Sphere In Drag

In the past year, we’ve been quite busy launching new partners and a number of smaller things we’ve wanted to build/ fix have been put on hold. Making our widget drag-able so it can navigate all the ads you find on content pages has been one of those ideas that always gets put one spot down on the priority list. Our on-site gave us a chance to take a step back and address a number of projects, the first one to go live is making our widget drag-able. So go ahead….drag us around.

Sphere: Related Content

Newsweek in da Sphere

I’m excited to update you with Sphere’s most recent launch on a major news site. We recently added Newsweek as a partner, joining a list that includes some of the best news sites on the web: The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNN, US News & World Report, TIME, AOL News/Sports/Entertainment, CBS, Forbes, MLB, ZDNet, Washington Post, TMZ and several more MSM sites and over 50,000 blogs. Newsweek is one of the most well respected media companies in the world (off-line and on-line) and we’re truly honored to be partnering with such a venerable brand with the highest journalism standards. We’re very proud of the quality and relevance of our results on Newsweek, here’s what we launched :

• • *Related articles from the Newsweek archives;
    
  • *Related blog posts from the Blogosphere; and
    
  • *Recommended Blogs

Sphere related content is on every article in every section of the Newsweek site. Here’s the most recent lead article from the home page as an example - CLICK HERE. When the page opens, just click on the Sphere icon link in the Article Tools box. This means that every article page on Newsweek displays both related articles from Newsweek and high quality bloggers, resulting in more opportunities for bloggers to add their voice to the discussion - a great opportunity for bloggers to join the conversation as well as reach a broader audience of readers. Always a good thing. Thanks to Newsweek for embracing the blogosphere and for their unwavering support in partnering with us. A special thanks to Kevin Stuart for his support and for nailing this implementation.

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AOL’Sphere

I’ve been playing around with the new AOL site and I think it’s really well done.

AOL and Sphere have been partners since beginning of this year. We started by deploying our Sphere Related Content plug-in on all AOL News, Sports and Entertainment articles. In the redesign, AOL added a tag cloud called Blog Chatter that links to the most popular topics in the blogosphere. When the reader clicks on any of the topics in the tag cloud, they’re redirected to Sphere to see the complete list of high quality blog posts on that topic. It’s a simple idea but very well done and another important opportunity to connect the conversation happening in mainstream and conversational media.

Overall, I love the new site. The new design divides the page into three vertical columns, with the heart of the programming at the center column. There, AOL’s editors and producers update and select top news stories, videos and photos in one place. Much like a blog, new stories push older ones lower as they are posted. Navigation is very simple. The color scheme is simple and unobtrusive, yet not boring. They have integrated video throughout in a simple, seamless manner. Articles are clean and flow well. The “story highlights” are super crisp. Nearly all stories include social media buttons that let people easily add stories to services like Digg, del.icio.us, Newsvine, Reddit and Netscape. Further, many of AOL’s stories include a thumbs up/thumbs down rating widget, another example of embracing conversational media.

You may notice that the Sphere Related Content Plug-in is missing but it will be added back soon along with some other higher exposure related content links.

Congrats to Lewis D’Vorkin, Kevin Lockland and their team for a very impressive redesign.

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WordPress.org Bloggers Getting The Word Out

A couple of weeks ago, we made our Sphere Related Content plug-in available to all WordPress.org bloggers. It’s gotten a great reception so far. As of yesterday, over 1,000 WordPress.org bloggers have implemented the plug-in on their sites. So far, we’ve gotten a number of emails in addition to the comments left on the WordPress.org Plug-in Directory - pretty cool. Read more

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