WordPress Publisher Blog

BlogTalkRadio, a social radio network, just announced a new round of funding.

Alan Levy, the CEO, posted on the company blog ( which is hosted on WordPress.com VIP ) explaining on how they got to this point and the power of bloggers and other individuals to create audio shows:

We launched BlogTalkRadio almost two years ago as an idea that we thought had some legs. As has been well-documented in the past, our theory was quite simple: Would bloggers, or in fact anyone, be interested in creating audio content using a phone? Would it be possible to create a new distribution platform and medium, where anyone with a phone and something to say could establish and build an audience? If this is such a good idea, why is no one else doing it? We had many more questions than answers.

Levy offers details on where BlogTalkRadio is today:

Fast forward from the fall of 2006 and we have broadcast close to 100,000 shows. We have had Academy Award winners, Presidential candidates, best-selling authors and many other notables. We have thousands of active hosts talking about the things that interest them and their audience. Our content is listened to more than 3 million times a month and as new content is created and added to the long tail, the number of listeners continues to grow rapidly.

[ Read more on the BlogTalkRadio blog & today's New York Times article ]

Yesterday, Health.com launched a complete site redesign, and I’m excited that WordPress.com VIP Hosting is part of it. Their main blog Poked and Prodded has been migrated from TypePad, and we are also hosting their two new blogs Healthy Living and Healthy Eating.

All of the old links to Poked and Prodded continue to work, and the newer articles now have the more readable and better search engine optimized WordPress style of permanent links.

One thing I really like about their themes is the use of avatars for each contributor both in the sidebar and on their individual author bios. It really personalizes the experience.

Health.com Editorial Director Scott Mowbray wrote in the article about the relaunch:

“… we do like to blog. We do like to present diverse voices talking about human issues”.

The the rest of the article continues to focus on their opportunity to use their expertise as journalists and editors to create a web site helping “make lives easier, healthier, and more interconnected”.

In my small role helping with the migration, and as a new parent, I found myself reading a lot of the articles and watching the videos. They are successful at “answering the questions you really want answered”.

The Health.com team chose WordPress.com VIP Hosting because WordPress provides the setting for people connecting, allowing Health.com to stay focused on their writing (using our intuitive interface), while we provide the flexible environment to integrate their blogs into the Health.com experience, and the performance, maintenance, and stability to give them the piece of mind that their audience and participants will always have a great experience.

A few of us had lunch with Ben Huh of the inimitable I Can Has Cheezburger (and others) today. Here’s the video:

LOLcats have remarkable staying power:

Update: Looks like I put my hand over the microphone on the part where Ben says how much he likes WordPress.com. You’ll have to take our word for it.

Robert Scoble’s blog, Scobleizer.com, has been completely redesigned:

Hosted, as before, on WordPress.com VIP - the new design incorporates many new features including integration of his friendfeed widget, and a showcase of Scoble’s latest videos from FastComapany.TV .

[ Visit Scobleizer.com ]

This New York Times article gives some interesting background on The Page, A Time Inc site that’s run by Mark Halperin and provides real-time politics and election coverage. The Page has rapidly gained a very large readership since it’s launch 6 months ago. What’s interesting from a WordPress point of view is that even though The Page is tightly integrated into the main Time.com site, it’s actually 100% WordPress based and hosted as part of the WordPress.com VIP program.

The newly formed Thomson Reuters Corp made its highly anticipated debut this past Thursday. Thomson Reuters is now the largest business focused media company in the world with 50,000 employees and annual revenues of more than $12.5 billion.

To communicate to various groups about the new combined entity, Thomson Reuters selected WordPress.com VIP to host this high-traffic and high-profile site:

The Web Communications team at Thomson Reuters was able to quickly get the site built using a custom theme. Leveraging the WordPress.com grid infrastructure, the team was able to deliver a superior user experience, particularly during the high traffic spikes.

As with other large traffic spike sites on WordPress.com VIP such as Gizmodo’s Live Blog - it’s good to know that when the world shows up at your door step, it’s an opportunity, not a problem.

Off the Rack, People.com’s StyleWatch fashion blog hosted on WordPress.com VIP, has been doing a great job covering LA Fashion Week.

Today Off the Rack spotlights George Clooney’s girlfriend, Sarah Larson, who was a special guest model for Ashley Paige:

The blog is seeing a high-level of interaction with it’s readers, and is well integrated into the overall People.com site.

Off the Rack also has a unique feature called “Comment of the Day” where editors highlight an interesting comment from one of their readers.

[Visit Off the Rack]

The Gizmodo Liveblog, which is hosted in our WordPress.com VIP program, covered the Apple iPhone Roadmap event today which officially began at 10am PST.

For publishers looking at dealing with traffic spikes, liveblogs like these are a great example of how our grid platform on WordPress.com scales up incredibly well.

Below is graph from a previous Gizmodo Liveblog that illustrates the amazing rapid spike in traffic which equated to several million pageviews over the course of about an hour:

[Visit live.gizmodo.com]

A big night last night for the movie industry with the 80th annual Academy Awards.

As with other big events like Super Tuesday, there was lots of great coverage by bloggers and news organizations on WordPress.com.

Big publishers in our VIP program also covered the event, including:
- CNN Headline News’ Show Biz Tonight Marquee Blog, which live blogged the event.
- BlogTalk Radio discussed the best and worst dressed, and also has an upcoming show with Oscar-winners Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman of Peter and the Wolf.
- People’s StyleWatch Off-the-Rack blogged about predicting which gowns the star would wear.

You can read the latest and follow the reactions to who won and lost on the “Oscars” tag page.

Anderson Cooper of CNN relaunched his 360Blog the other day and is now hosted at WordPress.com in our VIP program. The previous version of the 360Blog was powered by Google Blogger.

David Reisner, 360° Digital Producer, posted a note with what to expect from this new blog:

The 360Blog promises to be more interactive and more custom fitted to your daily blog needs. More pictures, more video… we haven’t exactly figure out how it can make you coffee or do your laundry yet (thanks for promising that on-air Anderson… no pressure or anything)

The feedback so far has been very positive with great reader comments such as one from Aruna:

Thank you so much for the blog makeover! It looks wonderful!
It’s clean and sharp, just the way it should be, and congrats on the innovative style!
The second you figure out how to brew coffee through my computer, I’m purchasing stock.

My colleague Lloyd Budd, who headed-up this this project, shares his thoughts on the blog’s new features and Cooper’s unique reporting style.