Congrats to LexBlog who have just launched LexMonitor, “a daily review of law blogs and journals highlighting prominent legal discussion as well as the lawyers and other professionals participating in this conversation.”
LexMonitor pulls feeds from nearly 2,000 sources and 5,000 authors, classifies them and serves them up, sliced and diced by subject category, author etc or by tags. And there’s more now and more to come. Great work Kevin, Rob and team.
Thanks for the kudos Nick.
And please pass on any feedback or ideas you may have for improving LexMonitor. Thought leaders like you are an incredible resource for us.
Finally, claim your profile – or maybe Rob will do it for you based on your kind words here. ;)
Liking the idea. Liking the ambition. Really not sure about implementation yet.
Aside from some specific teething problems, I’d say tagging, prioritising and filleting really need work.
What about a personal front page, with selected categories/tags displaying automatically? Surely needed?
Plus the international aspect is a problem -I’m on it, but it is SO based on the US that the question is ‘why’?
It’s certainly a laudable idea, and a decent implementation (I’m sure there will be improvements as the site matures.)
Are there any concerns, Nick or NL, that LexMonitor may be making money with your content? That seems to me a conversation that blawggers should have.
Martin, had a good discussion on that recently at http://www.binarylaw.co.uk/index.php/2008/06/04/rss-who-profits/
Yep, I monitored that discussion at the time (pardon the pun.)
I don’t think your conclusion, however, quite addresses the essence of my argument: if we provide excerpted feeds, rather than full ones, that does not lessen the profit-making potential of the aggregator. Surfers will enter their search terms in the aggregator of choice, and see your linked article (with excerpt) in the results. They also see a Google or private ad in the sidebar, and click on that on the strength of the search results. That service is either:
1) monetising content that you yourself would want to monetise, or;
2) monetising content that you do not wish to monetise, and do not want to associate with such initiatives.
I certainly believe these aggregation services should adopt an opt-in, rather than opt-out, policy.
Martin, I had wondered about that, ever since some mysterious ‘lexblog’ referrals started cropping up in my stats during their testing phase. I’m still thinking about it – although a few google ads is less concerning that, for instance, membership charges.
And, just for the record, I wasn’t asked about being included or not.
Martin – I said in the referenced post I have no problem with this type of service. Does it deliver value beyond the excerpted content? Of course it does. That’s what’s being “monetised”, not the content.
@Nick: I think you’ll need more to convince me; why is it so obvious that it delivers value beyond the excerpted content? Is its function not already adequately catered for by the plethora of tools available to search blog feeds?
@NL: I think you’re right that Google ads are the least obtrusive of the monetising options available to aggregators (but is it only because we’re used to them?). I think LexMonitor and others, however, may also employ other ads.
@Martin: In “the plethora of tools available to search blog feeds” would you include Google and Technorati? Do they not deliver value? Do they not monetise it?
@Nick: Is that not my argument? If Google and Technorati already exist (both of which you can, incidentally, opt out of), what is the value of LexMonitor (or any other blawg aggregator) above and beyond those services such that it deserves to make money from other people’s content?
This question, to my mind, needs to be answered on a case-by-case basis. Google needs no further justification – the value is clearly enormous. I am not so sure about Technorati; I have never seen particular value in the service, and I have often wondered whether I should simply block it from conflictoflaws.net.
The question should really be: does the market need the product? If it increases traffic to our blogs, raises awareness of it, and thereby indirectly increases any revenue we may make from it, then perhaps the market can and should sustain that product. If it does not offer a significant (and unique) benefit, however, then there is no reason to allow it to monetise our content. If traffic is not increased, and if it actually makes people less likely to click on our own Google ads, why is it there?
LexMonitor is a free daily review of law blogs and journals highlighting prominent legal discussion as well as the lawyers and other professionals participating in this conversation.There has been a lot of coverage of the launch. Binary Law, KM Space, Law Firm Web Strategy, were just some of the bloggers to comment on the launch.the service is good, potentially very good. Any feedback can be suggested by others.
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james wilkins
Internet Marketing