AOL Taps Intelliseek To Monitor Blogosphere

America Online has hired blog monitoring firm Intelliseek to provide it with buzz-tracking data, including information on the blogosphere's most popular posts and news stories, the companies announced Monday.

The arrangement also gives AOL the ability to syndicate BlogPulse's two blogs--BlogPulse Newswire, which summarizes daily blog activity, and BlogPulse Spotlight, which focuses on entertainment-oriented blogs.

The deal, which comes less than two weeks after news broke that AOL would purchase Weblogs for $25 million, appears to be part of a larger effort on AOL's part to address the "long tail" of the Web--the thousands upon thousands of small, niche sites that aren't affiliated with larger media companies. "Intelliseek's data is one part of us answering the question 'What are people doing on the Web?'" said Bill Schreiner, AOL vice president and general manager of community programming.

He added that AOL, in the near future, will roll out more deals aimed at bringing Internet buzz data to visitors.

The deal also greatly extends Intelliseek's reach, said Karthik Iyer, Intelliseek's senior vice president for business development. "Doing this deal will really put BlogPulse on the map, and give it the exposure it deserves," said Iyer.

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