I don’t often get contacted with sponsored posts, and sadly when I do they’re generally about topics completely irrelevant to my writing – so being offered information about a new way to create networks of related content sounded too interesting to ignore. It’s called Small Rivers, a tool for bloggers to network content and audiences started by a small team on the Swiss Institute of Technology EPFL Campus, who wanted to find an easier and better way to connect communities of shared interests without having to leave their own website, blog or social network. So Small Rivers attempts to allow both creators, and their visitors to find other people discussing the same topics, showing extracts of content, videos and comments, all on your site. It works by registering on the Small Rivers site, and inserting a button onto your site – when anyone clicks on it, a sidebar opens which shows everywhere the same button is found, what content is on those pages, and what discussions are taking place. So rather than manually creating your own blogroll, this acts like a distributed network of links, to which anyone can contribute. Which means what normally ends up as a static collection of links often forgotten and outdates instead becomes a more relevant and fluid collection. There’s also a bookmarklet to add content and sites easily, plus you can share via all the usual social networks. As a site owner, it could be one of the better ways to increase the amount of value you can offer to visitors quickly and easily. Via the site itself you can browse networks to find relevant ones to join, and create your own. The only thing I’ve immediately spotted which would be a nice addition is an option to moderate the links being added to your network to stop any malicious or spam contributions, but I’m guessing this might be an option in a Pro paid version (Small Rivers as standard is 100% free) which is due in the near future, along with more organisations who seem set to use it – there already seems to be a WWF network which has collected some interesting content. You can see the button in action on the WWF Arctic Conservation site in the right side bar. It’s currently in Alpha, so there’s a small number of networks currently in action, but some of them are already collating quite a large amount of content, and it seems like one way in which blogs can evolve further in the face of all the buzz about microblogging and rumours it will kill the traditional blog. Like many networked services, it relies on critical mass to succeed, but certainly the elements of a decent content discovery/delivery mechanism are already in place. You can also try out the service by clicking on the Small Rivers button below and taking a look at an example network.
