Discussions

Introducing the Newsfeed Widget!

Posted by NINE • 3/05/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: announcement, blog, blogcatalog, html, launch, news, widget

Hey guys, I wanted to introduce you to the newest widget in the BlogCatalog family, the Newsfeed widget. Basically, it’s tied into the information you have shared with the blogcatalog community to share with the readers of your blog. Now, your fans get a chance to see your favorite websites, stumbles, twitters, and blogcatalog activities!

Available in a variety of colors, the widget is a fun and dynamic addition to any blog because while you are being active online the widget is constantly changing for your readers giving them the opportunity to catch your latest suggestions and updates. It also gives users the opportunity to add your feed to their RSS reader so they can follow your favorite stories and videos at their convenience.

This is a great way to promote your posts and your friends posts, so take some time and check out the NewsFeed widget here: www.blogcatalog.com/account.widget.php?type=feed

Also, we have finally updated the profile page with their own personal activity feeds. Now you can check out your favorite members feeds from their profile, if you like what you see you can add them as a friend to place them in your dashboards newsfeed.

The Dashboard’s news feed gives a chance for you and your friends stories going viral. As soon as BlogCatalog sees that you have a new post, we put it in your followers feeds so they can check it out right away. Also, if they digg or stumble the post then THEIR friends can see your posts, and if those friends digg or stumble the post then THEIR friends will see it… and so on… and so on… So not only is it a great way to get the latest news, blog posts, and entertainment but it gives you a chance to promote your favorite webpages to the people following you and vice versa!

Oh and for those of you looking for the ever so popular Neighborhood posts you can now find them in the right hand column below the Favorite Discussions, or even better, for a larger view you can see them in your dashboard here: www.blogcatalog.com/dashboard/neighborhoods/

User Comments

3/05/08

cooltool

This is a good tool

[reply]
1. 3/12/08
  
  cooltool
  
  Hey Support , can you please delete my account at last? I am waiting more than day !!!
2. 3/14/08
  
  cooltool
  
  I decided to stay , cuz i luv BlogCatalog
3/05/08

thegoodknife

probably my favorite widget so far.

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3/05/08

wilbau

Wow. Amazing. Great. Thanks.

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3/05/08

AndyBeard

These widgets will really help the viral exposure of your content.

The resources you share also add to your authority status as a blogger, and make your blog a resource people want to come back to.

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3/05/08

crkian

Dam another change to my blog post.

[reply]
1. 3/05/08
  
  thegoodknife
  
  at the rate that we are updating BlogCatalog i don't think you will ever finish.
2. 3/05/08
  
  crkian
  
  Ive only just got past the dashboard. I may need more than 1 blog.
3. 3/05/08
  
  markstoneman
  
  Blog post or ebook?
4. 3/06/08
  
  crkian
  
  Thats not a bad idea Mark, an ebook would be a good thing to go with it.
3/05/08

Rich

I was just mentioning how fast its changing, from a launch of four colors to nine; from a launch of 12 social networks to 20. Makes it hard to write about.

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3/05/08

Theresa111

Very lovely. Really.

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3/05/08

Mewie

bravo! I love it.

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3/05/08

TonyB

Mewie, it looks cool on your blog

mewie.typepad.com/

[reply]
1. 3/06/08
  
  Mewie
  
  Thanks! You guys make it look cool.
3/05/08

HelioJenne

That seems to be a great widget to keep readers up to date to our blogs feeds and expose our content even more. Congrats to BlogCatalog! Hugs.

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3/05/08

TonyB

Thanks HelioJenne ..... this is a fun, easy and useful way to keep your friends updated about what you are doing on the social networks you belong to. And they don't have to visit blogcatalog or some other social network to do that. They can go directly to your own blog and if they like even subscribe to the RSS feed on this widget.

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3/05/08

imhar

This widget make me has much choice

[reply]
1. 3/05/08
  
  TonyB
  
  Exactly. You can control the settings from your dashboard. It's designed to respond to as many blogger's needs as possible. It's flexible. You can select only to display your activity on 1 social network or 20 or none. And your readers 's don't have to visit blogcatalog to see your activity..they can go to your blog...which is really how it should be.
3/06/08

Rich

I forgot to say it earlier. Well Done. Here's a comment left on my blog...

"This is a great move by BlogCatalog. I think we are also looking at a hyper-competitive market for social networks, with a much needed consolidation in the works. Moves like this make BlogCatalog hard to dump, while networks that cannot enable people to move and play as they wish will be caught behind."

[reply]
1. 3/06/08
  
  TonyB
  
  Rich...thanks for sharing that comment.
  
  The bc team is highly focused on creating features that enable bloggers to "move and play as they wish". The idea came out of bloggers telling us that they don't want to be limited to displaying their social stream of activities on one site.
  
  This tool lets you display what you are up to on social networks wherever the traffic is.
3/06/08

pchere

Very cool.

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3/06/08

kopter

comment removed by the community.

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3/06/08

inkjetoffice

very good

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3/06/08

ghostytwofish

This looks sweet.

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3/06/08

reasonablerobinson

Awesome!! a great tool to add value to your blog

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3/06/08

2sweetnsaxy

Kool!

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3/06/08

dharmagypsy7

Hi Everyone!!! I missed you guys. I was offline for awhile because my powercord broke.. anyways awesome widget!!! Glad to see you guys being so proactive as usual.

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3/06/08

filmasia

sounds pretty cool!

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3/06/08

lankapo

the design similar with blog rush ,
mm I hate Blogrush so sorry

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3/07/08

gosmelltheflowers

Awesome stuff for us flowers, thanks!

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3/07/08

mikeny07

I seen the changes latley at MyBlogLog. They are doing their stuff over also it seems.

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3/07/08

4Freedoms

Great widget. Should try this.

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3/07/08

inhisgloriousname

Nice work.

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3/07/08

BlogBadly

It's like Twitter, but better!

Awesome job on this, BC guys.

[reply]
1. 3/08/08
  
  TonyB
  
  Thanks MoneyMoose.... it actually compliments Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon since anyone visiting your site can quickly see any new Tweets, Diggs or Stumbles of yours.
  
  It's almost like your own social activity broadcasting system.
3/08/08

Manictastic

Is it just my blog, or does the widget on my blog not look as good as advertised on here? The symbols seem to be crushed under the frame of the widget, chez moi. Anyone can tell me if they see this as well? And maybe help me fix it? Thank you.

[reply]
1. 3/08/08
  
  thegoodknife
  
  i think we have fixed the issue on our end. give it another look.
2. 3/09/08
  
  Manictastic
  
  Yup, it's fixed now. Thank you.
3/08/08

saoribloguera

Looks nice, gonna try it

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3/08/08

bobonism

cool.

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3/09/08

planificacionmuni

Excelente herramienta hojala pudieramos tenerla completamente en español

Gracias

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3/10/08

ironmanx

Excelent, I Love it !!!******

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3/10/08

andreio

Nice tool

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3/10/08

XIII

Great update.

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3/10/08

TonyB

For anyone who installs the News Feed by Monday March 17th.... receive 6 months free upgraded membership on blogcatalog.

To receive the upgrade/extension read this thread

www.blogcatalog.com/discuss/entry/birthday-cake-offer-for-bc-members

The thread also contains more information about the News Feed including some hot reviews by some top bloggers.

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3/10/08

GratciaNulis

awesomeee....

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3/10/08

scribu

Why does my widget look like this when I put it on my blog, at scribu.net ?

i5.photobucket.com/albums/y197/SCriBu/bc_widget.jpg

I have tried different widths, but the edges remain unaligned.

[reply]
1. 3/10/08
  
  khairulfaizi
  
  Hi scribu, maybe it has to do something with your wordpress theme css.
3/10/08

Carolshmarol

I added this widget but it did not update my last post. I posted it hours ago and kept checking my widget plus my profile and it did not update my last post. Any suggestions?

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3/10/08

Food2gro

Hi, my newsfeed widget shows the text in white. Can someone help me? It's on my sidebar down toward the bottom: blog.food2gro.com

[reply]
1. 3/11/08
  
  thegoodknife
  
  should be fixed now. Thanks.
3/10/08

m38967

Hi----very nice.

Is there any way you guys can add Sk-rt and Hugg to the list of communities? Pretty please.

Missy.

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3/10/08

musTraysManagement

Very nice, essay to set it up. Thanks a lot.

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3/11/08

ameer157

OMG! Great Tool! links the everything you do in the same place!

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3/11/08

crkian

Any chance of it displaying stuff from my dashboard. Rather than linking to my stuff it links to what me mates are doing

[reply]
1. 3/11/08
  
  NINE
  
  We thought about doing this from the start but we figured we would just launch one first and then see if there was enough demand for it.
  
  We weren't sure how many people would want to display other peoples activities on their widget.
3/11/08

laughoutloudadmin

cool.. I love it. Thanks

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3/11/08

Food2gro

Thanks GoodKnife!!! It looks great now! Cool! Much obliged!

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3/11/08

markstoneman

I subscribed to my feed to see what it would look like. Each item begins with my username followed by "has" and a verb like "twittered" or "stumbled" or something. Since I give a little over two inches of space to my feed titles in my reader (using three panes on my little iBook), most of the space is taken up by this information and not what was actually tweeted, stumbled, blogged, or whatever.

I know that most people have bigger screens, but there are people who view their feeds via a Google gadget or on a portable device. With that in mind, I wonder if the full username and "has" is necessary in each title. Seems like some sort of serious abbreviating would be in order.

[reply]
3/11/08

markstoneman

One other thing I noticed: posts from my Tumblr tumblelog get treated like a normal blog post, but often they're just a link or something. I don't suppose there is a practical way for treading Tumblr like a community instead of a blogging platform? (And if this sounds completely stupid, just ignore it and I'll shut up.)

[reply]
1. 3/11/08
  
  thegoodknife
  
  you bring up a good point and most lifestreaming services do treat tumblr as it's own community. but since we are a blog community most users submit their tumblr as their BC blog making the integration into the dashboard a bit redundant and confusing for some.
2. 3/11/08
  
  markstoneman
  
  Well, if you ever do it, I'll drop my Tumblr tumblelog from my list of blogs. By the way, Tumblr has changed a lot since I began, not least because of its dashboard feature and the different privacy settings one can use for posts.
3. 3/11/08
  
  thegoodknife
  
  I played around with tumblr last week and i really liked it. it was simple and sweet. I would definitely suggest this to anyone looking to quickly get a nice looking blog going.
4. 3/11/08
  
  TonyB
  
  goodknife...could I figure it out?
3/11/08

planificacionmuni

The Feed is a tool of much importance, I hope that we pruned to continue growing in conjungo.

[reply]
1. 3/14/08
  
  planificacionmuni
  
  Gracias
3/13/08

mygeotlin

comment removed by the community.

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3/16/08

raffleblog

this tool is nice but I don't consider to put it in my blog...

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3/16/08

WEIRDandPASSIONATE

What about adding a widget with the GPS co-ordinates? For example: GPS: -33.81109 (S) 19.98023 (E). Than we also know where our friends are.
But be aware: The Google Earth picture of the co-ordinates I gave you are more than 6 yrs old. Things have changed since than ..........

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3/16/08

lafrance

Hello!

Thank you seem this one is a good one for my joomla sites.

Pierre

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3/17/08

hanxiansheng

That's great! I will try it on my blog www.handingchao.com. Thank you for sharing!

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3/17/08

ichaduma

I feel somewhat overly exposed.

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3/18/08

janetpaculanan

hello guys, i try this to my blog... heheheh hey guys please add my link than you

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3/18/08

timethief

@nine
Thanks very much for creating the widget. Unfortunately, it's javascript and that means that none of the free hosted wordpress.com bloggers can use it. So I'm wondering if there is a possibility that a news widget that we free hosted wordpress bloggers can use is on the drawing board. {Fingers crossed}

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3/19/08

planificacionmuni

Thanks for informame on the limitations of the WIDGETS but although I know the quality of wordpress, prefieron much to BLOGGER by its facility, asi like ademas its compatibiblidad like my other tools, I hope that it is possible to be used thanks to inform to me...

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3/19/08

speedyeoh

This is a big surprise for me. Good tools!

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3/19/08

WendyWings

Not sure why my latest blog posts are not showing up on the widget, I tried the autodiscovery and it still hasn't worked.
Facebook etc is all showing up ok though.

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3/21/08

pundeerd

cool tool!!

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3/22/08

Profitimo

Great! A new idea..Good job mate

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3/22/08

Ankitshukla1

Great work!!!!!!!

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3/22/08

marketingbyann

Great!! Just put this awesome Newsfeed widget to the site. Thank you.

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10/16/08

BakaKelana

Great widget, I want this widget

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