Blogs.com is a service that allows bloggers to connect with one another and share the most popular posts that they may have found while browsing other blogs. But, it isn’t like other social networking and sharing sites, as there are integrated tools to make it easier to find blogs that may interest you.

Screenshot of Blogs.com

Overview

Even though I wouldn’t normally review a smaller-type site like Blogs.com, it is different from a majority of other sites, although it is mainly a directory for sites in specific categories.

It is a newer service and has recently seen some updates and modifications to the theme and format. Owned and operated by Six Apart, they have editors that choose the best stories for showcasing on the main page. However, there is a fairly decent chance that you will see some of your content indexed on the site, especially if you have a more popular blog that sees a decent number of comments.

The main benefit that I see from the service may not be the traffic, but the sense that you can find new blogs and be inspired by what other people write. Reading through some of the lists, I instantly found interesting content and sites that I never visited before.

Another aspect to look at is the fact that you can see what other people are publishing, and get ideas for your own blog. Without having to browse through other traditional media sources, you could stick with blogs.

Top Ten Lists

This is a major feature of the service. There really isn’t anything like this on the web elsewhere. Yes, there are sites that feature “Top 10″ lists of their favorite blogs, but it would take you days just to create a roundup of all of them, and they probably wouldn’t be that user-drive link on this site.

The lists have been created by both the people running the site and visitors and fellow bloggers. They encourage you to create new lists, as it helps other readers discover new content.

Sample Top Ten Lists

Let’s look at an example of how the site is setup. Assuming that you like pop culture blogs, clicking on the category will bring you to a new page, which features a few of the best blogs in the category. The list displays the blog’s title, a link to it, an RSS and share button. With sharing in mind, this makes it easier to recommend blogs to others. To the right of this, there are recent posts from the blog, although these could be viewed by visiting the site.

At the bottom of the page, there is an area to leave your comment on the blogs featured on the page, although I don’t really see any reason to if you can’t leave it addressing certain blogs.

Posts and Content

Blogs that appear on the site have either been chosen by the editors at the site or have been added by people who have suggested their blog or others that they enjoy reading and visiting on a regular basis. The best part of it all is that there are no complicated algorithms or tracking tools that make it hard to find the most popular content. You are given rather random searching options, which makes it harder to find the sites that you are already reading and easier to find the highlighted/most interesting sites.

Over time, they may be getting these features, but for now, you are given the options of browsing by category, a top 10 list, or through the search bar. Beyond this, there really aren’t any other ways to find content, which isn’t what the site was setup to do.

Moving onto the main page, when you hover over any category, you are given “options” to view additional sub-categories. Clicking on any of them brings you to a page that displays recent posts from the category. This is convenient if you are interested in reading posts from the sites featured on Blogs.com, although there are certainly limitations to this. For one, it is impossible to view content published for smaller bloggers, as the site is really promoting the “Top 10″ feature as explained earlier.

Blogs.com Sharing Options

While there might be thousands of blogs covering “World News,” there were only three blogs with recent content displayed, with one of them accounting for 80% of the total posts on the page.

Now, I can also say that this would be beneficial if there was a large influx of spam blogs on the network, although there aren’t at this time.

You can easily subscribe to a blog from this page or share the article with others.

Clicking on a main category (Business, Entertainment, News & Politics, Life, Technology, or Student Life) will bring up a post “From the Editors” that covers a topic in mention. Beneath this, there is a “Featured Top 10 List,” followed by Recent Blog Posts from various categories that are all a part of the main category.

Traffic Information

Compared to many other directories, the site sees a surprisingly high number of monthly visitors (between 1.5 and 2 million visitors). Although not all blogs are featured on the main page or category pages, I am sure that if you run a popular site and continually produce unique content that it will make it easy to get your site some traffic or new readers from people visiting your site for the first time.

One thing to note: I don’t know how involved the community surrounding the site is, as the domain may be seeing a great portion of its visitors just because it is blogs.com.

Traffic Ranking and Details

Traffic numbers in this range (within the top 1,000 websites) indicates that there is a need for this site and that there is fresh content or new features added on a regular basis. Getting your site listed on Blogs.com will result in at least a small boost in traffic, but not all blogs qualify, it is pretty selective at this time – Top 10 only.

Conclusion

Behind the site, there is a good message: too much content can be overwhelming, especially when it comes to blogs. There are so many unique articles posted per day, that you can’t keep up with them all. Despite the best efforts of the site, not all user-generated content can get through, so some will be wondering why they don’t see much benefit from using the site. However, I beg to differ.

For one, it can be a great resource for people that want to see a snapshot of content from bloggers and what is popular. It is more than just a blog directory, but isn’t a community portal, either. There are few sites like it, no matter how you look at it.

I would just like to recommend checking out the service, no matter how you feel about finding new blogs, as it can be useful to truly discover “the best in blogs.”