The Friday Roundup

Lots of things are baking here at TypePad including this awesome new update that we'll be doing weekly. Check out the posts that made the rounds at our office. Keep your eyes open for a shout out on your own blog in the coming weeks.

• Velveteen Minds shows us how to "carry the big stick" in social media.
• Our very own, NataliePo, explains the "NEXT" phenomenon and how awkward situations are avoided in the office.
• The Scenestar jams to Stars new video for "Fixed", off their upcoming second album debuting at the end of June.
• Demented beasts as art? Try not to scare the kids with mmooch's paintings for the "Too Art 4 TV" show .
• Still top of our minds, Ries talks about branding in the wake of BP's oil spill."They talked the talk but never walked the walk."
• Rahul made us laugh with this meme poster: Michael Cera is Superbad, ya know?
• Thank you, Social Media Handyman, for this great write-up about why TypePad works for Small Businesses. We couldn't have agreed more. :)
• Some food for thought from Seth Godin. For work, life or both.

Like what you've read? Be sure to follow the linked profiles to stay up to date on these blogs. Until next week, we'll be seeing you at the ballpark. Have you seen a really awesome post on TypePad? Tell us about it in the comments!

Comments

[A Twitter User]

Thank you for adding the Friday Roundup. I look forward to reading it each week.

It's wonderful when TypePad promotes one of the blogs they host. You all mentioned Between The Pages in a post last month and it made my week.

[Kofla Olivieri]

Excellent idea to find new blogs to read.

[Paul Chaney]

Thanks for including my post in the Friday roundup. I appreciate it very much. I've been a Typepad user since December 2003 and consider that a badge of honor in a manner of speaking. It's a great product that has only been made better with the new version.

[Account Deleted]

I am fairly new to Typepad and I am just now learning about all it has to offer. I appreciate this update as it has encouraged me to explore more. Thanks.

[Cihelun1504]

android

[Jennifer]

I really hope I don't sound like sour grapes because all these bloggers are great, but aren't most of them the ones you already promote on your "find great blogs to follow" page? I've checked out all of them, and admire them and regularly follow some of them, but it's a relatively small list that doesn't seem to change. I'd LOVE to see a random listing of "small guy" Typepad blogs. I'm sure there are lots and lots of great ones out there and I'd really love to see what people are doing/saying. One of my favourite things about Typepad is the creativity it affords bloggers, and some people have created great looking blogs and I'd love to explore them. And I'm always looking for new blogs to read, but your small list of "find great blogs" never seems to change. Just a thought.

[kimmi8]

Glad to hear that you find this post useful.

[kimmi8]

Thanks for the comment Paul. Great post and we look forward to reading more!

[kimmi8]

Welcome to TypePad. :) We'll try to keep these posts useful for you.

[kimmi8]

Thanks for the feedback Jennifer. No sour grapes at all, since we think it's important to give honest feedback. Two people on last week's roundup were actually *not* on the follow list. And the roundup isn't focused on new people to follow but rather great, fun content that the staff has been passing around.

We definitely want to improve the "find great blogs" list but until then, we'll try to add more "small guy" blogs in our Friday roundups.

[Jennifer]

Thanks Kimmie. I did find the two "small guy/gal" blogs in the Roundup, and do love that you're posting great content. That's what it's all about. And I suppose finding Typepad blogs is as easy as doing a blog search on Google with Typepad as the keyword.

[WenLin Soh]

Enjoying this roundup and your leads to interesting reads. Looking forward to more.

Perhaps in future editions you could have a couple of finds sorted by big blog categories? E.g. who's reading what in food blogs, music blogs, travel blogs, sports blogs, how-to-blog-and-market better blogs. You could rotate categories in each roundup so as not to clog it up.

While I'm on here I also wanted to say thank you and let you know that I'm really enjoying Typepad's search-on-my-blog function. I was initially trying to install google search on my blog but frankly was having a real headache with it. Your search function was easy to add on works great.

And one last thing for now. I've been traveling in and blogging from China for the last month, and love it that Typepad is (currently) accessible in China, while Wordpress, and all the Google-hosted platforms are (currently) blocked. To me, that's 1.3 billion reasons that makes me feel great about having picked Typepad to work with, vs at least these other platforms.

A bit of a ramble, but I hope you'll pass on my thanks to the rest of your team.

Wen
http://www.goingwithmygut.com

[kimmi8]

1.3 billion reasons to love TypePad?!! Thank YOU for the comment Wen. Great to know we were the right blogging platform for your needs. As for the roundup, we're having fun with it and are definitely thinking of doing weekly themes in the future.

Happy travels!

[Account Deleted]

I agree. I think that the list of featured Follow Blogs in the Typepad dashboard is kinda like elitist----and biased. What only catches the interest of the Typepad staff are the ones they feature....not the "small blogs" or the "blogs that they don't have any interest." I'd been with Typepad for 2 years and since then I'd been requesting for a list of Typepad blogs to search but still, they don't have that . ....they'd been promising this for years.

[kimmi8]

Thanks for the feedback. About 30% of the blog listed in the follow module are from small bloggers actually. We include blogs that fall into the specific categories so it's hard to add general, personal blogs. That's not to say we don't enjoy reading them or find them interesting. But we find it's easier for new users to follow blogs when they are in verticals such as entertainment, design, crafts, etc.

[Anastasia]

What a wonderful way to read and / or follow more blogs! Thank you TypePad.

[Account Deleted]

Great job Typepad Team. I am very happy on how quickly Typepad Team got back to me at the time I was needing some assistance in maneuvering Typepad. I was kinda disappointed though that posts can automatically updated to Facebbok profile and can't on business page. I am still doing it manually. Also, I was looking for ways to upload videos in my other soon-to-be site (aside from using YouTube, Vimeo, Google or Yahoo kind of) I came across a list of free video players I can use in my site, I found out there were several plug-ins for Wordpress, why not any for Typepad? Thnaks again for doing a great job.

May http://www.bringthesexyback.com

[kimmi8]

Thanks for the feedback May. It doesn't look like you have the Facebook Like button (http://everything.typepad.com/blog/2010/05/facebook-like.html) added to your blog? That would actually replace the fan page that you have and allow any visitor who "likes" your blog to receive updates in their streams.

Did you check if the video plug-ins were for Wordpress.org rather than Wordpress.com? If you're on WP.org, you would self-install these plug-ins to your website/blog. It's their non-hosted blogging platform and is comparable to our enterprise product, Movable Type rather than TypePad.

We do allow a number of different players to be uploaded to TypePad, but yes, they are generally popular video players. The reason for that is because of security issues around non-popular players. I don't want to get to technical but the short of it is that it's possible for users to embed code into videos that could do harmful things to session ids and login information of their readers. So we only allow certain "trusted" players on TypePad. Hope that makes sense.

[chairman]

I love TypePad and i am here to stay.
Chairman