Whether you’re riffing on the latest celebrity gossip or ranting about local politics, Blogged lets you add your two cents to today’s hottest news posts. As of this morning, the conversation tracking service is offering another level of news-related discussion through its live chat feature. In addition to aggregating topical blog posts and real-time blog comments, Blogged lets you find your online friends and create article-specific or topic-specific chat boxes. If you’re like me and you have a knack for putting your foot in your mouth, this chat feature helps ensure that your buffoonery is kept amongst your inner circle.
Last month ReadWriteWeb covered Blogged’s transition from a blogging directory to a social news service. The company shifted its focus to facilitate discussion on news-related blog posts. While Blogged’s site, Facebook application and widget allow for public conversations and trackbacks, today’s live chat release is more discrete. Rather than immortalizing and publicly broadcasting sensitive conversations, this feature keeps political commentary and snide comments in the shadows.
In addition to the chat feature, the company also offers users the opportunity to retweet their posts and embed Blogged services into their own sites. By embedding the Blogged code, users eliminate the need to repost information. The service syncs and refreshes all of your posts and comments from the Facebook application, widgets and Blogged site in real-time. The new Blogged service is best described as one part news feed, one part Echo conversation aggregator and one part Google Wave. To check out the service visit blogged.com or try the Blogged Facebook application.
