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Are we about to see Blog Networks 2.0?

Are we about to see Blog Networks 2.0?

eGonzo Weekly by Martin Neumann

Instablogs, the New Delhi-based blog network, recently celebrated their 1st birthday.

But apart from the usual fanfare came the announcement that they’re well on their way to taking their blog network in a new direction.

With Instablogs 2.0 – The Next Generation Blog Network they have a vision of “bringing bloggers and readers closer,” focusing on the current excitement over social media/networking.


Ankit Maheshwari, in charge of Business Development at Instablogs says:

I have been advocating for blog networks to evolve into social networks for quite some time now … The idea of metamorphosing our blog network Instablogs into a social network was in my mind from last 10 months or so.

When the new features shortly come into effect at Instablogs readers will be able to:

  • form small topic-specific communities and tribes.
  • conduct network-wide tagging and searching.
  • utilize a newsroom for news submission/tipping and news link picking.
  • view all stories in the network aggregated in one place accessible via a reading room.
  • create their network of friends.
  • read, rate and comment on stories.
  • RSS customization for any channel, topic, writer, tag, etc.
  • have their own personalized homepage.
  • access Readers’€™ Rewards whereby they can be editors for any channels of their choice.

The personalized homepage is the one that attracted my most interest as well as the advanced features of RSS customization that will be on offer.

It sounds like they’re trying to keep readers at instablogs for much longer and get readers to view multiple blogs with a portal-like experience. I guess this can only be achieved if they have a wide-enough variety of topics (ie: blogs) on offer – which they have.

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This is an interesting move from Instablogs and I applaud their initiative in thinking more “web2.0ish” in regards to blog networks. It seems they are going from what is really a “network of individual blogs” into a truly unified “blog network”.

Currently they have a group of 200 beta testers putting it all through the ropes before the official release date of November 5.

I’m sure other blog networks will be looking on very closely.

Martin Neumann blogs at The Blog Columnist and at Kickstart My Biz

View Comments (6)
  • I am already looking forward to Blog Networks 3.0. Where the readers get paid to read the blogs. I already proposed Calacanis to pay me to vote at Netscape, but I guess he doesn’t want me to drive a Porsche or even to have 2-ply toilet paper at home.

  • This is very close to what we’re doing over at Syn….. Just substitute “network magazines” for Anit’s “tribal” approach to the inventory and bingo.

    If all the technology works — and readers understand it — it should be worth watching. But it may lose readership if it gets over-technical.

  • Thanks Martin,
    Instablogs Community is working great, though we have a very small group right now. But our beta testers are helping us to sort out many things, and most importantly they are helping us in preparing the help files.

    We have completed the app in a very short time, so there is ongoing development everyday. We would be inviting few hundred people more by next week.

    >>But it may lose readership if it gets over-technical.
    Yes John, thats true, few of our beta testers have complained about the same. This is always a big challenge for any programmer to keep things really simple, and yet powerful. We have skip many features from our first version, like Conversation tracker, importing own feeds to keep this version as lite as poosible. Anyways we have put up a quick tour online –
    http://www.instablogs.com/tour/

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