A new startup called Zemanta launched in alpha mode today. The service integrates with blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger, and Typepad to suggest pictures, links, articles, and tags related to your blog postings. Using proprietary natural language processing and semantic algorithms, Zemanta compares the words in a blog post to their pre-indexed database of other content in order to suggest related items which will display next to your blog post.
The articles Zemanta suggests come from 300 or so “top media sources” as well as the other blogs of Zemanta users. The images suggested come from Wikimedia Commons, flickr, and stock photo providers like Shutterstock and Fotolia. Zemanta also pays close attention to copyright, making sure that suggested content is licensed as Creative Commons or approved by stock providers, so you won’t get into trouble by using Zemanta’s service.
As a blogger, to get your content “Zemified,” you’ll need to install the Firefox extension, as the only supported browser at this time is Firefox. Once installed, you only need to visit one of the supported blogging platforms and begin to write your post.
While you write, you will notice a new Zemanta sidebar added to your post editing page, which will fill with related content as you type out your entry. The more you write, the better the Zemanta recommendations will be, but each entry should be at least 300 words for Zemanta to work properly. Zemanta is English-only for now, but you may have luck if writing in another language if the content you’re writing about involves trademarked items or well-known buzzwords.
To learn more about Zemanta, check it out in action in the following demo:
Zemanta Blogger integration from zemanta on Vimeo.
Although Zemanta is exciting in terms of its semantic algorithm, whether it will really add truly relevant content will need to be seen as bloggers start to use the service. You can see it live on this blog entry, where the blogger used it to provide related links and the image.
