PostRank

Our most valuable resource is our community, and so we wanted to make PostRank Discovery even more functional, flexible, and friendly for you all.

We’re excited to announce that global topics are now user-editable, and both those and users’ topics can now be filtered.

Note: You must have a PostRank account and you must be logged in in order to edit or filter topics.

Add a New Feed to a Global Topic

If you have a great blog (yours or someone else’s) that’s missing from a global topic — like Photography or Moms or Social Media — you can add it easily.

On PostRank.com, if you’re not already on the global topic page, type the topic name into the search field at the top right of the page, and select the topic from the results that drop down.

On the global topic page, click Manage in the right sidebar. The Add Feed field will appear at the top of the page above the list of the topic’s feeds. Type or paste the feed URL you want to add to the topic into the Add Feed field.

As you type, a list of suggested feeds will appear. Any suggested feeds that are not already included in the global topic will have a green plus symbol icon to the right. To add one of those feeds to the topic, simply click it to auto-fill the Add Feed field.

Once you’re done, click the Save Changes button above the Add Feed field. A confirmation message will appear at the top of page to verify that the new feed has been added.

Remove a Feed from a Global Topic

If you notice a feed (yours or someone else’s) in a global topic that doesn’t belong there (off-topic, an out of date site, etc.), you can remove it easily.

On PostRank.com, if you’re not already on the global topic page, type the topic name into the search field at the top right of the page, and select the topic from the results that drop down.

On the global topic page, click Manage in the right sidebar. To the right of each of the feeds in that topic’s list there is a delete checkbox. To select feeds for deletion, simply check the box for all the ones you want to remove. Each feed selected for deletion will be highlighted in red.

Once you’re done, click the Save Changes button above the Add Feed field. A confirmation message will appear at the top of page to verify that the feed(s) has been removed from that global topic.

Viewing and Filtering Posts in a Topic

You can now view the aggregated posts from the feeds in one of your own topics, or in a global topic. To view and/or filter a global topic, on PostRank.com, if you’re not already on the global topic page, type the topic name into the search field at the top right of the page, and select the topic from the results that drop down.

To view and/or filter one of your own topics, click topics from the menu at the top right corner of the page, and then click the topic you want to view.

When the Topic page loads, click the Posts link in the right sidebar. The content on the page will reload, displaying a list of posts rather than a list of feeds. (These are the most recent posts from all the feeds in that topic feed.)

At the top left of the page you can select a filtering level from the drop-down: All, Good, Great, or Best. Once you select one of those options, the list of posts will automatically update accordingly and hide posts that have PostRank scores that fall below the selected filtering level.

If you like, you can then share or export that filtered topic feed using any of the sharing or exporting functions in the right sidebar.

View Global Topic Activity

We’ve also added an Activity function in the right sidebar, which shows you what changes have been made to a topic over time, and by whom.

We’ve given you even greater control over finding, sharing, and Reading What Matters. And lots of folks continue to create and curate their own lists, and find great people and topics to follow in the community.

In conjunction, as we announced with the launch of the PostRank Twitter Newsroom last week, you can subscribe to any of the Global Topics in Twitter, even if you don’t have a PostRank account.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions, confusions, or feedback, by email, Twitter, or Get Satisfaction.

The folks at AdvertisingAge released their latest Power150 list this morning, which now features the power of PostRank analysis!

There are already some noticeable changes in the listings, and we’re hoping our real-time analysis will keep the rankings current and interesting for a long time to come. Our congratulations to the bloggers on the list! (We’re not even playing favourites with the Canadians.)

The AdAge blog post has a great explanation of how and why they integrated PostRank into their analysis, and what it brings to the list and its rankings:

Why’s PostRank so great? For one, unlike other metrics, they provide real-time data. We’ll only be grabbing it once a day like any other metric, but you can be reasonably sure that your recent hot post will be accounted for. But here’s an even bigger reason: we have a specific time window. For each blog, we’re grabbing PostRank scores for only the previous 30 days, an intentionally small window of time. We wanted to make the Power 150 more dynamic and current, and, by basing 1/3 of your overall score on recent activity, we’re hoping this will affect rankings in three ways:

Level the playing field a bit. If you’re a king now, you could be demoted within 30 days. If you’re at the bottom, you could enter the upper reaches yourself within a month, if you do well enough. Of course, the latter still won’t be easy, but hopefully not the insurmountable task it once was, because recent successes will count for more and long-accrued success a little less.

Encourage people to keep up with their blogs. If you stop blogging for a month (as some of you have — tsk, tsk), your score will suffer. We don’t necessarily want to punish you for taking a break, but we think those who are still active and working should have an advantage.

Give a better picture of what’s happening now. We want the Power 150 to be a more dynamic place, a better reflection of the fluidity of conversations on the web rather than a calcified “Who’s Who.” It’s a pretty lofty goal, but this our best shot so far.

Additionally, there’s more information here, as well as a chance to win Power150 prizes!

We’re thrilled to be a key part of the Power150 analysis and list, and we hope we can help keep the list timely and relevant and help people even more to Read What Matters.

Hot on the heels of the release of PostRank Discovery we’re excited to announce the launch of our PostRank Twitter Newsroom!

Now, in addition to finding great feeds, topics, and publishers on postrank.com, you can follow any and all of your news “Twopics” on Twitter.

Twopics include the top news stories from around the web in topic areas ranging from Ruby to Green to Moms, all dynamically filtered, ranked, and updated by PostRank.

Can’t find your favourite Twopic? Create it, add some source feeds, and share it with your friends and community. Have a great news feed that’s not yet included in your favourite Twopic? Add it as a news source and share it with everyone!

Check out the stories in some of these Twopics:

@pr_entrepreneur

@pr_politics

@pr_health

Don’t have a PostRank account? No problem, any Twitter user can follow a Twopic in the PostRank Newsroom.

For a complete list of Twopics visit the PostRank Twitter Newsroom page. We’re launching with the 50 most engaging Twopic areas and will be adding new ones daily. (And we hope you’ll all add your favourite topics, too!)

The PostRank Twitter Newsroom makes the most socially engaging content on the web easy and accessible. Find and Read What Matters.

For more information on PostRank Discovery:

PostRank delivers the best blog discovery engine!
Introduction to PostRank Discovery

Curation is becoming the next hot buzzword online, which isn’t terribly surprising. Thanks to the internet’s low barrier to entry, we’re faced with a need to curate the biggest (and fastest growing) storehouse of information we’ve built since people started grunting at each other. Fortunately, some of this rapidly accumulating information actually is useful.

For all we know, cave paintings were meant to impart: “Tasty mammoths found here. Approach with caution. Bring big rocks and sharp arrows.” That’s curation — gathering information (based on education and experience), filtering it to surface the useful parts, and presenting it in a clear, organized format.

Curation has been a fundamental part of human communication since the global population numbered two people. As soon as there’s more information out there than one person can remember, we need curation. And, as importantly, we like doing it. People get a lot of satisfaction from sharing what they know. (Plus it has traditionally been very helpful with that whole “survival of the species” thing…)

We also tend to gravitate toward other people rather than just black and white data when there’s information we need. Certainly a quick Google search or peek at Wikipedia can answer most basic questions, but when we need deeper or more nuanced information, or recommendations from credible sources, we tend to approach it from the angle of “Who knows this?” Fortunately for those of us in need of information, a lot of those resource people are easily accessible via the web and have their useful information (curated by them) available there.

Steve Rosenbaum recently published an excellent article: Can ‘Curation’ Save Media. His definition of media strongly leans toward mainstream media and corporate content. I’d have placed the quotation marks around ‘Save’ rather than ‘Curation’, since, while older forms of media are seriously struggling, media online doesn’t need saving. It continues to grow by leaps and bounds; it just needs to be harnessed and managed better. It needs curation.

Mr. Rosenbaum opens with:

There is a trend evolving at media companies both big and small that promises to have a remarkably positive impact on what you read, watch, and share on the web: Curation.

This is quite true, and extends beyond media companies. All kinds of companies, developers, and individuals (especially the AideRSS crew) are exploring ways to better manage the content we consume online. There’s just too much to keep up with, and people have become accustomed to extensive choice. We don’t read/watch/play just because it’s there anymore. We gravitate towards what interests and engages us, but often we need help finding out that that content exists, and where.

From a corporate perspective, Mr. Rosenbaum notes:

The old model was “one to many” (NBC -> viewers). The new model is “one to a few” (YOU -> your friends and followers). That means there is an overwhelming explosion of content being created (Twitter feeds, blog posts, Flickr photos, Facebook updates) and most of it is interesting to a very small number of people. But, mixed in with this cacophony of consumer content, there is contextually relevant material that needs to be discovered, sorted, and made “brand safe” for advertisers.

Curation is the new role of media professionals.

Professionally, many of us have ongoing monitoring and research responsibilities, which we need to keep abreast of to be effective at our jobs. We are also tasked with corporate curation — synthesizing and reporting on this information to management, teammates, and clients. Good curation certainly provides value, but also interestingly, is a way to build trust. As Mr. Rosenbaum explains:

Strangely enough, curation shifts the balance of power back to brands and publications. While anyone can make content, the decision to gather it, and present it by trusted content curators has more risk, and therefore more value.

Until now, however, the best we’ve been able to do is cobble together various tools to help us curate. Each tool provided some of what we need, but not all. The other issue we face is balancing tools with that aforementioned human input. “Just the facts” rarely gives us the whole picture or a sense of sufficiency in knowing both what we need to know and its relevant context. That is why I regularly hear from people who love using PostRank, but who are also concerned about missing the “hidden gems” out there.

As Mr. Rosenbaum elaborates from a journalistic standpoint:

Separating the wheat from the chaff, assigning editorial weight, and — most importantly - giving folks who don’t want to spend their lives looking for an editorial needle in a haystack a high-quality collection of content that is contextual and coherent. It’s what we always expected from our media, and now they’ve got the tools to do it better.

Yes, that’s right, the future of media is better, not worse. It’s more detailed, multi-faceted and nuanced. And, just more.

As any Twitter user can tell you, other people are the best curators of hidden gems — interesting articles, handy resources, especially droll lolcat pictures, you name it. Curation is a big part of Twitter, and the source of much of its value. Millions of people finding information that’s useful and interesting to them, reading and synthesizing it, and sharing it with those in their networks.

So really, the ideal tool would combine people and technology to streamline curation. Finding, organizing, and sharing the best content with technology’s precision and high-speed access to resources and and humans’ opinions and feel for nuance. And, of course, given the speed at which the online world moves, the content we curate would have to be constantly up to date, supplying the best results for right now.

Such a tool would be quite a Discovery, no? Something as valuable to the modern online citizen today as practical mammoth hunting instructions would have been 10000 years ago.

Stay tuned…

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.