Wow, it's about time the big sites started doing this.

Spotted over on the Microsoft Monitor weblog:

Early this morning, I read up on the latest news about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Of interest, interactive graphic over at MSNBC. Down in the lower right-hand corner is "Blog this," which if clicked logs the user into MSN Spaces (assuming he or she has a space) and fills in a post with title and link. User just needs to click save. The filled-in post looks like this.

I've been hoping that Yahoo! News would do this for a while now.

Good job, Microsoft.

Posted by jzawodn at August 31, 2005 11:57 AM

Reader Comments
# Jeff Boulter said:

So how do you determine which blog site/software to link to? MSN just goes right to Spaces. I assume that's not what you would want and 360 probably wouldn't cut it either.

on August 31, 2005 02:25 PM
# Jeremy Zawodny said:

The first time I click the button, ask me where my blog is. If I don't have one, then suggest something useful.

Flickr's "blog this photo" feature does this well, albeit for geeky folks. I'm sure Y! News could simplify it a bit.

on August 31, 2005 02:36 PM
# chad said:

Why would 360 not cut it? I assume Spaces is similar in focus to 360: not hard-core bloggers such as yourselves.

on August 31, 2005 02:45 PM
# Michael Griffiths said:

It's a nifty feature :-)

If I recall correctly, MSNBC has had this since February or so. Long time.

I'm kind of suprised no one noticed it before now :-)

on August 31, 2005 05:45 PM
# Alex said:

ZDNet actually had it on ZDNet Blogs for a while. Didn't go to any specific blogging service, but offered HTML code with links.

on August 31, 2005 06:17 PM
# Micah said:

But why not offer users a Javascript bookmarklet a la Blogger's BlogThis! bookmarklet that grabs the page title and URL, makes them into an HTML link, and sticks them in a popup window's textarea that posts directly to your MSN Spaces weblog? That way, you could use the bookmarklet on a news story on any site.

Yahoo 360, Wordpress, and Blogger already have such a bookmarklet.

on September 1, 2005 08:24 AM
# gaby de wilde said:

Hard-core bloggers have profiles all over the place. If you dont have a yahoo akka your a noob. LOL

It's an interesting topic. I guess all Blogger blogs have blog-this for a long time already? Why should big news sites be any worse?

It would not be so hard to UN-hide a div with a blog-this link in it if the visitor has a 360 blog. Can do a trick with a blank image, I guess there a lot of ways to do it.

It would be neat for the posting to appear in the blog withouth viewing a single blog-this popup or page. See the "blog this" link change into "working" and into "done" - so one can blog withouth leaving the page.

To avoid confusing things the new post should not have the bloggers name under it and have no option to be edited (just a delete). If I want to say something in response I can always post a comment on my own blog. (later)

To make it really inovative one can make the blog have a pre defined subject & fixed tags so that the blog-this link only appears under topics that fit the blog. That would make a fast and seamless user interface.

It would create ilustrated & rich formated posts in single clicks.

(off topic) from a user perspective my web and yahoo 360 would look better in a single popup?

on October 2, 2005 04:32 PM
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