PostRank

Lots of folks have installed our new v2 Top Posts Widget. We think your sites look mahhhvelous. How are you liking it? Any other features you’d like to see?

However, there are still a bunch of folks out there who have our v1 widget installed. On Friday (Feb.6th) we’ll be switching the back-end functionality for the v1 widget to be the same as that for the new v2 widget.

For those who do nothing, the v1 widget will still continue to work. They might see some different posts displayed in it than they’ve been seeing, since it will no longer be pulling in top posts based on the user’s specified time frame of the past week, month, or year.

Ideally, though, we recommend upgrading to v2 — the new Top Posts Widget. Installation is fast, easy, and you can customize the appearance, enable topic search on your site, and WordPress users get PostRank analytics built in.

We’ll be notifying as many of the folks who have the v1 widget installed as we can, however, just in case, you heard it here first.

Analytics need to evolve. The web is a lot bigger, more complex, and more interactive these days, and yet we’re still using dot-com tools to measure and make sense of it. It’s time to do feed analytics right.

Audience engagement is no longer just about subscribers or trackbacks. You want to know what your audience is saying and doing with your content, and where. You want to be able to converse with them while their questions and comments are fresh. And you want to know who the real topic experts are in any niche — including you — not just who’s on the A-list this week.

You’ve asked us for solutions to issues of inconsistent data, unresponsive service, and simply being unable to find out about your audience. You want real-time stats that include social media engagement metrics. Community-driven influence measurement. And that’s just the beginning.

We want your input. Head over to our Feed Analytics Beta page, sign up for our beta, and let us know what you want to know. Sources to track, ways to present data, trending — we bet you have a million great ideas. And we want to incorporate the best ones into the products you’ve asked us to build.

Sure, we wish we had something to roll out right now, and we’re working on it, but the requests started flooding in sooner than we expected. It’ll take some time to get it right. But when we’re ready to show the world, you’ll get the first look and chance to test things out.

Share your input with us, sign up for our beta, and keep checking in over the next few months as we roll out the products you’ve asked for. (We recommend subscribing to the RSS feed.)

We can’t wait!

Canada’s Most Influential People in Social Media

In keeping with Dave’s intent with the project, it’s cool to see those included in the list fall into categories beyond marketing and the like. In Ilya’s case, the popularity of his blog helped secure his position at #5 on the Most Influential Men list. Congratulations!

Congratulations, too, to Jacqui Murphy from Tech Capital, Ben Watson of Overlay.TV (another of Tech Capital’s portfolio companies), and the other folks recognized!

Just before the holidays here at the Aideplex, we bid adieu to our co-ops Stephen and Trevor. However, we haven’t let their chairs grow cold, as yesterday we welcomed Josh and Thomas into the fold!

Thomas is no stranger to our ranks, as this is his second co-op term with the company. In fact, after we made him help us move, he got to enjoy the new office for one whole day last term before returning to school.

Josh, however, is brand spanking new (and full-time, not a co-op). To us, at least. Like Dan Sinclair, we imported him from Toronto, though he seems to be settling in to the area nicely. (We’ve explained where to get good coffee.)

You can read a bit more about our n00bs on our About page.

Please join us in welcoming Josh and Thomas to AideRSS. We’re looking forward to having them around, and expect great and geeky things to come!

We’re launching our new and improved PostRank Top Posts Widget, which is an awesome tool for publishers!

• Readers can discover your most engaging content at a glance.
• Topic search enables readers to find your best content on specific topics that interest them.
• Older content stays as visible and relevant as your most recent posts and continues to draw significant reader engagement.
• Readers stay on your site longer, view more pages, and click more links, which translates into ad impressions and revenue.
• The Widget’s look and feel is easily customizable to match your site.
• Readers can create customized RSS subscriptions to content right from the Widget.
• WordPress users can monitor their social media analytics and track conversations right from their dashboards.

We support the most popular blogging platforms, and also offer provide a bare-bones version for the do-it-yourself-ers. Take your great content from hidden gems to revenue generating!

Head on over to our PostRank Top Posts Widget page to learn more, choose the version that will best snaz up your blog, and let more readers get started discovering your best content!