http://www.sphere.com/blog Connecting the Conversation Thu, 15 May 2008 15:46:11 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This chart graphs the traffic on Sphere's blog in April. As you can see, traffic chugs along fairly consistently at 150-300 visits per day, then spikes to more than 3,000 the day of our acquisition by AOL, which was covered by various high profile blogs and mainstream publishers. ... http://www.sphere.com/blog/2008/05/13/famous-for-a-day/ Someone left the "Overlords" sticker on my desk. Those of you who familiar with our team, know we like stickers. This one is pretty funny and plays off the perception that a big company suffocates a small acquisition like Sphere. So far, not the case. We like the access to ... http://www.sphere.com/blog/2008/05/06/a-few-weeks-in-the-rearview-window/ We went live today with one of the more exciting partnerships since starting Sphere. We're now displaying related content on all hosted Wordpress.com blogs. Martin, Steve & Co, together with the guys at Automattic, put forth a Yeoman's effort to get this running smoothly.....not an easy task. ... http://www.sphere.com/blog/2008/04/26/sphere-goes-live-on-wordpresscom-blogs/ This is a good shot of the Sphere business team during a strategy session, courtesy of Lu at COD Ranch. This is, quite naturally, our preferred mode of operation...in front of a roaring fire, laptops at the ready, coffee/tea in hand. In this photo (counter-clockwise starting from left): ... http://www.sphere.com/blog/2008/04/22/doing-business-the-sphere-way/ Next week is a big conference week in the Bay Area. On Monday I'm off to participate in the first Alternative Search Engines Conference, hosted by Charles Knight, ReadWriteWeb and sponsored by SeeqPod, UpTake, Matchpoint, HealthPricer and GoPubMed. I'm excited to hear how poeple are feeling about vertical ... http://www.sphere.com/blog/2008/04/19/off-to-get-some-schwag/ Unlike the rumor that Sphere has reserved the Wrigley Field bleachers for Game 7 of the 2008 World Series, the conjecture about Sphere being acquired by a larger platform is officially true. AOL has acquired sphere. More information is here, here and here again for the curious detail seeker. Where to ... http://www.sphere.com/blog/2008/04/15/aol-buys-sphere/ If you’re following along or just a snoopy competitor, our growth in Q1/08 continued to accelerate. Q1 was a fun few months around here - thank you to all our existing and new partners that have grown their Sphere footprint or added one of our services to their ... http://www.sphere.com/blog/2008/04/14/q108-wrap-up/ We've been excited about the video opportunity for a long time. The team recognized the power of displaying related video on articles early and the related video on Reuters has been one of our best performing installations. Now, we're starting to roll it out to the rest ... http://www.sphere.com/blog/2008/04/11/related-video-widgetized/ 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 ... http://www.sphere.com/blog/2008/04/10/sphere-in-drag-mode/ Smoky and the team are on a ranch in Southeastern Arizona (we're staying at the COD Ranch - hat tip to the gang at Automattic who found the place) for an on-site get together - most companies call that an off-site but for us, it's a rare opportunity to ... http://www.sphere.com/blog/2008/04/09/310/