WebHelperMagazine.com

by Scott Frangos, Managing Editor WebHelperMagazine.com

What do you get when you cross a search engine with a news aggregator and a blog pipeline? How could such a convergence machine help you with your social marketing efforts?

“(the sphere widget) places your blog and articles squarely in the same pack with some very well-known bloggers and news agencies.”

To answer those questions, we’ll take a look at an interesting conversational intersection on the web where blogs and news meet – at “Sphere.” At first glance, Sphere looks like a news search engine, but it is also a Blog Directory (and there are a number of those… see the Directory of Blog Directories). But where Sphere stands out is that when you search, you get a return with links to blog posts on the subject of your search on the left side of the page, with links to relevant news stories on the right. Consider this screenshot for a search I did on “Social Marketing”:

We can see (above) that people are currently buzzing about Google’s “Open Social” versus FaceBook (and Microsoft’s stake in it). The buzz is in the “news” and in blog posts. What’s the difference, one might ask? Well, old-timers like myself who actually trained in colleges of journalism know that the “News” is a a bastion of professionalism, veracity, and objectivity, while blog posters are, well… relative whipper snappers filled with unsubstantiated gossip. Right? Hmmmmm. When you read some of the “blog posts”, it’s difficult to tell them from the “news” stories. I think we might be in for a big flip flop on who’s got the right perspective in the news and information “sphere.” And of course, sphere has this convergence flipflop covered… from both sides (are there “sides” on a sphere?).

Bloggo Sphere…

Now, a good thing for BlogMasters to do would be to jump on over to Sphere and submit their blog using the feedback link. Another thing you may like to do is get the “Sphere” widget for WordPress, Blogger, Moveable Type, and Typepad (and some others). The widget, “connects with an icon link at the end of your blog posts. When a reader clicks on the icon link, we find blog and media articles related to your blog posts.” Smart. Of course it jumps folks off your site/blog, but it does them a service by catering to their interests. And, it places your blog and articles squarely in the same pack with some very well-known bloggers and news agencies. One good practice for BlogMasters would be to install the widget, then see what blogs pop-up which are deemed “related” to your post. Go to those blogs, make relevant comments, and link back to your own post.

Spinning the Sphere…

Let’s close with a look at who’s behind Sphere which is composed of “people passionate about connecting mainstream and conversational media content.” We’ve got the likes of Matt Mullenweg (Founder of WordPress); Josh Macht (former Editor of Time.com); Ron McCoy (former Chief Technology Officer of New York Times Digital and About.com); Mary Hodder (Founder/CEO of Dabble.com — a place to organize and collect web videos ); and Scott Kurnit (Founder and former CEO of About.com). Old media meets new media. Blog engine meets web video mash-up. Talk about conversational media and social marketing. That’s right… talk about it.

The Tilt of Your Sphere…

Current choices for tilting your sphere — more to come.

Where’s all this leading? Well, we expect innovation from such a sphere guidance crew — the Sphere site itself hints at some interesting things in the works. I was not disappointed when I read the description of WordPress Sphere plugin over at WordPress.org. Seems you “can adapt your plug-in or the election campaign: Left, Right, Balanced.” We added the plugin here at WebHelperMagazine.com, and sure enough there is an option to have the plugin display a left or right tilt, politically speaking. Danger, Will Robinson…. Danger (go ahead and sphere that reference if you don’t already know it) — the right apparently means “Republican”… but are they always conservative? Who exactly chooses the categories and which sites go in them? What happened to the “Politics, Whacko Third Party” category? We’re of course staying neutral here at WebHelperMagazine.com.

The plugin developer has promised more options (sphere settings) soon. That should be interesting. Will we get a sphere focus choice for Darwinism versus Intelligent Design? Microsoft versus Google? Which way will your sphere spin? And… will you disclose the focus you choose… to your readers? Answering the questions that arise from the options Sphere developers are creating looks to create some maturity in the blogo-News-Mashup sphere. And also some built in spin blinders for blog readers.