At Startup Camp in London, I met Nick Halstead, the erstwhile founder behind <a href="http://fav.or.it/">fav.or.it</a>, a new blog aggregation site that's been <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/favorit_new_rss_reader_integrate_comments.php">widely discussed</a> in the, um, blogosphere (there's a dog chasing its tail somewhere in that statement).

Fritz Nelson, Vice President, Editorial Director InformationWeek Business Technology Network

March 31, 2008

1 Min Read

At Startup Camp in London, I met Nick Halstead, the erstwhile founder behind fav.or.it, a new blog aggregation site that's been widely discussed in the, um, blogosphere (there's a dog chasing its tail somewhere in that statement).Now there are plenty of blog aggregation engines out there, from Technorati, which claims to track and index over 112 million blogs, to Google Reader, to Bloglines and several others. There's even a new project from Microsoft, called Blews, which aggregates political blogs along partisan lines.

Halstead's goal was to build a site that lets a much wider audience -- one that doesn't understand things like RSS or multiple windows -- access the millions of blogs on every topic known to man, and some unknown to anyone but the handful of people who share them.

Halstead started with a call to the community for the top 10,000 blogs. More get added over time, but only if the community accepts them. The community also re-categorizes and retags blogs as they wish. The other cool feature is the ability to comment on blogs from within fav.or.it -- that is, you don't have to go to the blogs specifically to comment.

Fav.or.it started life more than a year ago, but was originally built for other purposes. The site's only been up (and is in beta) for a few weeks. Let's see if it can unseat some of the established players.

About the Author(s)

Fritz Nelson

Vice President, Editorial Director InformationWeek Business Technology Network

Fritz Nelson is a former senior VP and editorial director of the InformationWeek Business Technology Network.

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