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Thursday, November 4, 2010

MerchantCircle to Take Over Operations of the Popular Bloglines Platform



We have some exciting news to share today that we think is going to make the experience on MerchantCircle even more valuable for our users. We’ve reached an agreement with Ask.com to assume control of the RSS reader site Bloglines in order to rejuvenate and integrate it with the MerchantCircle experience.



For those of you who may not be immediately familiar with Bloglines, it is the world's most popular free online service for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing RSS feeds, blogs and rich web content. Bloglines was a pioneer in bringing RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds and rich content to mainstream Internet users. It’s been touted for excellence around the world with many awards and accolades, including Time Magazine's Coolest Websites for 2004 and Search Engine Watch's "Best Blog/Feed Search Engine" award.



Ask.com, which has owned the property for the last few years, had decided to retire the service to focus more on its core offerings. This provided a wonderful opportunity for MerchantCircle to acquire the operations to reinvest in the platform and enhance it for its 2.7 million users.



But what does that mean for you? There are a lot of exciting plans on the horizon, but we can say for now that you will soon see Bloglines integrated for your use on your account dashboards. From there you will have the ability to organize and follow online information about your business, your community and your industry.



There’s so much potential and we are excited about the next steps. For now, please see our press release and news story on TechCrunch about the changing hands of Bloglines.

21 comments:

  1. I just wanted to thank MerchantCircle from the bottom of my heart for keeping Bloglines up and running. I don't know what I would have done without BL having tried all other RSS readers... THANK YOU!

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  2. I am very happy about this - thank you!

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  3. Thank you! Love Bloglines and am relieved it will stay around. :)

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  4. Alright!!!... I was trying to get used to the Google Reader, but I was not happy with it. I was planing to use Bloglines until the last possible minute. Thank you, thank you, thank you.... Now all we need is a companion Android App to view Bloglines updates on the move and offline.

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  5. It's great to see MerchantCircle growing. Congrats! I am looking forward to using Bloglines within the MerchantCircle community.

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  6. This is great news, but I hope that the change in ownership/management doesn't mess up things.

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  7. thank you so much. I love Bloglines and I was so sad it was going away!

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  8. I just want to say thank you. I could not believe that my Bloglines would just disappear. LOL, I am craftsy, and the crafts blogs have changed my life! I get inspired to make things I see on the blogs, and then I end up buying materials and finished items! Maybe I am the only one in America who still buys things now. But I know that when I see something on Bloglines it captures my imagination and also my pocketbook, LOL!

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  9. you have no idea how this great news made me feel! yay! thank you!!!!

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  10. This is so great...I've tried a bunch of others in the past month to try and replace bloglines, but none have even come close to what I want. Hopefully, MerchantCircle will keep the same basic format.
    Thanks for the good news.

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  11. Thank you for taking over Bloglines. I've been a Bloglines user for many years now, and nothing I've seen beats the simple interface, fast loading, and clear editing features it has. It trumps Google Reader hands down. I hope you'll work to preserve the things that make it great.

    Thanks again,
    Ken
    Berkeley, California, USA

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  12. Thank you for picking up Bloglines. But please don't make any changes to its layout. That is what I like best about Bloglines. Simplicity!

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  13. CONGRATULATIONS! BRAVO!

    I am so glad to know that BLOGLINES is up and running again!

    BLOGLINES IS THE BEST!

    Thank you!

    From Sonia de Amorim Mascaro, São Paulo, Brazil.

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  14. Thank you for making bloglines 'alive'. I can't bare myself for using other RSS feed aggregator.

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  15. This is super fantastic news. Thank you, Merchant Circle!

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  16. Thanks for taking over Bloglines. I was in despair trying to find a comparable service; there isn't one.
    As a long-time user, I have two requests:
    1. don't screw it up
    2. please respond to user feedback or requests for support (like ask.com *don't*).
    cheers!

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  17. Glad to see Bloglines is gonna hang around.

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  18. This is indeed good news for me. I have used bloglines as my primary RSS feed aggregator. Hope to add to your mix.

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  19. It's great to see MerchantCircle growing. Congrats! I am looking forward to using Bloglines within the MerchantCircle community.

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