• by Shankar Gupta , February 5, 2007

Aiming to provide more metrics for blogs and community sites, comScore Networks and blog network Federated Media have forged a research partnership.

For the deal, comScore will build a database, using a customized weighting and projection system, designed for measuring the blogosphere and other social media.

Federated Media represents a number of social media sites, including Digg.com, Boing Boing, Jeff Jarvis' BuzzMachine, GigaOm, Google Blogoscoped and Metafilter. The nature of those sites, which rely on user participation, makes measurement more challenging than at other more top-down sites, said Magid Abraham, comScore's CEP and president. "The complex nature of blogs and community-driven sites like Digg presents unique measurement challenges," he said.

For comScore, the partnership is one of several new initiatives aimed at providing marketers with more Web metrics. Earlier last week, the company unveiled a new service that allows media planners to break down advertising networks' reach and frequency by vertical category.

Also, last month the company partnered with behavioral targeting firm Tacoda to license comScore's data. With that deal, Tacoda will have access to demographic data offering detailed consumer behavior on sites outside the Tacoda network.