Feedster, Inc., the pioneer of RSS search with the largest index of searchable feeds, announced that Workbench has placed first in its Feed of the Year competition for 2005. Since 2003, Feedster has selected a Feed of the Day to acknowledge an undiscovered blog or topical feed. The new Feed of the Year award honors writers who have displayed continued excellence in blogging. Each 2005 Feed of the Day was reviewed for uniqueness, freshness, presentation, usability, and community.
“An insider’s blog on blogging and the blogging business. Real news, well reported and written. Tons of comments, despite a complete feed,” said the Feedster judges in their praise of Workbench. “Every single item was news. A big winner, despite infrequent updates. Hey, good stories take time, kids.”
"I'm completely geeked -- Feed of the Year is the first award I've won in 10 years of publishing on the web," said Roger Cadenhead, author of Workbench. "Ten long years of being overlooked by the Webbys, Bloggies, Nobel and MacArthur Genius Grant. I feel like teen-age Courtney Cox being plucked onstage to dance with Bruce Springsteen, but with a less butch haircut."
“I am extremely proud of the selection of Workbench as Feed of the Year. It is the type of blog that continues to show the rest of us what this medium is all about.” says Alan Graham, Feedster’s Community Liaison. “What makes this award different is that it is not a popularity contest. Most blog awards consist of nominations, reviews, and voting so naturally, the more popular blogs always rise to the top. Instead, a panel of independent judges rated blogs across a range of criteria, not just number of links or traffic.”
"Blogs -- really good ones -- aren't finished work. They're alive." says Doc Searls, Blogger & Senior Editor of Linux Journal. "They have pulse and personality. Like human beings, they converse. They involve themselves in the topics their writers care about. They look to move subjects forward, to have effects. They are expressions of utility rather than futility. They are read and pointed to because they are interesting and good for the world. Just like their authors."
Feed of the Year Second Place Winner was Treehugger
Feed of the Year Third Place Winner was Double-Tongued Word-Wrester Dictionary
As Feed of the Year, Workbench will receive a brand new video iPod. Second and Third place winners receive iPod Nanos.
About the Judges:
Betsy Richter, formerly chief editor of Excite.com, founding editor of Oregon Live, has her own blog My Whim is Law, and is captain of Metroblogging's Portland site, one of 30 in an international network.
Dana Blankenhorn, has 25 years of experience writing about Internet content, and ecommerce strategies. A member of Internet Media Assn. Blog: www.a-clue.com Dana’s Moore’s Law blog www.corante/com/mooreslore defines the history of technology.
Russell Shaw is a technology and politics author, journalist, blogger and consultant. Author of seven books, he writes the daily IP Telephony Blog for ZDNet and is a frequent contributor to other tech and news blogs. His website is http://www.russellshaw.net/.
January 1, 2006 in Press Releases | Permalink
Mr. Whitney comes to Feedster from LesConcierges where, as CTO and Co-founder, he focused on delivering CRM solutions to the personal services market. Mr. Whitney was previously the CTO and Co-founder of healthshop.com, an eCommerce company aimed at the alternative healthcare market. He was also the Director of Engineering at Starwave Corporation where he was responsible for ESPN.COM, NBA.COM, NFL.COM, various Fantasy Sport Games, and proprietary eCommerce technology that supported multiple subscription-based products.
“We are very excited to have Brent join the company,” said Chris Redlitz, Feedster’s President. “He brings the necessary background to help us build a more scalable infrastructure as our business continues to grow. He is instituting a core development process that dramatically improves our ability to innovate and release new products. Brent is working closely with our co-founder and Chief Scientist François Schiettecatte“
"Feedster is a market leader in RSS search, syndication, and advertising. I am interested in working with a company that has a great team and growth potential" said Brent Whitney "Feedster has made the necessary moves to build an organization that addresses the opportunities and needs in this evolving marketplace."
About Feedster
Feedster is an established and rapidly growing pioneer in RSS-based technology and services. The company helps individuals and organizations harness the rich information available in the universe of RSS feeds, which includes blogs, traditional news services, podcasts, e-commerce sites, and entertainment properties. Feedster’s search engine scans the Blogosphere constantly, providing a fresh look at the more than 19 million sources it tracks. Each day, Feedster adds millions of new content from existing feeds as well as finding tens of thousands of new sources. Feedster’s syndicated content service enables web publishers to aggregate dynamically-updated content that can be customized for their own site visitors. Feedster’s advertising network matches marketers with the premium demographic audience of RSS subscribers through highly targeted channels in numerous vertical categories.
December 20, 2005 in Press Releases | Permalink
New Service to Provide Integrated Dashboard of Blog and Mainstream Media;
Advanced Text Analytics Automate Sentiment, Surface Topics and Influencers
SAN MATEO, Calif. – December 12, 2005 – Biz360®, the leader in market intelligence solutions, and Feedster Inc., the pioneer of RSS content syndication and search with the largest index of searchable feeds, today announced a partnership to help marketing and communications professionals glean intelligence from the increasing volume of blog and wiki content discussing their company, products and competitors, along with trends that may impact their businesses.
The new service, BlogView™, is the latest expansion of Market360®, Biz360’s award-winning market intelligence application. BlogView will leverage Biz360’s market-leading technologies to automate sentiment ratings and surface topics and influencers related to specific companies, products and trends. Biz360 uniquely provides this level of relevance by subject, which allows marketing and communications professionals to create and act on specific role or issue-based dashboards that can now present mainstream media and blog measurement in a single view.
Feedster will direct Biz360 to active blog feeds, enabling Biz360 to collect the content for text analysis. The partnership will allow Biz360 to identify and add new blog sources as they appear on the Internet. Biz360 is currently tracking over 15 million unique sources through Feedster, which includes blogs and wikis. Feedster has the ability to separate the postings of real value to marketers from fake content sites like splogs (spam blogs) that are not real blogs. Quality, up-to-date content and relevant analytics are both critical to market intelligence solutions.
“New forms of media and delivery vehicles, such as blogs, wikis and RSS, have created new challenges for marketers,” said Deborah Eastman, chief marketing officer for Biz360. “Our vision has always been to provide clients with a 360-degree view of their market and it is clear that postings and conversations occurring on blogs can have a profound impact on perceptions of brand value and company performance. With Feedster refreshing 19 million feeds each day, we can help clients ensure that nothing is developing below their radar.”
“The Blogosphere is noisy and hard to track since for every legitimate blog there are dozens more that are essentially fake. Feedster has an advanced ability to monitor everything in the blog world and provide Biz360 postings that are meaningful and actionable,” said Chris Redlitz, president of Feedster. “Feedster’s continuously updated database of active RSS feeds will help power the Biz360 service, providing marketing and communications professionals with reliable, best-of-breed monitoring and analysis capabilities.”
“Although media channels continue to fragment and the mass market continues to move toward niche audiences, disparate media sources are still connected and information moves freely between them,” continued Eastman. “An integrated view of different media types helps marketing and communications professionals understand the trends, influencers and dynamics of their market. Feedster’s proven leadership in developing and maintaining a comprehensive collection of active blog feeds on the Internet enables Biz360 to deliver the market feedback loop organizations require to stay on top of market trends and measure the impact of their brand investments.”
BlogView is available now as part of Market360, which includes RSS support, or as a standalone service. The capabilities will also be available through LexisNexis® MarketImpact™ and StrategyOne’s MediaMind.
About Biz360
Biz360’s market intelligence solutions provide real-time insight to Global 2000 and government decision-makers, so they can take action to shape the market and improve their competitive position. Our flagship offering, Market360, continuously analyzes global news and information aggregated across print, broadcast and online sources, including blogs and stock message boards, to deliver real-time intelligence. Industry leaders use Market360 to evaluate market sentiment, respond to competitive threats, monitor trends and issues, and measure marketing performance.
Our clients include AstraZeneca, Harley-Davidson Motor Company, PacifiCare Health Systems, Sun Microsystems, Verizon Services Group and Xerox. Biz360 can be reached at 866.424.9360 or www.biz360.com/.
About Feedster, Inc.
Feedster (www.feedster.com) is an established and rapidly growing pioneer in RSS-based technology and services. The company helps individuals and organizations harness the rich information available in the universe of RSS feeds, which includes blogs, traditional news services, e-commerce sites, and entertainment properties. Feedster’s search engine scans the Blogosphere constantly, providing a fresh look at the more than 19 million sources it tracks. Each day, Feedster adds millions of new content from existing feeds as well as finding tens of thousands of new sources. Feedster’s syndicated content service enables web publishers to aggregate dynamically-updated content that can be customized for their own site visitors. Feedster’s advertising network matches marketers with the premium demographic audience of RSS subscribers through highly targeted channels in numerous vertical categories.
The privately-held company is based in San Francisco.
December 12, 2005 in Press Releases | Permalink
Will Honor 31 Outstanding Bloggers
Feedster, Inc. the pioneer of RSS search with the largest index of searchable feeds, today announced that it will honor the achievements of independent bloggers and publishers with a “Feed of the Year” Countdown. One finalist will be announced daily beginning tonight and at midnight on December 31, the “Feed of the Year” will be announced.
Since 2003, Feedster has selected a Feed of the Day to acknowledge an undiscovered blog or topical feed. The new Feed of the Year award was created to honor writers who have displayed continued excellence in blogging. A panel of independent judges reviewed each 2005 Feed of the Day and rated them for uniqueness, freshness, presentation, usability, and community.
“As a citizen of the blogosphere, Feedster has always recognized the achieve-ments of independent bloggers and publishers. Our Feed of The Day was created as an opportunity to honor a unique voice or technology from within the din of the web,” says Alan Graham, Feedster’s Community Liaison. “We are taking this one step further with our Feed of The Year Countdown. During the entire month of December we will recognize some of the best contributors to the blogosphere from our own Feed of The Day list.”
What makes this award different is that it is not a popularity contest. Most blog awards consist of nominations, reviews, and voting so naturally, the more popular blogs always rise to the top. Instead, a panel of independent judges rated blogs across a range of criteria, not just number of links or traffic.
Prizes will be awarded to the Feed of the Year recipient and the top 2 finalists including iPod nanos and the new Video iPod.
To follow the Countdown, click here.
About the Judges:
Betsy Richter, formerly chief editor of Excite.com, founding editor of Oregon Live, has her own blog My Whim is Law and is captain of Metroblogging's Portland site, one of 30 in an international network.
Dana Blankenhorn, has 25 years of experience writing about Internet content, and ecommerce strategies and is a member of Internet Media Association. Dana’s Moore’s Law blog defines the history of technology.
Russell Shaw is a technology and politics author, journalist, blogger and consultant. Author of seven books, he writes the daily IP Telephony Blog for ZDNet and is a frequent contributor to other tech and news blogs. His website is www.russellshaw.net/
December 1, 2005 in Press Releases | Permalink
Today, the company announced that it has promoted Chris Redlitz from Vice President Sales and Marketing to President.
Mr. Redlitz has been VP Sales and Marketing of Feedster since 2004. Under his direction, Feedster established several key partnerships including AOL and launched the Feedster Media Network an RSS advertising platform.
Mr. Redlitz is an online media veteran with extensive experience in advertising. In 1997, he co-founded Adauction, the first online marketplace and exchange for media which leveraged the power of the Internet to bring media planners, buyers and sellers together in one marketplace. At Adauction, Mr. Redlitz was successful in building the company to a 150-person business with strong revenue base. In 2000 Mr. Redlitz received Ad Age's i20 Award for his accomplishments in the development of interactive advertising and was recognized as one of the most influential people in online media and marketing.
Prior to Adauction, Mr. Redlitz served as senior vice president of sales for Money Mailer Inc., and lead generation companies Get Relevant and Aptimus (NASDAQ: APTM). Early in his Internet career he helped found one of the first independent online yellow pages, On Village, which was acquired by World Pages. Mr. Redlitz previously worked for Reebok International over a ten year period holding management positions in sales and marketing. During that time, Reebok’s annual sales grew from $15 million to $2.5 billion.
“Chris is a proven executive with unique insights and vision regarding the future of online advertising and growth opportunities. Under his direction, we expect Feedster to expand its leadership as the premier RSS search and syndication company. The investors are excited about Chris stepping into the leadership role,” says Marco DeMiroz, Feedster Chairman and Managing Director at Selby Venture Partners.
“I am very bullish on the market opportunity and Feedster’s position as a leader in the emerging RSS syndication and advertising business,” says Mr. Redlitz. “I have been in the online media space for the last 11 years, and I feel the same energy and excitement from the early days of the web.”
November 7, 2005 in Press Releases | Permalink
Automated Self Service Engine to Build Targeting Channels
Today the company announced it has launched an automated self service engine for the Feedster Media Network. The self service process will make it easier for publishers to sign up and participate in Feedster’s evolving RSS ad solution. This will populate 20 different channels to enable advertisers to reach users via RSS ads in highly targeted channels such as Technology, Arts & Entertainment, Health & Fitness and Travel & Recreation.
Working with marketers such as Sun, Microsoft and CPM, Feedster’s Technology channel proved that its advertising network can provide a new, highly targeted means for advertisers to reach the micro audiences that are growing through RSS feeds.
“Feedster will allow large and small publisher to generate revenue from their feeds. As RSS continues to grow at rapid pace, advertisers are discovering RSS as effective targeted channel,” says Chris Redlitz, Feedster’s President. “RSS is a non-intrusive, opt-in platform that reaches users defined by what they elect to read through their RSS subscriptions.”
“Blogs are increasingly driving value and fueling growth opportunities for everyone. Feedster provides a way for us to reach this community in aggregate and effectively deliver our message,” says Rhodes Klement, Sr. Director Global Brand and Advertising, Sun Microsystems. Sun was an early user of the Feedster Network while it was still in formation.
“Starcom recognizes the synergy between this new format for publishing and the shift in audience behavior. We selected Feedster to integrate our message within relevant and timely content and deliver it to an audience that would help us extend our message,” says Brandon Starkoff, Associate Director, Starcom Worldwide (Sun’s agency).
Recently, CMP Media's TechWeb Network broke a new RSS ad campaign with Feedster to publicize its second annual Blog-X Awards, which recognizes the best independently published technology blogs in the industry.
"CMP Media wanted to capitalize on the synergies between RSS and the shift in audience behavior towards blogging," says Ray Manna, Director, Online Audience Development Marketing for CMP Media's TechWeb Network. "Feedster made the process easy and efficient helping us reach its Technology Channel users with a key message about our second annual Blog-X Awards."
Advertising on the Feedster Media Network will be priced on a variable CPC basis depending on which channels are selected by marketers. “We provide the opportunity for blog publishers to monetize their efforts with relevant advertising from advertisers,” concludes Mr. Redlitz.
November 7, 2005 in Press Releases | Permalink
We are pleased to announce that Alan Graham, a noted blog researcher and creator of the world's first book dedicated to blogs as literature, Never Threaten To Eat Your Co-Workers, has joined the company as Feedster’s Community Liaison.
“I really like Alan. He's smart, engaging, helpful, insightful, and a lot of fun to work with. He sees way ahead of the curve, understands markets deeply (publishing for example) and knows how to connect both in person and in the virtual forms,” says Doc Searls, Senior Editor of Linux Journal. “This is a great move by Feedster.”
“Alan is a digital chameleon riding the edge of technology, not following it.” says Chris Redlitz, Feedster’s President. “He'll serve as a bridge allowing Feedster to develop an even closer relationship to the blogging community that we serve.”
Since 2001, Mr. Graham has been an author, blogger, and columnist for O’Reilly and Associates, the world’s premier technology publisher. His work has also appeared in Macworld, MacAddict, and David Pogue's Missing Manual: Mac OS X."
In 2001, Mr. Graham was Author/Creator for Visor Adventure, the world’s first PDA-driven Travel Blog for which he traveled 9,000+ miles in under 30 days to prove the power of mobile technologies. His career also includes posts with PresenceWorks, Inc (Chief Technology Evangelist) the world’s first commercial developer of IM Presence Technologies; Empatheia, Inc. (Founder/Consultant) a firm that brought business development to smaller startup tech companies.
November 4, 2005 in Press Releases | Permalink
Mitsui & Co., Ltd., today announced it has made an investment in Feedster, a leading developer and provider of RSS search services for the Internet that will help Feedster expand its business worldwide.
Blogging has rapidly spread worldwide. In Japan, according to the research conducted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications early this year, about 3.35 million people blog and 16.5 million read blogs, both of which will double in number in a couple of years. This will stimulate demand for Feedster’s proprietary blog and RSS search engines.
“Mitsui has established its market leadership in Japan by offering its e-commerce clients a variety of e-marketing services that satisfies their needs through its strong relationship with major U.S. partners,” says Katsuhiko Oizumi, general manager, Internet service & marketing department, Mitsui & Co., Ltd. “We will expand their business horizon in cooperation with our existing e-Marketing services, and leverage our assets to enhance the corporate value of Feedster.”
“We are pleased to have Mitsui as an investor,” says Chris Redlitz, Feedster’s Vice President, Sales and Marketing. “Feedster is already a market leader in blog search and content syndication. With this investment we continue to distance ourselves from the field and prepare for global expansion.”
About Mitsui & Co., Ltd.
Mitsui & Co., Ltd., Japan, is one of the world's most diversified and comprehensive trading companies. Headquartered in Tokyo, Mitsui & Co., Ltd. maintains a global network of 175 offices in 75 countries, and has 723 subsidiaries and associated companies worldwide.
September 7, 2005 in Press Releases | Permalink
Today, Feedster launched the FEEDSTER Top 500, a ranking of the most interesting and important English language blogs. The ranking is achieved by taking into account factors such as the number of inbound links over time; if the blog has been recently updated; and the elimination of obvious non-blogs that have appeared on other top-blog lists.
“Feedster’s ranking shows the diversity of content and opinion that make up the user-created blog world and move away from rankings based largely on who’s been around the longest. The list seeks to go far beyond techies and far beyond the A-list bloggers and far beyond text,” says FEEDSTER Top 500 creator J. Scott Johnson, who is also a co-founder and CTO of Feedster.
As a result, some of the highest ranking blogs reflect a wide range of subject matter, among them: Vimeo / Newest Clips, Albino Blacksheep, Sepia Mutiny, Stuff on My Cat, Baseball Prospectus, and Cinema Minima.
“We left out professional news sites, aggregation systems, and some fairly static web sites that happened to have feeds but don’t ‘feel bloggy,’” says Mr. Johnson. “This sort of filtering is a different screen than what we use to categorize news versus blogs in Feedster search and is much more subjective. Our first iteration of this list solves the staleness problems and not-a-blog problems that others have faced.”
“We’re planning to refresh the FEEDSTER Top 500 each month and will keep its ranking methodology fluid. As the blog world is rapidly changing, we must quickly update our ranking methods to keep up,” concludes Mr. Johnson.
August 16, 2005 in Press Releases | Permalink
Feedster, Inc., a rapidly growing Internet search engine and advertising network for blogs and RSS feeds, announced today that Tony Guntharp, well-known in the developer community by his blog name fusion94.org, has joined Feedster as a Senior Software Engineer, a newly created position.
Mr. Guntharp will develop software to power and extend the new Feedster Media Network, a way for advertisers to reach highly-concentrated vertical audiences through RSS feeds.
“Tony is bringing his experience in developing and deploying high traffic websites to improve all aspects of Feedster with a concentration on the Media Network,” says Scott Rafer, the company’s President & CEO. “He is a huge talent and we are pleased to have him at Feedster.”
Mr. Guntharp was the co-founder of both Konstrux Technologies, which implements gForge for companies, and Damage Studios. Damage Studios was a San Francisco based game studio working on Rekonstruction, a next generation massively multiplayer online game.
Prior to founding both companies, Mr. Guntharp worked at VA Linux Systems (now VA Software Corporation), where he (along with Tim Perdue, Drew Streib and Uriah Welcome) co-founded SourceForge.net and served as the Engineering Manager of the Web Technologies Group focusing on the development of Internet applications and the acceleration of the Apache and Tux web servers.
Prior to joining VA linux Systems, Mr. Guntharp was one of the co-founders of Fresher Information Corp, a San Francisco software company whose Core Technology involved the MATISSE Object-Oriented Database Management System. There, Mr. Guntharp architected Internet applications involving Content Mangement Systems for ZDnet and craigslist.
Mr. Guntharp has over 15 years of experience in Systems Engineering and Systems Architecture. Eariler in his career he worked for healthshop.com, A3 Ventures, planet U, and at NTT's Multimedia Communications Labs. He is the co-author of "Practical Linux" published by Que, June 2000 (ISBN: 0789722519).
Feedster, Inc., is a rapidly growing Internet search engine and advertising network for blogs and RSS feeds. Feedster’s helps individuals and organizations harness the rich information available in the new universe of RSS feeds, which includes blogs, traditional news services, e-commerce sites, and entertainment properties. Feedster’s search engine updates several times per hour, always providing a fresh look at over the more than 12 million sources it tracks. Feedster adds millions of new documents each day from millions of blogs and a quarter million professionally edited feeds from sites such as The New York Times, BBC, CNET, and Wired. Approximately 50,000 new sources are added daily.
The company has also developed an advertising network that enables marketers to target RSS subscribers in numerous vertical categories.
Founded in March 2003, the privately-held company is based in San Francisco
August 9, 2005 in Press Releases | Permalink
