better explore the 65 billion posts now currently housed on the site (65 billion posts, yeah).

    Now, when you search a term, the results page shows posts that mention said term, not just the ones tagged with those terms.

    For instance, a search for “Breaking Bad” will yield results that are tagged #Breakingbad and results that simply mention the term “Breaking Bad.” If you only want to search results that are tagged #Breakingbad, you’ll need to enter the tag in your query.

    Tumblr is making it easier to find more specific posts too by allowing multiple tag searches in individual queries. That means you can now search for #breakingbad #amc #aaron paul #bryancranston to limit your results to post that include all of those tags.

    Also, the search results page will now include related blogs for your search terms.

    The final change has to do with NSFW content:

    “And in an effort to make the explicit content filter more transparent (and less confusing), we’ve moved the option right to the search results page. We’ve also been able to use this smarter filtering to unblock innocuous keywords in our apps that used to be prohibited by app store policies,” says Tumblr.

    You can see the new filter as it appears inside search results below:

    As you may recall, Tumblr took a lot of heat for supposedly censoring a bunch of NSFW and Adult content earlier this year. Tumblr fixed a bug that was preventing adult blogs from appearing in search results even when Safe Mode had been disabled. One issue that still remained, however, was Tumblr’s app family filtering tag searches for terms like #lgbt and #gay, even if that content wasn’t NSFW. But at the time, CEO David Karp said that there was really nothing to be done about some tag searches being blocked in the mobile apps – mainly because of Apple’s strict rules on promoting adult content and their fears over being banned from the App Store. This change to search should help alleviate some of those issues.

    Images via Tumblr Blog