The blank white box, as Gross and Brier refer to the interface presented by almost all other social media publishing tools, is a path to writer's block or ineffective self-promotion for most corporate participants in online social media. These two experienced practitioners from the advertising and marketing world have now launched a much-anticipated new service called Percolate that aims to give people something to talk about. They've quickly built up a small customer base, have bootstrapped a team of 7 employees and this week they are opening the service to the world. The first 300 ReadWriteWeb readers to visit the site through this link can access Percolate right away.

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Percolate reminds me of a philosophy I've long advocated about blogging: inhale feeds and exhale blog posts. Alongside that philosophy is a belief that the best way to grow your brand is by adding value to conversations of general interest online. Your conversion rate with regard to your marketing goals may be lower than it would be if you were just talking about yourself all the time, but by emphasizing the value you add and your pass-along value, then the total number of people you'll reach and hopefully your total number of conversions will be much higher.

Bare-knuckle RSS and blogging fans have been doing that for years, but much of the rest of the world could use some smart, attractive technology that lightens the load and makes content production even easier and more efficient.

Percolate presents something like a personalized Techmeme of topic content on the right hand side of the page (it cross-references news updates from millions of feeds with your personal network of trusted Twitter contacts and your demonstrated history of topic and source interest), and a stream of your contacts' feedback on news on the left. You're then encouraged to jump into either of those streams and offer feedback on any existing news item that's as short as a one word tag or as long as a full blog post.

"What people are really doing on Twitter is not saying I'm having lunch with my cat," says Gross.

"What they are doing is contextualizing links all day. We don't think that filtering for the best links is a product, though, we think it's a feature. The value is created when you can get users to trust your platform for both consumption and publishing. The real breakthrough over the last year was Tumblr and Twitter, the way they created the read/write interface where you created and consumed in the same environment, in that dashboard-like flow."

Gross says the first few customers who are licensing Percolate's technology as a back end and publishing to their own website front ends are aiming to have their team members post 20 to 30 short responses to links of interest each day - rather than struggling to write 1 to 3 medium to full-length blog posts each day from a cold start.

Future iterations of the publishing tool will be focused on grabbing media assets and pull-quotes from the pages that Percolate users are commenting on. That will make it all the faster and easier to create rich blog posts throughout each day.

How Well Does it Work?

I buy this idea, I really do. The service is available for free to consumers and charges for API access by brands. The interface has a couple of bugs at launch, but Gross (who worked at RWW ad network partner Federated Media previously) and co-founder Noah Brier, who has been a well-known online media consultant to leading brands around the world for many years, are very capable people and will likely iron out any kinks in the system soon.

I'm not sure how well the stories surfaced will prompt responses from users. That will be a big challenge to get right and it will require some training by users.

Users will likely find pleasing the inline publishing of responses to links as the core experience on the platform. Gross says his company watches Tumblr closely (who doesn't in the publishing world?) and I can imagine people seeing Percolate as a Tumblr for brands or for responses to out-of-network content.

What do you think, would-be bloggers? Does this seem like something that could help you publish more and better content online?

Things are different these days, though. The rise of Facebook and Twitter has stolen the thunder of Do It Yourself and Own It Yourself Publishing. Those little blips and quips of insight and boredom are more fleeting than blogging ever was. But out of that shallow and fast-flowing river of self-publishing has come curation. And today social media curation crosses another key threshold: market leading curation and publishing tool Storify now supports Dave Winer's original protocol for publishing content to blogs. Storify will now use XML-RPC to push permanent, search engine-friendly HTML along with dynamic Javascript to blogs built on WordPress.com, WordPress.org, Tumblr, Posterous and Drupal. Social media curation has grown up and is becoming a first class citizen of the open Web, just like blogging.

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Storify will now allow those collections of multimedia to be published out onto the servers of the most popular blogging platforms online and their users. The content will live there permanently and will be indexed by search engines on the page.

Co-founder Xavier Damman says that HTML output directly to blogs has been the company's most-requested feature from users.

Throughout most of history, content creators were very few, content curators larger in number but still small and content consumers by far the biggest of the three groups. People like Dave Winer, Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan shook that equation up with the creation of blogging technologies, then Williams again and Mark Zuckerberg completely blew the numbers up with the enablement of hundreds of millions of new content creators on Twitter and Facebook. Now Storify will take some of the same "this is for real" technical underpinnings and attempt to bring the group of people online who are curating content into a new era of publishing as well.

The new feature is intended to give users the flexibility to decide which identity they want to utilize for comments, even if they're logged in to WordPress via multiple accounts. You can, for example, be logged in via Facebook or WordPress but decide to leave your comments under your Twitter profile.

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WordPress describes the process as something that "gives visitors control over which identity they can use." And no doubt questions over identity and anonymity (and online etiquette) continually plague blog comments - for both blog authors and for blog visitors. Will giving your blog visitors the option to link themselves to their "real" identities via Facebook improve the level of conversation? That's probably the hope - next to the desire for more engagement, of course.

It's worth pointing out here that what WordPress has implemented today isn't Facebook comments per se. Today's new feature is a matter of letting users choose the social profiles by which they comment, but it isn't a full integration. In other words, your WordPress comments aren't pushed back into your Facebook stream.

WordPress's Scott Berkun does say that better Facebook and Twitter integration features are coming soon.

The new feature is intended to give users the flexibility to decide which identity they want to utilize for comments, even if they're logged in to WordPress via multiple accounts. You can, for example, be logged in via Facebook or WordPress but decide to leave your comments under your Twitter profile.

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WordPress describes the process as something that "gives visitors control over which identity they can use." And no doubt questions over identity and anonymity (and online etiquette) continually plague blog comments - for both blog authors and for blog visitors. Will giving your blog visitors the option to link themselves to their "real" identities via Facebook improve the level of conversation? That's probably the hope - next to the desire for more engagement, of course.

It's worth pointing out here that what WordPress has implemented today isn't Facebook comments per se. Today's new feature is a matter of letting users choose the social profiles by which they comment, but it isn't a full integration. In other words, your WordPress comments aren't pushed back into your Facebook stream.

WordPress's Scott Berkun does say that better Facebook and Twitter integration features are coming soon.

Figures released today from web monitoring company Royal Pingdom highlight another repercussion of the skewed gender representation in tech - namely, the overwhelming predominance of male visitors to technology blogs.

Royal Pingdom looked a number of popular tech blogs, including ReadWriteWeb, and examined the ratio of male to female site visitors by using demographics data from Google's DoubleClick Ad Planner.

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Of the popular blogs that Royal Pingdom examined, only Mashable comes anywhere close to a 50-50 split between male and female visitors. Sites like Techmeme and Slashdot have closer to 90% male visitors. About 72% of ReadWriteWeb's visitors, according to Royal Pingdom's stats, are male.

In a survey from last summer, comScore found that women outnumber men on social networking sites and tend to spend more time on those sites as well. But that interest and engagement hasn't seemed to spill over into the tech blogosphere.

What contributes to the difference? Is it a reflection of the tech industry at large? Is it the content on the sites? The authors' gender? The editorial voice or tone? Is it the community that surrounds it?

Blogging isn’t something that only the nerdy types or teens do anymore, and it most certainly goes beyond posting pictures of your children (or pets for the childless out there) and griping about your job.  Blogging is, for some, a business or a source of extra spending money.  It’s also a source of money, power, and satisfaction.  But as it goes in professional sports, there are millions playing in the neighborhood little leagues, but a very small minority will ever make it to the big leagues.  So how do you improve your chances of taking your blog from beyond just a hobby into something that you add to your resume and turn into cash?

1. Be prepared to pour in your blood, sweat and tears.

Very rarely does a blog go from a readership consisting of your family, friends, co-workers, and admirers (or enemies)  that have figured out how to stalk you online, to an overnight success.  Sure, if you break a big story and CNN picks it up and gives you a shout-out, you might get an instant influx of visitors, but the chances of that happening are slim.  So instead of banking on a miracle, be prepared to slave away at it for a bit.  Know that you will at times doubt yourself and your ability to go on, that you will have to force yourself to blog when you really don’t feel like it.  Be prepared, perhaps, not to know what “free time” is anymore.  This may not be true in all cases, but for someone like me that runs a news oriented blog, it’s a 24/7 operation.  A blog focusing on, say, technology might not have to be so vigilant in covering breaking news.

2. Before you start blogging, think about what you will be blogging about.

My interests are so varied that I couldn’t pick just one topic to blog about, and I knew I’d probably get bored writing about the same thing day after day, week after week, year after year. That being said, if you want to establish yourself as an expert in a field or topic area, then a more focused blog will be most suitable.

3. Avoid free blog services.

Resist the temptation to start with a free blog on Blogger, WordPress or any of the other free, hosted blogging services.  You will kick yourself later, trust me.  If you’re serious about taking your blog beyond a recreational activity, do yourself a favor and buy a domain and web hosting.  You can start with something as simple and cheap as GoDaddy, and move as your site grows. I started out with shared hosting, and since then I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been kicked off hosts due to my site’s growth and resource usage.  These days, we have our own server.

4. If you use a premade template, at least customize some parts of it.

A unique design will make your blog more memorable.  If you do use a premade template that thousands of other people have also installed on their blog, which I have nothing against, try to customize it at least a little bit.  At the very least, pay someone $50 to make you a nice logo.

5. Consider a collaborative effort.

You’ll have to share the profits, but sometimes two (or three or four…)  is better than one.  It takes some pressure off of you as you’re not the sole blogger, and if you need to step away for a few days, there’s someone else to cover for you.  Just choose your partner or partners wisely, and strongly consider getting your partnership arrangement in writing, just in case things sour one day.

6. Socialize and network with others.

Join Twitter and Facebook and start a conversation with your readers.  Make sure to reply to comments on your blog.  By talking with your readers, you’ll keep them checking back in and you’ll be at the forefront of their minds, making them more likely to become a repeat visitor.  Repeat visitors are very important in establishing your blog.  Fly-by traffic is still worthwhile, but building a loyal readership base is crucial.  Making friends with other bloggers and website owners can also be beneficial as they can help drive traffic your way.

It’s not as easy as it looks or sounds.

Many have tried and failed. It can be done, and it doesn’t take a huge advertising budget, a staff of writers, or luck.  However, it does take some degree of talent (if you are a horrible writer, I’d advise against pouring your heart into making a career of blogging) and a whole lot of dedication and drive. Having a plan also helps, although if you don’t have one you can still become successful, it just might take you longer as you figure things out along the way.  I’ve been doing this for years now, and I’ve learned a lot along the way.

In Part 2 – Mistakes to Avoid of this multi-part series on becoming a blogging success I’ll talk about what NOT to do, and how to avoid some of the pitfalls.

Tumblr is a fast-growing publishing platform (last month we reported it has now raised more money and sees more hosted pageviews each month than WordPress) but it has struggled with occasional down-time, as such platforms often do. Its urban hipster image sometimes leads to mockery of its upset users when they complain of downtime, but we argued in support of those emotions in a December post titled Why a Day of Tumblr Downtime Matters to the Entire Web & World.

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You'll note that the monsters got a name change when they were let inside the house. Personally, I like Inman's TumblBeasts a little better.

Inman has propelled his web comic to fame less than two years since launching it. He was the subject of an interview on tech blog Mashable this morning, for example. Inman has grown famous on the web for web-centric humor satirizing things like email, but has built his business from sales of more utilitarian works of humor like How to Use a Semicolon. Next time Tumblr goes down, which Inman tongue-in-cheek Tweets he hopes happens soon, now you'll know where that image came from.

In the Summer of 2008, ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez wrote about how a much less well-known designer named Yiying Lu posted a whale graphic to iStockPhoto and then saw a community of Twitter fans propel the image into official use as the page telling users when Twitter is down.

Tumblr is a fast-growing publishing platform (last month we reported it has now raised more money and sees more hosted pageviews each month than WordPress) but it has struggled with occasional down-time, as such platforms often do. Its urban hipster image sometimes leads to mockery of its upset users when they complain of downtime, but we argued in support of those emotions in a December post titled Why a Day of Tumblr Downtime Matters to the Entire Web & World.

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You'll note that the monsters got a name change when they were let inside the house. Personally, I like Inman's TumblBeasts a little better.

Inman has propelled his web comic to fame less than two years since launching it. He was the subject of an interview on tech blog Mashable this morning, for example. Inman has grown famous on the web for web-centric humor satirizing things like email, but has built his business from sales of more utilitarian works of humor like How to Use a Semicolon. Next time Tumblr goes down, which Inman tongue-in-cheek Tweets he hopes happens soon, now you'll know where that image came from.

In the Summer of 2008, ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez wrote about how a much less well-known designer named Yiying Lu posted a whale graphic to iStockPhoto and then saw a community of Twitter fans propel the image into official use as the page telling users when Twitter is down.

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Blogging also declined slightly among adults aged 18-33. Its popularity did increase among older generations, and as a result the result for adult blogging overall went up, from 11% in late 2008 to 14% this year. "Yet while the act formally known as blogging seems to have peaked," reads the report, "Internet users are doing blog-like things in other online spaces as they post updates about their lives, musings about the world, jokes, and links on social networking sites and micro-blogging sites such as Twitter."

Wired's Ryan Singel has a great analysis on whether or not we've reached "peak blogging." Singel points out that blogging has long been hard to define, "other than from a simple technical perspective: Any web publication that publishes information easily in reverse chronological order is a blog." But the "spirit" of blogging, one that encourages everyone to express themselves online, lives on in a variety of other ways - "blog-like things," as the Pew report describes.

I can't help but think of Mark Zuckerberg's introductory remarks at Facebook's recent messaging announcement, in which he described high-school age students' response to email: it's too formal, it's too slow. Does blogging suffer from the same stigma in their eyes?

Interestingly, Millennials rank "reading blogs" higher than any other age groups. All ages, in fact, ranked reading blogs above blogging. So I guess it's just incumbent upon some of us to keep writing, if not blogs then "blog-like things."

Zemanta is a startup that captures more internet buzz words than almost any other I can think of:  semantic web, rich media, recommendations and real-time.  I mean that in a good way, too.  In addition to a browser plug-in and this new relationship, Zemanta is available through partnerships with blog platforms Movable Type, Blogger.com and Scribefire. The company claims it now reaches 30% of the blogs online.

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