Our Wiki Whiteboard

Brainstorming Topic #1: What attributes does a successful blog aggregator have?

1. Visible stats?

2. Obvious deliniation that it is an agrregator and who contributed the content

3. Opt-in only with easy access to opt-out - if recruting blogs it should only link after whomever is running the aggregator contacts the content creator, asks permission, and explains why their blog was choosen (i.e. they should know what and who they are aggregating if recruiting)

4. Easy text links directly to the original post

5. Text links that help the SEO of the blogger that is being linked too. For example, if the blogger is writing about politics, make the text on the link related to the politics the blogger writes about. This will increase the SEO rankings for that blogger so it is a win-win situation.

6. An understanding of the blogger and their subject matter - i.e. human aggregation

7. Usability is key - I like the technorati model, but it is very hard to navigate... i like especially how you can leave little comments about why you like the blogger but can't figure out how to do it for my favorites just as an example

Brainstorming Topic #2: What do we NOT want in a blog aggregator?

1. Advertising (question: Suppose bloggers got a piece of the action? -- kurt)

2. Linking that cycles the user internally and deeper into the aggregator site

Brainstorming Topic #3: What do we need to do to establish our own blog aggregator?

1. There's a great WordPress plugin called FeedWordPress that can be used to create an aggregator: http://projects.radgeek.com/feedwordpress/ This is, in fact how www.cvilleblogs.com is run.
2. Relationships with the bloggers
3. how about http://simplepie.org/wiki/tutorial/how_to_replicate_popurls I think this is used for AllTop which is a very popular agg..