Gothamist comes in da Sphere

We’re super-excited to welcome Gothamist into the Sphere network. Gothamist is the premier local blog network in the US currently managing sites in 10 cities with more on the way. They’re named after their flagship site, Gothamist, so-named after our fair city, New York. We’ve launched initially with SFist, their San Francisco property, showing related articles from SFist plus related articles from other mainstream media news sources on every article permalink page like this recent article on SF taxi mayhem. Click on any of our links to access other stories related to the issues discussed. Below is an example of our module on SFist. As everyone who lives in a market served by Gothamist knows, they are an invaluable source of local information and news with a twist. As far as local blog reporting is concerned, they are pioneers and we’re honored to be partnering with them. Kudos to Jake, Neil and his team for getting this slick integration up and running smoothly. Other Gothamist properties include LAist, Chicagoist, DCist, Austinist, Bostonist, Houstonist, Phillyist and Seattlest.

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Sphere Facelift…

In case you haven’t seen our new freshly designed site, go take a look around and tell us what you think - www.sphere.com. Sphere’s new look and feel is the result of a team effort led by Dan Cederholm over at Simple Bits.

As our business has blossomed and evolved, our Read more

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Buzz Tracker & Yahoo!

Firstly, we’d like to offer our congratulations to Buzz Tracker and Yahoo! for joining forces. Scott Moore (who runs Yahoo! News) and his group are smart folks so I think this will end up being a good acquisition for both companies.

I also want to address a few of the posts I’ve seen that mention Sphere and Buzz Tracker together. While some of you think we’re in the same business, we have never viewed our business and, more importantly, what we do as a competitor to the various meme trackers available. That space is well covered and I don’t see Sphere adding Read more

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B5 - who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

B5 (Blogging Bug Bites Big Blue) - seems that Big Blue is taking a page from Microsoft and encouraging IBM’ers to blog. Despite the fact that we’re very much in the early adoption period for corporate bloggers, it’s another good sign that the shift from a read-only to a read-write platform is spreading it’s roots.

I spoke at AdTech last year about the importance of empowering customers to blog about their brands by making available brand assets such as logo’s, advertising footage, soundtracks, etc. I got this idea from Tim Smith who is really smart about how to create brand loyalty. I was amazed at how divided the audience was about this idea. Some thought it to be proactive, understanding there is no turning back to a crafted world in which customers yield limited ability to influence the opinions of a community of users, potential users. Others thought it marketing blasphemous.

The truth is that customers now own brands and the companies that created them are lucky they get to navigate the image making. It reminds me of the late 90’s when the smart, marketing driven companies started to slowly embrace the web despite their fear of losing control. Those companies were careful not to jump in too deep. They tested new ideas, figured out what worked best and then committed. Very smart. It’s an approach that the best companies in this decade will adopt, especially as it concerns user generated content. While the particulars might be different, I have no doubt that being open, gaining real time input from customers no matter how positive or critical, is the best way to develop a community and steward a brand.

Posted by Tony

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