The new citations feature that I have just recently noticed on Bloglines makes it even more useful than Technorati in finding entries linking to your blog. It's improvements over Technorati include: * speed (though this is probably due to the # of users on it) * the ability to customize your search to search inside or outside your bloglines subscriptions, which makes it much easier to find the random strangers who are linking to your blog. * includes LiveJournal entries. * seems to preserve entries much longer than Technorati, so you can find much older links.
Of course, it doesn't have the same level of API openness that Technorati has, and despite the inclusion of LiveJournal blogs, Technorati seems to carry some blogs that Bloglines does not, which makes their search results complementary, rather than competitive.
Comments (2)
I've been using Bloglines for a while now, and it really is great. It's pretty simple to use and is very much optimized to just let you do what you want: read feeds.
I wonder where they're getting their money from? They've never run ads and they don't sell merchandise.
Posted by David Ely
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August 2, 2004 1:44 PM
Posted on August 2, 2004 13:44
Not sure either. The founder made some cash when his free e-mail list service got bought by Yahoo, and it sounds like Bloglines was written to address a personal pain of his (http://www.wingedpig.com/archives/000023.html).
Other than that, my guess is that they are trying to carve up some territory in the developing RSS reading/searching space and waiting for the market to transition into the mainstream. I'm sure that Technorati/Feedster/Bloglines look fairly attractive to a Google/Microsoft/Yahoo, none of which handle RSS aggregation particularly well. It worked for his last free project, right?
Posted by kwc
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August 2, 2004 3:35 PM
Posted on August 2, 2004 15:35