Content suggestion engine for WordPress: TechCrunch has an interesting article this morning on the Alpha release of a product called Zemanta. Zemanta is a contextual content suggestion engine and works with WordPress and Firefox. With nothing to install on the blog, and a simple FF extension, Zemanta creates a little AJAX box on the side of your write panel in WordPress with suggestions on what to add to your content. This information is gathered real time from various media publication sites and blogs. I am watching the Zemanta control box as I type this post and it seems to update after regular intervals with new suggestions. It also lets you add links to various keywords on your post to other articles on the web and your blog.
I just tried out some of the features including addition of pictures and related links but the soup generated is not pretty and I personally do not care for it. But it is still Alpha code but it sure is fun to play with and discover related and relevant content to display to your readers. If you are a WordPress (or Blogger) user, give it a try and let us know what you think.
Personally I love it, because it’s a Slovenian company and Zemanta plugin it’s a time savior.
I installed/restarted/activated but I’m not seeing it anywhere on my blog. I’ll have to take your word that it’s a neat tool.
Looks like one to monitor for developments, thanks for the heads up…
I wrote a whole long comment about what I did and didn’t like about this extension and when I submitted it I got a page with the URL “suck it spammer.php” and lost the comment.
Can’t be arsed to type it out again.
Collin: You must have gotten caught in one of the spam traps. I apologize for the inconvenience.
Not a problem Mark. Suffice to say I quite like the product, especially as it’s free. I don’t like the logo at the bottom of every post (yes I know I can remove it) but if that helps keep it free, it stays.
I do like the built-in tag suggestion system though, something sadly lacking since UTW died its death.
Hi Mark, thanks for this nice writeup. we have lots of cool features coming up soon and would love to hear any feedback (good or bad) on how we can improve the service.
@faboo, does it work now? please use our getsatisfaction forum for basic support or feel free to email us.
happy blogging!
Hy from Zemanta!
Hy, thank you for this review!
We would very much like to listen to our users and improve in our next iteration.
It is _really_ hard to create the markup that works well on all the different themes, installations and inside different blog engines.
We would be really interested in ideas how to reduce the mess in the soup we create, so please give us feedback via email or via http://www.getsatisfaction.com/zemanta
Anyway, no matter what issues you have, don’t hesitate to contact us. We really want to make this as automagic and smooth for our users as possible.
Removes the originality of the authors thoughts doesn’t it?
I like it not because i am born Slovenian but because it’s useful app.
I’m not sure it’s a ‘content suggestion engine’, I think it’s more of a ‘content research engine’ that can assist you with posts. I just used it tonight on one of my posts. The only thing I really don’t like about it was that it automatically added its own link in the base of my post. If there’s not a way to get rid of that, I’m getting rid of the tool.
Tried it out on WP 2.5 out of curiosity. Doesn’t show up at all. Seems like a potentially useful tool, though.
@douglas, the link gets added in your text area, so you can simply delete it before posting.
Your trust is very important to us, so we didn’t want to enforce anything behind your backs. However please understand that we want to get some kind of credits for the service, so we enabled it by default.
we are watching your feedback closely and will take it into consideration in the following releases.
@pratee, why do you think that? we are simply suggesting what seems to make sense, the authors still have to decide on them or go look for better ones.
I like the idea but I think it needs a little more work. I blogged about it here.
Love the idea and coz browser based it works on both WordPress.com blog and hosted blogs that use WordPress. Tops! The links found are a bit hit and miss in their relevance (based on an enormous sample size of one tiny post, mind) but I’m sure that will improve.
I don’t think I like the idea. To me, the whole point of blogging is to write up or visualize something creatively in a way it has not been done yet. If Zemanta adds some keywords and images to my posts it will likely be an average of the related blogosphere / web content.
In other words: my post won’t be read because it is good but because a plugin added terms that search engines love and some eye candy from fickr.
If it suggests roughly the same content additions to everyone writing about the same subject the blogosphere will be even more self-repetitive than it already is.
I warmly recommend another content suggestion tool, which does 3 things: bring relevant suggestions that the readers love (because that’s what they’re searching for!), inspire and support you as a blogger in writing about topics that are relevant (and oftentimes fun), and increase traffic through improved, content-based search engine placement please check out Hittail at http://www.hittail.com
It’s great!
It works now also with 2.5 !
Thanks to share this with us. Actually these are the most important and nice things to know about it. I hope most of the people also would like and try it to implement with their work. It’s play great role at the time of blogging.