Blog reading on Facebook is becoming a popular activity. One of the top applications for following blogs through the social networking site is NetworkedBlogs, an app which launched last year bringing the blog community to the Facebook platform. Half MyBlogLog, half RSS reader, the application lets users add their blog, favorite the blogs of their friends, and click though the latest headlines. Most importantly, the app brings blogs to the more mainstream Facebook audience. ]]>
Blogs on Facebook are Doing Well
Originally called "Blog Networks," the creators decided to change the application's name to "NetworkedBlogs" when they purchased the external, independent web site at networkedblogs.com where an online blog directory is maintained. The application itself has not changed - it has only grown and improved. The company recently ramped up their infrastructure to handle pulling a lot more feeds and released a feature to pull the blog feed directly to your profile on Facebook. They're also continuing to improve their feed reader by adding more social elements to it.
Although we saw the potential for a simple but powerful community-building app such as this back in June, there was no way to know for sure whether or not it would catch on with Facebook users whose app preferences tend to favor games and other time-wasting applications.
As it turns out, NetworkedBlogs is fairly popular...at least among blog applications. They currently boast nearly 450,000 active users - that is, people who interact with the application by reading, commenting, adding a blog, etc. And the total number of installs sits at just over 700,000. That's huge when compared to the other blogging apps out there. Unfortunately, Facebook doesn't have a category just for blogging apps, but a search for "blog," "blogs," and "blogging" shows that their nearest competitor hasn't even cracked 100K, and, in many cases, other apps haven't even gathered 5000 users.
Additionally, bloggers who are using the NetworkedBlogs application are adding about 500 blogs per day, bringing the current total to 125,000 blogs available via this Facebook blog network.
What's New: A Network Widget for Your Blog (+Invites)
The latest big addition to the network is a new Network Widget which can be added to your blog's web site. When the widget is clicked, a Facebook Connect window pops up allowing your visitors the opportunity to follow your blog on Facebook. The widget is currently in beta, but the first 50 ReadWriteWeb users interested in trying it out can let us know in the comments. You can see the widget in action here on this blog (see the column on the right).
Note: If you want to follow ReadWriteWeb on Facebook using the NetworkedBlogs application, you can do so from here: http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blog/readwriteweb.
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