Idea generation #60: What can you build using Zemanta's API

Zemanta in one of my current favorite service. Added to the fact that we are encouraging our startups to leverage on good platforms, I want to give some thoughts of what kind of services that can be built using Zemanta's API:

A newsreader powered by what I blogged: This is a no brainer for me. I find the current crop of news aggregator such as Techmeme very unsatisfying. Now, Zemanta knows my interest through my blog and is already surfacing interesting links for my insertion. Why can't I turn that into a full blown news aggregation service. Better yet, why can't I input all my favourite blogs and let Zemanta recommends related reading materials based on those?

A new form of Digg: Related to the above is a new form of Digg, one that is powered by how many times a blog has been inserted, where each insertion is counted as a vote. Bonus points if you can attach a value of authority to the vote so that insertations made by more 'authorative' bloggers are given more weight.

Integration with blog shops: Products are now becomming more and more like content producers. See what kraftfoods.com has done with its hugely trafficked recipe site and what walmart.com has done with its popular blogs by mothers. Zemanta can be used to power such information for small blog shops that have no budget to hire full time bloggers or to pay for such content.

Zemanta as a platform: This is something which is not available right now but is something I hope will happen. What is valuable about Zemanta, beyond its technology, is the little 'browser' window that occupies the right hand side of my blog posting. That is prime 'estate' area. The idea is for Zemanta to turn that window into an igoogle equvialent where users can select the apps they want to display. Zemanta can then create an apps store for these apps and have a triving developer ecosystem.

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Posted in: idea generation