clearspring - the widget network.

The blog search engine and advertising network Technorati has recently released part 1 of their 2008 State of the Blogosphere report, which analyzes the health and trends of using blogging as a medium.

This year Technorati reports some awesome stats. They’ve had 133 million blog records indexed. They’ve seen 7.4 million blogs posted in the last 120 days. They conclude that “blogs are a global phenomenon that has hit the mainstream. ”

At Clearspring, we believe that this validates our view that blogs are still a major of avenue for which people share content online. Within the blogging space, all in all we’ve integrated Launchpad with WordPress.com, Windows Live Spaces, MySpace blogs, Xanga, Blogger, Typepad, LiveJournal and Vox.

I’ve been blogging for 4+ years now on a variety of domains. I’ve shared with my audience my view points, life experiences, and the interesting things I’ve found online. It’s been an incredible opportunity to meet and form community with so many amazing people that I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet with otherwise.

Do you blog? If so, what do you like to share?

We were recently discussing different tools we could give to the people to help them understand widgets and the value proposition of Clearspring. We decided to write up a quick white paper. It’s entitled “What’s a Widget and Why Is it Important? (PDF)”

I’d encourage you to download it, read it, and send me comments. Let me know what you think. E-mail me at justin@clearspring.com.

When I woke up this morning, it seemed like everyone online and in the morning news shows were talking about the NBC Saturday Night Live skit where Tina Fey plays Governor Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler plays Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I quickly went to NBC.com to see if they had posted clips from the show. They had. Let me say this… not often do I laugh out loud at stuff that I see. This almost had me shooting Red Bull out my nose.

Instantly my first thought was, I have to share this with my friends. I know a lot of people that don’t watch Saturday Night Live but would find the clip hilarious. With the Clearspring share menu, I could do this with ease. As you see below, I shared and posted it to my Facebook page.

For a while now, here at Clearspring, we’ve had an amazing relationship with NBC. They distribute a lot of their content through our widget platform Launchpad. This is an amazing example of how when you match rad content with shareability you have a great recipe for virality.

You too can use the power of Launchpad to make your great content shareable. Sign up for an account right now.

If you have any questions, drop me a line – justin@clearspring.com. You can also follow us on Twitter @clearspring.

Hooman and I are hitting the road this week. There will be a couple of great opportunities that you can hear us speak.

On September 8th, Hooman will be at the PMA Digital Marketing Summit on a panel entitled “Social Networking, Social Media, Widgets, Podcasting, User-Generated Content… Where do they fit and how do you use them?” The panel is from 11:15 – 12 p.m. The panel will be moderated by Brian Morrissey of Adweek and will include Marshall Sponder, Sr. Social Networks Analyst at Monster.com and Web Analytics Associon as well as Kwasi Asare, Head of New Media at Bad Boy Entertainment.

Stay connected with Hooman while he’s at the PMA Digital Marketing Summit and in NYC by following him on Twitter.

On September 10th, I’ll be at StartUp SF demoing Clearspring’s widget platform Launchpad. Its from 6-9pm at 8th Floor Cafe of Orrick, Herrinton & Sutcliffe (@ 405 Howard St in San Francisco). It costs $10 online in advance / $20 at the door.

I’ll be in San Francisco from Tuesday to Friday of next week. If you want to meetup, grab lunch, coffee, or a beer, drop me a line. E-mail me at justin@clearspring.com or follow me on Twitter.

I read A LOT of blogs. Often, I’ll come across a post that I want to blog about or that I want to share with a friend.

Recently blogging company Six Apart relaunched Blogs.com as “the place to find the best in blogs.” We worked together with Six Apart to implement Launchpad so that it was as easy as possible for Blogs.com users to share articles with their friends.

Here’s what happens when you share. Under each story that’s listed, there is a little share button. When you click it, our Launchpad On-Page menu comes up. (See the screenshots at the beginning of the blog post.) You’ll see some of the usual options like “post”, “send”, and “bookmark”. What’s neat is, when you click “post” and select a destination (i.e. Facebook, MySpace), it will send that destination an excerpt of the blog post in a widget. See the example below:

Our CEO Hooman Radfar is quite the busy man. He spends a lot of time traversing the country, meeting with customers, and talking at conferences about widgets and all the awesome things we’re doing here at Clearspring. Sometimes it can be hard to keep up with him. Well not anymore…

Hooman has started using Twitter. You can find out what Hooman is doing right now at his screen name @hoomanradfar.  Friend him up.

Another great way to keep up with Hooman is through his popular blog Widgify. There he adds his commentary on what’s happening in the Web 2.0 industry as well as brainstorming ideas about the future. With a little bit of Foo magic, he’s launched a redesign. It’s looks quite tasty. If you haven’t seen it, go check it out – http://widgify.com