Zemanta For Bloggers? Good Idea, Bad Idea, Or Great Idea?

March 27, 2008 | By Darnell Clayton | Filed Under Blog Software, General, News, Technology

Previously reviewed by TechCrunch, Zemanta offers itself as a useful tool to help make blogger’s post “more vibrant.”

Currently available only in Firefox and Internet Exploer (the latter still in beta testing), Zemanta’s main goal is to provide to help bloggers find relevant links to their articles by suggesting related content through words and images on the side (after you install it).

One of the great things about Zemanta is that it actually scans the web for Creative Commons content, so bloggers will be able to post useful images without the fear of being sued by an angry photographer/artist (provided they link back that is).

It may also help fend off bloggers block, which can creep up unawares upon authors (especially in the middle of a post).

Unfortunately the only draw back to Zemanta is that the software has the potential to be abused by sploggers, who may find it easier to leech off the backs of a future giant than to purchase the software to scrap content themselves.

That aside, Zemanta may prove its worth, especially if they are able to include video recommendations (hopefully beyond YouTube, although that may be a great place to start).

The software is currently only available in for Blogger, Typepad and WordPress.com and self hosted WordPress blogs (2.0 and up), although they will hopefully consider expanding the software to other blog platforms (such as Moveable Type).

Update: Corrected link for Moveable Type (Thanks Dave for the heads up).

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Comments

9 Responses to “Zemanta For Bloggers? Good Idea, Bad Idea, Or Great Idea?”

Dave on March 27th, 2008 9:47 pm

I believe the link you have for Movable Type is wrong. Maybe it should point to http://www.movabletype.com/
Vaibhav on March 28th, 2008 12:57 am

It is definitely a good idea. Though the image suggestions need a lot of luck (as mentioned here: http://www.onlineobservations.net/zemanta-a-bloggers-aide-maybe/)…

I personally use LiveWriter and so look forward to anyone writing a Zemanta plugin for that.
andraz on March 28th, 2008 2:37 am

Hy from Zemanta!

Thanks for review!

We are trying really hard and listening to what users are going to say and then try to fix the problems pointed out.

Other types of recommendations are on our mind too, but first we will work some more on current ones and try to make them even more useful.
More platforms are also in the making.

About the video there is a question that it is really hard to find a good on-topic video for most of the blog posts (excluding the ones about presidential elections, plenty of material there… :)
For example what would you like to have suggested beside this post?

Most sploggers already have tools to include content, they are half baked but are there. If I joke a bit: it might be a dream to make Zemanta so good that even a splog becomes really useful content just by using it (I don’t think anyone ever approached splog problem from that angle :)

Enough of joking, we hope to hear from you again and to have you as a happy user. Please send us mail or contact us through http://getsatisfaction.com/zemanta

bye
andraz
andraz on March 28th, 2008 2:46 am

oh, about live writer,

we are looking into how to deliver that soon also.
Robert Payne on March 28th, 2008 1:05 pm

Holler when you have the Windows Live Writer version!
D. Harris on March 28th, 2008 4:13 pm

Great article, link is wrong but they’ll find it.
andraz on March 29th, 2008 4:58 am

Yes, we’ll try to bring livewriter plugin out soon.
Please bear with us, haven’t slept enough for a few days now. :)

bye
andraz
Eric on April 6th, 2008 4:08 pm

Honestly, Zemanta makes blogging fun again. There is plenty of room for improvement, but even the basics are an excellent foundation.
Bontb on April 9th, 2008 9:08 am

I like it very much!

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