Google News is one of the leading sources that people use to find news, but a recent note issued by a popular blogger at Quick Online Tips notes something interesting about new blog submissions.

When you go to submit a site to the service, you are greeted with a drop-down menu to select the number of authors and editors that contribute to the creation of new content. You can see an example of it below, which can be clicked on for the full resolution.

I don’t know the requirements that the search engine had before to get into the news page, but I believe when the Blog Search/News Search were more integrated, more “independent” blogs could get into the results. Most bloggers with a single author and those not covering the news would never be affected by this, but it is worth noting. Having your results seen amongst other higher-profile blogs can certainly provide a traffic boost.

About Google News:

Traditionally, news readers first pick a publication and then look for headlines that interest them. We do things a little differently, with the goal of offering our readers more personalized options and a wider variety of perspectives from which to choose. On Google News we offer links to several articles on every story, so you can first decide what subject interests you and then select which publishers’ accounts of each story you’d like to read. Click on the headline that interests you and you’ll go directly to the site which published that story.

Should Multiple Author Blogs Have an Advantage

I understand that multiple author blogs may see more frequent content published, but honestly, how hard would it be for a “spammer” to make it appear as though there are multiple authors, only having content republished from reputable news sources? There are quite a number of popular news sites that only have one author, but are still publishing multiple articles per day.

What’s your take on this, and does it really matter that they are excluding single-author/editor blogs?

Another week has gone by, and now is a great time to showcase some of the best stories from the past week. While this won’t be a weekly occurrence, it is a good time to present links I’ve liked over the past week. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll also find some of these links.

Photo by m o d e

Please comment to let me know any links you’ve enjoyed recently.

• Why Social Media is Important for Business [Video] – Many businesses still don’t get social media, and then there are those that don’t want to get anywhere near it. This video explores some of the ways businesses can utilize social media.
• 5 Minuses of Social Media That Could Kill Your Freelance Business – Great ways to avoid freelance “fails” when it comes to your social media efforts. Many of my readers are freelancers, so this is a great post.
• 4 Ways to Use Social Media Cues to Engage People – A great post on how you can better engage your visitors.
• Best of 2009 in the Blogging Industry – A look at some of the trends and paths blogging has taken in the year that was 2009.
• Blog Writing Tips from the World’s Most Famous Authors – Some great quotes and tips from the greatest authors, which can inspire you to create fresh, new content.
• 6 Powerful Reasons Why Everyone Should Have Their Own Blog – Confidence and opportunities are the two biggest reasons I found on the list that you can use to determine why you should create your own blog. Click the link for more reasons.
• How to Manage Expectations with Your Blog Readers – Communicate effectively with your readers in order to gain insight into what they are looking for, and meet your personal goals along the way.
• Why Entrepreneurs Shouldn’t Write Business Plans – Businesses evolve, so why should you waste your time writing a business plan that isn’t up-to-date a week after you write it?
• Fun Stats About the Web – A few interesting facts that can help you gain some true insight into what services are being used around the web. It’s pretty stunning when you read that just 2% of all sites have both a Twitter and Facebook link on their site; just 5% have either a Twitter or Facebook link.
• How to Brainstorm Brilliant Ideas for Your Blog – Inspiration for those of you who have recently had difficulty writing on your blog.
• Yahoo! Will Kill MyBlogLog Next Month [Possibly] – Another giant (Yahoo) shutting down a service it paid $10 million for. Just two years after the purchase, the site looks to be cut in order to reduce costs at the search giant.
• Relocate Upload Organizes Your WordPress Uploads – A simple, but effective tool for separating where you upload WordPress files to on your server.
• Creating and Launching A Linkbait in 4 Easy Steps – Some great tips on how to create linkbait, a type of post many hate, but is still one of the most effective for gaining exposure and traffic.
• 5 Low Cost or Free Social Media Monitoring Tools – Some great tools that can be used to monitor how well you are utilizing social media/networking on the web.
• How to Find Your Voice as a Blogger – A few basic tips from others on how you can find and develop your voice as a writer.
• 69 Services and Resources for ProBloggers – A “quick” look at some resources that can help you attain the “pro”blogger status.
• How to Make Money Without Selling Out – You don’t have to plaster thousands of ads across your site in order to make money!
• Top 10 Firefox Add-ons for WordPress Users – A list of some useful extensions/add-ons for Firefox lovers.
• 15 Tips to Get More Comments on Your Blog – Useful tips to help you increase the number of comments left on your blog.
• 5 Types of Articles You Can Write At the Year-End on Your Blog – As the year comes to a close, you can find some great ideas contained within this post.
• 10 Quick Tips to Boost Your Blogging Skills (Part 2) – Some useful tips that will essentially guarantee that you will see some level of success in your next blogging venture.
• Growing Your Blog’s Editorial Team – Grow your blog beyond a small team to one that generates more frequent content using these tips.
• What to Do With Clients When You’re Sick – Sometimes you can’t avoid being sick, so here are some tips that you can use to tell your clients that you’ve had to push the work back a few days.
• Productivity Tips for Bloggers form a Best-Selling Authors – Useful tips from a professional writer for being more productive.
• Managing Fast Growth in a Startup – Tips for those of you who may want to grow your blog beyond a simple site.
• 6 Unexpected Events that Can Take Over a Web Worker’s Life (and How to Deal with Them) – I shouldn’t need to explain this one.
• Fear of Bad Ideas – Hurry, generate those bad ideas – the good ones will come!

Over the past week, I’ve discovered quite a bit of resources and inspiration sourcesf that I’m sure you’ll also find interesting. If you want to share this link with others, please do so, otherwise explore and continue sharing the articles below.

10 More Beautiful Websites Using WordPrses as a CMS

This article shows how versatile WordPress really is, also showing some popular design trends.

WordPress Overwhelms TypePad in Reader Vote

87% of users prefer WordPress compared to TypePad, and just 4% think there is only a small difference between the two platforms.

20 Best WordPress Typography Plugins to Enhance Readability

Control your typography for the best readability within WordPress. There are plenty of resources included.

18 Alternative Ways to Use WordPress

Even more great uses of WordPress, ideal for people who thought that WordPress was limited to “just” blogs – it can be used within e-Commerce sites, for wikis, and portfolios, to name just a few of them.

WordPress Web Design Process

A look behind the scenes of a design process for a corporate/business web design using WordPress as a content management system (CMS).

Twitter Founders: From “Stupid” Idea to Possible IPO

Building a company that may appear stupid to you won’t be stupid to the millions of people who will soon be using it.

100 Ways to Find Ideas for Your Blog Posts

Even more great ways to find ideas for your blog posts, ideal if you are suffering from any version of “writer’s block”

Blog Promotion: 169 New Ways to Build Traffic Like a Ninja

More specific than one of my recent posts, but great for people who need some more tips and advice on where to begin.

Show Your Favorite Tweets with WordPress

A “basic” tutorial that can be implemented within your sidebar to display your favorite tweets.

20 Reasons Why You Should Blog Before You Twitter

Twitter will lead to some people that begin using Twitter, but even more people that have already started blogs are discovering it for the marketing/connecting benefits.

Mark Zuckerberg on How to Build Backer Culture Inside a Company

Great advice from someone who helped start one of the most popular (and modestly/soon-to-be profitable) sites on the web, and “get judged not by how you look but by what you build.”

50 Most Influential Bloggers of 2009

Great people to follow on Twitter, even better if you have just begun using Twitter.

Blogging is Dead, Long Live Journalism

Blogging is so diverse that you can either be writing about your daily life or dissecting real-time stories and news. Therefore, the article writer calls them “online journalists.”

Conclusion - Thanks for reading the article – leave your thoughts about any of the articles and whether you want to see more articles like this in the comments area below.

Product reviews have been a main source of income, in one way or another, for thousands of bloggers, for quite some time. Ideally, product reviews are complete and un-biased, covering all the positives and negatives of the product, rather than taking into account previous opinions of a company.

Through a new FTC Act, set to go into play on December 1st of this year, bloggers will be fined or given warnings when or if they publish a review of a “free” product without informing their audience/readers that it was paid for or given for free. Often, products that have been given to bloggers for free are given higher reviews than a product that was purchased, for obvious reasons.

Under this new act, the government hopes to increase transparency in blogging, although it is more of a way to crack down on people who may be providing false or fabricated information due to how they received the item or the amount of compensation that was given. Bloggers who do not comply with this new act will face warnings or be fined up to $11,000.

How to Avoid Being Fined – Disclose how you received the item and under what terms the item was given to you under. In other words, if you were given the review for free as a promotion, tell your readers. If you purchased it, tell your readers, and if you are simply rehashing information from another source, it would also be a good idea to link back to the article.

In all honesty, it is better to be safe than sorry, although it will be extremely difficult for the FTC to track millions of blogs and new posts as they are published each and every day.

More information can be found through the official release, otherwise you can read others’ thoughts at Read Write Web.

Tracking what others are searching for on the web can be difficult at times, as there is simply too much content. Think about YouTube’s statistics for a minute – more than twenty hours of video is uploaded every single minute to the site. Thousands of blog posts are published every hour, and millions of blogs have been created.

How do you separate this content and decide what is relevant from what may not be? It sure can be difficult, especially for people who do not know where to look. Many of the sites below have been inspired by social networking sites, as they are geared towards sharing content that has been user-generated. Additionally, they can be placed on your blog in a manner that makes it easy to share content with others – “digging” and “re-tweeting” are popular widgets included on blogs today, and they are easy to implement.

As stated in a previous post, make sure these features are well visible on your site, otherwise they are pretty much useless in helping promote and expand your blog into new arenas online.

1. Digg

Often appearing first on lists like this, Digg isn’t as targeted as many of the other sites, but certainly has the most diverse set of content anywhere. The most popular stories, video, and general websites can be found across the site. Most ideal for news and off-topics sites.

2. StumbleUpon

With new content added around the clock, StumbleUpon is great for finding random inspiration from around the web. You can separate content by what type of site you run – Computers, Humor, Arts, Online, etc.

3. Mixx

Mixx is great for various sources of content, ranging from news to entertainment to fun. Niches and groups can be created through the site, making the site better for promoting your content to others who may find your site interesting, at least compared to other sites.

4. Delicious

Delicious is a social bookmarking site, allowing you to share your favorite sites on the web. Popular and recommended bookmarks can also be found through the simple front page, along with a search form for discovering new content.

5. Buzzup

Largely promoting news-related stories, you’ll find various technology-related tips and news from around the web on the site.

6. Reddit

Again, Reddit is similar to Digg and makes submitting new content and discovering relevant posts on the web extremely easy.

7. Popurls

Aggregating content from the top social bookmarking and networking sites, this site was one of the first of its kind, making it easy to find what others find interesting.

8. Alltop

Beginning with only a few main topics, you can now find recent stories from thousands of blogs and hundreds of different categories from sites across the web.

9. TweetMeme

Separate what is truly useful on Twitter through TweetMeme. Content from various categories and timeframes can be found. It’s ideal for people who don’t want to browse through millions of tweets, and those who want a quick glance at what is popular.

10. TechMeme

Aimed at technology writers, TechMeme covers more on what is popular across all technology blogs. It has helped define how people find and interact with one another, as it was launched nearly five years ago.

11. MyBlogLog

Although MyBlogLog is a community for blogging, you’ll find new content here, as it is aimed at the blogging community.

12. FriendFeed

FriendFeed has similar functionality to Twitter and has been recently acquired by Facebook, ideal for sharing content with others.

13. Yahoo! Buzz

Although Yahoo! Buzz aimed at medium-sized blogs initially, it has largely become a source for traditional media to promote their content. You can submit your own content, but there really isn’t much functionality other than for bookmarking.

14. Google Blog Search

Find content from various sources, including smaller blogs, as new posts are added just a few minutes after they have been published.

15. Newsvine

Containing posts from various sites and categories, you’ll find new content on this site easily, through a well-designed layout.

16. Diigo

A rather new site (at least for some people), this site focuses on research, sharing, and bookmarking.

17. Blinklist

Said to be able to find saved links within 0.18 seconds or faster, this site makes sharing and saving bookmarks (and useful articles) easy.

18. Faves

Find new content from others by category and create your own topics, sharing your own links.

19. Clipmarks

Browse through the most popular content, including text, images, and video through a simple rating interface.

20. dZone

Primarily aimed at web developers, you can find relevant links and resources on this site. More ideal for inspiration than writing new content, you’ll be able to help grow your blog using the resources.

Conclusion

Please share any other sites you may have discovered that are great for discovering new content.

In the past year, and especially recently, a market has begun to develop for what you might coin as “premium” or “paid” plugins. Much like the market that exists for premium themes, there will be disputes from various community members, should more people begin to pursue a different form of benefitting from their work and efforts.

A recent post on ToMuse by Kevin Eklund sums up some ways that the business model could be created, although I will be providing some of my own input into this, not necessarily based on the open-source community, but more around what people are looking for when they install a plugin.

Currently, the main ways that plugin developers and creators make money is through donations. With all forms of donations, they usually don’t amount to much, unless there are campaigns to help support the developer, and this rarely happens. Plugin authors usually see problems trying to continue support for their plugins, especially as new features are added to WordPress that make a continuance of the plugin not worthwhile.

Suggest ways that he writes about are: 1) premium plugins, 2) freemium plugins, 3) paid support, 4), ad supported, and 5) a combination model.

WordPress Isn’t Free

Even though a lot of work on WordPress is done through an open-source business model, the team must raise money to continue operation, and plugin developers are left out of this. Assuming that WordPress can generate more revenue, people who side with WordPress in the promotion of the service (more so WordPress.com, which is somewhat ad-supported) could see some return in their efforts. This model might not work properly, as it is quite difficult to track how many people sign up for either WordPress.com or download and use WordPress.org based on plugins that they like before trying them out.

Some would also say that support isn’t free for WordPress, either. In order to find out how to tweak some of the settings, you may have to consult with people more familiar with the service, who may charge for their work. Sure, there is an expansive database full of code that you can use, but if you are starting your first blog, it can be a struggle to begin to edit the ~5MB+ worth of code that comes with each WP installation.

Time, Usefulness, and Expenses

I will present the argument for premium/paid/ad-supported plugins for two groups of bloggers – those who receive compensation for their time and those who use WordPress.org for their personal blogs.

Personal Bloggers – When someone sets up a personal blog, they typically resort to the very basic plugins — anti-spam, related posts, Twitter/social integration for sharing, miscellaneous widgets, and possibly a contact/comment form plugin to extend the usefulness of these areas.

Unless they have some goals with the site, as in promoting themselves online, which only a few do (most use a personal site to promote side projects and books/products/other blogs), they don’t have much time and additional income to put into paying for additional items, let alone a premium plugin.

99% of the plugins out there can do what they want without added configuration. This is great if they want to use WordPress as a more powerful, yet still easy-to-use system for writing posts and managing their content.

Commercial Bloggers – These are the people who want a more complete solution, one that works for them as a custom solution. Especially true as you work up the website ladder, these people also have more time and can spend more income for solutions that have been adapted to suit their blog.

Many would rather spend $50 or more on premium themes, plugins, and services that allow them to save time and effort down the road, not having to use multiple plugins to perform one task.

For example, while there may be a few solutions to properly integrate forums into your blog, only a small percentage of them will work for people who want the complete, custom look. Others will require advanced editing before their members can even sign into the forum without going through complicated systems.

Why Monetary Support is Crucial

While there are paid plugins available that can perform similar functionality to the free counterparts, you “often” don’t see the same level of support and “free” customization that the paid developers are able to offer. In saying “often,” there are in fact cases where you see better support for free plugins, better compatibility and more advanced, back-end control of how the plugin works and is displayed.

In the future, due to the number of people switching to WordPress from Blogger and similar services, or who are starting a blog for the first time, the time expense may be too great for certain plugin developers to continue working on the plugins. This has been a growing trend, with multiple versions of the same plugin being created, but by different people, as well as transferring ownership of the rights to develop certain plugins.

Should WordPress begin hosting a more advanced, non-free plugin area to the site, they may find that people still want to use the free versions. Or, it could be the other way around. If anything happens, it might be independent developers who launch their own “stores” and collect revenue on the services that they provide around the plugins, in addition to a much smaller fee (say at increments of $1, $5, or $10) to use the plugins.

The freemium model surely does exist. Even Automattic has been known to use it. For people who make “more than $500 a month” form their blog, they are recommended to purchase an Akismet Commmercial Pro-Blogger API Key. Much of this goes into continued support for the plugins, including hosting costs and ensuring that a majority of spam is caught.

On the other hand, when you introduce more features into a plugin, you are siding with more professional bloggers who contact you about adding them into the plugin. They are features that the average user wouldn’t normally take advantage of, but because they have now been included, they may look at more in-depth.

Plugin authors could request that you sign up for an affiliated service, like hosting, before they decide to give you support. Now, this works to a degree, but will want to go this route, especially if they already have settled on a hosting account. At WordPress.org, they keep hosting offers on the side, but still within reach for people who may be interested in “supporting” the service. They likely make enough to support the hosting costs of serving plugins and themes, but not much more.

Similar to the affiliate offer, ad-supported models only work to some extent – most people do not click on ads unless they are really relevant, and how relevant can they be when they are integrated into the back-end of a website, where most people aren’t looking for special promotions and products.

In Conclusion

The premium plugins marketplace could one day happen, but some work still has to be done on making the experience buying premium themes better, with one place to find (non-affiliated) themes that are fully compatible with WordPress and conform to the ethics of WordPress.

Only time will tell what happens. I am, by no means, suggesting any clear way to approach this, as I don’t have the answers, nor am I actively involved in developing plugins. It would be nice to see a plan or marketplace come to fruition, combining the expertise and support of some of the top developers.

In an announcement at WordCamp San Francisco, Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, he announced that the WordPress version that most people use and the version that many professional companies and larger sites use (MU, Multiple-User) will be merging.

Apart from the fact that many people who use the traditional version find it easy to create additional blogs, it is sometimes obtrusive when you want to easily add more blogs (at subdomains or folders) without having to run the install scripts or manage them from completely different admin areas. The single install is what will help more people who previously wanted to use that feature to use WordPress without having to worry about converting to the MU version in the future.

At this point, it appears as though many details surrounding the conversion profess are unclear. Whether you would have to do a manual conversion (replacing some files) or if this would be completely built-in is up in the air. What we do know is that WordPress as we know it is becoming more of a complete content management system than ever before.

Via Technosailor.com.

In trends this year (and for a majority of last year), micro-blogs and the act of micro-blogging became more important to how we communicate online. For one, Twitter and similar tools began allowing us to communicate much more rapidly, while still being able to enjoy what we loved (and still love) – blogging. What separated these tools from others in the past and anything that may be released in the future is how they have helped to change the way we think about what we are doing online.

Twitter as a Service

Note: I am not trying to attack Twitter as the main service, but the overall notion that micro-blogging will not be replacing traditional blogging methods anytime soon.

It took well over a year before Twitter became critical to how a lot of people “chat” online. I say this loosely, because some people have become so addicted to the service that they rely on it simply to function. However, it is merely a tool, and not something that should be relied on. It has become popular due to the fact that it combines several aspects of “common” online communication methods:

• Blogging
• Chat
• Email
• Calling (in some way or another)

We are trying to leave more of an impact on one another than ever before. Think about social media this way – these tools help you focus on one thing, rather than the individual or wide-reaching effects that other methods (once) had. With Twitter and any other similar tool, you are trying to give that “a picture is worth a thousand words” phrase without posting a picture – you are doing it through a sentence or two.

Applied to blogging, services like this will never work, due to the fact that you are limited so much by what you can do. You can’t present your feelings about what is happening in your life and your thoughts in a “paraphrased” manner. It simply isn’t possible unless you give hundreds of updates daily.

What Twitter does effectively is allows you to communicate effectively with others without having to create a whole new email, a new chat session, etc. You are given the ability to reply to and post updates, generally in public. Previous methods, including email and chat were often private, so this is where the social networking aspect comes in. 

We have seen plenty of instances where Twitter has overtaken these other methods in popularity from the standpoint that it is more effective to promote a service, new post, and give updates through this – your Follower are similar to subscribers, who want to be informed on every action that you take.

Core Problems

As I mentioned briefly above, several of the main flaws in Twitter have not yet been solved by other solutions, although there is sure to be another service created down the road to solve them. They are where communication and advertising blend together – and that fine line is broken often.

• Advertising - At some point or another, people discovered that the 54.2 million US visitors that happen upon Twitter each month could pose as an attractive audience to advertise their products to. Unlike blogs, it will always be more difficult to determine whether the people on there are actually trying to promote a product or simply give a recommendation for it. You are given ~140 characters to work with along with a “shortened” URL. Therefore, much of the fundamentals behind ethical advertising are not there.
• Lack of Control - When more people were using Blogger (the difference between WordPress and Blogger is much less today), they were complaining and commenting to the staff that they needed more features, more power, to get their message across. They got some of it, and for the rest of them, they switched to other systems such as WordPress. Now that Twitter has become popular, some have been asking for more power/features – aren’t we going around in the circle once again?
• Communication - Thinking about communication and interactivity, you don’t really get much with Twitter. There are other more complex sites, such as Facebook, that allow you to do much of the same tasks as Twitter, but more effectively.
• No Flexibility - With a blog, you are free to publish nearly anything you want – from pictures to movies, to full-length stories. You can’t do that with micro-blogging services, unless you are talking about one that clams to be one, but is actually a full-blown blog service.
• Ownership - Like Blogger, including other services, according to terms, you might not have “full” ownership of your content. This could be a problem, especially if people try to “overtake” your account – you probably won’t be able to get it back.

Main Advantages

Despite the numerous disadvantages, micro-blogging services do offer several advantages, which should also be mentioned.

1. You can literally setup an account in ten seconds, then publish updates in a few minutes each day, without having to manage categories, tags, pages, and other aspects, although Twitter works most effectively if you have already established a site.
2. You can more effectively determine who is the “Most Popular,” as everyone’s pages are nearly identical, other than the background, frequency of updates, promotion method(s), and popularity prior to joining.
3. You don’t have to create or manage your own site. Now, this might appear as a disadvantage if you need full control, but it is a good solution for many.
4. There have been hundreds of clients and services released to help you make Twitter (and others) available from nearly anywhere, including your desktop, phone, and others.

Conclusion

Dissecting the word “micro-blogging”, what remains is blogging. While we won’t transform all of our blogs into Twitter-like pages, I believe that the trend is more towards mobile communication, rather than short, brief updates. Because, by the end of the day, content still rules. Years down the road, we won’t be able to take or even make much of Twitter messages. However, the blogs will remain, and the content will still be accessible through search engines. Twitter is simply bridging the gap between blogging and chatting, and everything in-between.

The not-so-popular microblogging service Pownce will be shutting its doors on December 15th (roughly two weeks from now) and will have a bittersweet farewell by its members and founders.  In just one short year (the service officially opened to the public in January 2008), the service was never able to kick off and have the major mass appeal factor that Twitter had – what led to its demise and what will become of this closing?

The Problems and Downfall

Pownce was a little too late to the microblogging arena and Twitter was able to grow on a basis of “devoted” members who continued to use the service, even if there was lots of downtime initially.  Then, mass media began promoting Twitter as a way of communicating with one another quickly, and the downfall was inevitable.  There was simply no way of keeping the service active when members were flocking to the more popular, and simpler solution.

The Similarities 

Twitter and Pownce were so similar that there was little to separate them, except that Pownce was more visual, allowing you to post images, videos, and more right within the message and there were less text/character restrictions.

Take a look at Pownce’s introductory statement: “Send messages, files, links, and events to your friends. Create a network of friends and share stuff. It’s free and easy…” then Twitter’s: “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”  Overall, they were meant to accomplish the same thing.

Mass Media Appeal

Because Twitter is essentially its own company, it was able to focus more efforts and raise more capital in order to continue operation.  In the meantime, Pownce was owned by Megatechtronium, who simply couldn’t lead the fight against the media giants, who were promoting it heavily during newscasts and specials.  People who normally wouldn’t use the social media tool soon became addicted to it and it spread like wildfire, even more so in the past quarter.

The main “benefit” to Twitter is that it was completely free (although some look at the image/video/text limits as negative aspects), whereas Pownce was operating on a paid (Pro) option and advertising.

With the death of Pownce, more like-minded services will be created, as there is Jaiku, Youmeo, Identil.ca, Plurk, Tumblr, which have all been created within the past several years due to the newly-developed rapid-fire communication method.

Simplified.

This line can be what held Pownce back from Twitter.  They had a desktop application, but beyond this, the functionality of Twitter was much simpler – you expressed what you were doing and nothing more.  Despite the fact that Pownce was more complex and feature-rich, they were unable to compete with a service that did what it was supposed to (when it was up) and nothing more.

What May Become of its Service/Founders

The two lead developers of the service – Leah Culver and Mike Malone will be migrating over to the Vox team, which may indicate that their expertise and knowledge will be used in developing that blogging tool, although it could also mean that a separate division will be created/added to the service, allowing you to quickly input messages (like Twitter and Pownce).

There have been past instances where the founders (and the entire company) have been acquired in order to advance another company’s services, as may be true in this case.  Another solution would be to have the founders work on integrating the previous interface/features into their Vox, MovableType, or TypePad blog systems, which would prove to be beneficial in the long-term.  After all, Six Apart has been in operation since 2001, and would be able to get more capital or funding to keep the service’s founders working on new projects.

You can find the “welcome” post on Six Apart’s Blog or the “farewell” message on Pownce’s blog.

The founders left with this note: “We’re bittersweet about shutting down the service but we believe we’ll come back with something much better in 2009. We love the Pownce community and we will miss you all.”

If you used the service: You are suggested to move your settings/posts to other services, such as their own Vox or TypePad, or WordPress using the export tool found within the Settings > Export area.

Your Thoughts

What are your thoughts on the closing of Pownce – have you ever used the service?

The video embedded below is inspiring to say the least, presenting a different view of what blogs can do. More than one half of all people in Iran are under the age of twenty-five, with more than 700,000 blogs in 2005 (100,000 actively maintained), making it the third largest country of bloggers.

Despite the fact that many face imprisonment if they use their real name, they continue to voice their opposition against the government and try to speak out about the rights that many other countries.

In many parts of the world, including the United States, much of Europe, and elsewhere, it is “legal” to blog and no government official can condone you for your activities unless you are a threat to the security of the country or express severe hatred against certain groups of people.

The video was created by a group at the Vancouver Film School, found here. A YouTube version is also available.