OPEN

Intelliseek is providing a daily blog data and trend analysis from its Blogpulse blog search and analysis tools to AOL under a deal announced yesterday.

This is interesting as part of its own trend: digests of the blogosphere as a form of news reporting / content in itself. You see blog digests appearing in mainstream media, such as The Guardian in the UK more and more.

As the number of blogs and other connected media continue to
proliferate, its likely that (a) traditional media will increasingly
report the goings on in the blogosphere in the round, and (b) that blog digests will appear in
different guises, giving people a guide to unfamiliar topic areas.

It makes sense to present the blogosphere in this way to a wider audience. Unless you are fully connected to the blog tribes (tech, politics, IT PR, whatever) that are best informed about a particular topic, then finding the most pertinent / interesting comment and commentators that are out there is basically a geeky labour of love.

OK, so armed with Technorati and Blogpulse itself the more tuned-in blog reader can  go hunting for the information he or she needs with relative ease, but as RSS aggregators become a mainstream I don’t think most people will want the hassle.

Perhaps this is where concepts like Seth Godin‘s Squidoo "lenses" (have a look at the Squidoo blog here and the previews here), where experts maintain an everyperson-friendly homepage on a topic, will prove to be a winner.

Intelliseek reported the news on its own blog as follows:

    Intelliseek, AOL Ink Deal for Blog Data

    Intelliseek’s BlogPulse.com search engine will begin feeding AOL users with     daily blog data and analysis under an agreement announced
by the two companies today. AOL will have access to each day’s top blog
posts, links, trends and activities, including BlogPulse’s
buzz-tracking graphing tools, Conversation Tracker, BlogPulse Profiles
and its two weekday blogs.

ITake a look at some early analysis of the significance of the deal at New Media Report , The Blog Herald and ClickZ News.