Zemanta - Excellent Tool for Bloggers
photo credit: Gandalfar
I like Zemanta - a lot. It has really inspired me to do more blogging because it is fun to use (golly, that sounds silly). But honestly, I had thought of putting together a tool kind of like this at one point. Zemanta is a Firefox plugin that works with the WordPress, Blogger, and Typepad blogging platforms. While you are typing up your blog post, Zemanta begins to suggest links to other blog stories, pictures from Wikipedia, links within your post back to Wikipedia and tags for you post. At first I was a little confused, but then I installed it and tried it out. Just install the plugin and start writing a blog post. Crazy easy, huh?
I like the basic features so far, but they are pushing new functionality based on user feedback. Now, this is pretty cool and all, but I am wondering about their business strategy. Free tool - very usable - I like it a lot and I imagine most other people do also. How do they monetize it? Do they eventually have a process that allows advertisers to embed ads in the blog posts (with the permission of the blogger of course)? Relevant link selling? Whatever it is, I will be using this tool and looking forward to better understanding their future plans.
Thanks for giving us a try and writing review. About making money, we are not fully sure yet how will that go as we first want to deliver a solid product.
There are number of ways we can go, but as always, it much depends on what kind of reception we get from our potential partners. But looking at general trends over the other web services, there will be a lot of focus in making money in a “non-evil” way.
If you have any other feedback, we’ll love to hear it at getsatistfaction.com/zemanta or just drop me a mail - jure@zemanta.com
Jure Cuhalev, Zemanta