Blogging has a fundamental problem - it’s tedious nature. Sure it’s easy to write content, but getting the blog ready for the public eye is simply not fun. Adding hyperlinks, tags, categories and pictures are a lengthy and boring process. As such, I have at least four blogs in my backlog that are completely written but I haven’t optimized with links, pictures and the like. But thanks to my new knight in shining armor (Zemanta) this issue is completely solved.

Zemanta is a simple plugin for FireFox and IE that works on all major blogging platforms. It overlays a bunch of actions overtop of your writing manager on your blog. It suggests tags, related articles, images, links found within your content, as well as offers a “reblog” button (as seen below) that allows visitors to blog about your article in a simple format.

The program uses semantic technology (ooo, semantics my fav!) in order to produce very precise results. I’ve seriously found no problems with this program. It solves exactly what it has set out to do and I’m sure the future of the program is quite optimistic. In conjunction to this the program is open API - I smell mashups! I use this on all my blogs.

I did some basic math on how much time I spend on these activities. I spend roughly twenty minutes a day - researching possible links, images and smart tags for each of my blogs. That translates to 2 hours and 20 minutes a week, 10 hours a month or 120 hours a year (or 5 days). This is just for one of my blogs, I host and run about five blogs which means I lose about 25 days a year tagging, linking and finding images for my blogs. Thank you Zemanta!

The only funding that the company has seen is seed funding of $1.5 million.

Oversaturated content and ideas were the end of Web 1.0. Too many people were trying to cash in on ideas that they didn’t have. Now a whole new age of thinking has been created - Web 2.0. Where social networking and communication has been highly implemented and crazy website ideas are actually accepted. Any two-bit webmaster knows that the uniqueness of content is how to make money in this industry, and the advertisers are lovin’ it! (Some contextual advertising right there) However, everything in this world follows one of the fundamental laws of physics - What goes up must come down. And much like Newton’s apple that fell from the tree so will the internet, once again.

But why? There are plenty of advertisers with plenty of money and plenty of web startups with plenty of ideas. If you draw your attention to a couple mega-giant websites that have been somewhat of the poster boys for Web 2.0 you will see increasingly less advertising. This is because customers don’t like advertisements. A user will visit a website because they want the content of the website and don’t want to sift through “Shoot the Duck” or “Is this your Crush?” advertisements. The website makes money by applying advertisements to their content and only established websites have the resources to do so - and to be successful. Large websites are making it not okay to have advertisement banners and other primitive advertising tools - even though they owe their existence to these.

So, what’s to come of Web 2.0? If large advertisers do not create more applications and tools that fit the increasingly more semantic nature of the web, expect another depression. This will not occur for a while, and in fact, the online advertising industry will continue to grow. But, one day in years to come computer users will grow weary of clicking on sponsored link after sponsored link for products they do not want and the industry will take a dive once again. To avoid this advertisers as well as webmasters need to step up to the plate. Advertisers need to create more interesting and user specific tools. Webmasters need to make banner advertisements accepted again. Follow the Yahoo and Myspace method and monetize just about every aspect of your website, regardless if your visitors like it or not.