Citizenbay, a Web community of people searching, sharing and producing local news and information, announced today the launch of its global community in which anyone can post or search localized content. This free service allows members to post stories and information that are then reviewed and ranked by their peers. These rankings collectively determine the prominence of a member’s post.

Citizenbay users have the opportunity to contribute to their community in two ways: by writing their own newsworthy posts or seeding news stories they find online. Users are also encouraged to add multimedia elements to their posts, from photos and videos to podcasts.

In addition to sharing information, members have the opportunity to monetize their contributions based on the rankings of their posts. Each day, the top 10 most popular stories in each of the 80 primary cities in the United States and Canada covered by Citizenbay — a total of 800 daily — based on the number of votes received by fellow members — are rewarded with a payment.

Posts are organized into channels, and in addition to local news include classifieds and events. Currently, Citizenbay provides local news to more than 80 primary cities across the United States and Canada. Cities not included in this primary list are classified as secondary cities, which offer both local coverage and coverage for their closest primary cities.

“Our goal is to build a large network of contributors in each of the cities we cover, who will contribute to daily news postings that will keep their communities informed and entertained,” explains Oleg Tscheltzoff, founder of CitizenBay. “By allowing users to vote on the most popular stories, we create a democratic and social method of disseminating local news that isn’t dominated by an editor’s decisions.”

Technorati Tags: portal, news, user-generated content, search, local, social media

PodZinger announced the launch of its advertising platform for podcasters. Using content classification technology and algorithms for analyzing consumer intent and aggregate consumer usage, PodZinger solves the problem of connecting consumers with relevant advertising in online audio and video content. The new service goes far beyond traditional text and click-through advertising services that advertisers are dependant on today, providing enhanced online experiences for content creators, advertisers and consumers.

PodZinger enables content creators to monetize their content, implement highly-targeted advertising programs and generate revenue by delivering the best and most relevant online audio and video content.

“As a podcast and radio host and producer, I believe PodZinger will be a tremendous service to my listeners, enabling them to browse archived shows to find specific information of interest,” said Leo Laporte, host and producer of TWiT.tv, among other shows. “With PodZinger’s new advertising platform I will be able to deliver effective, targeted advertising that is relevant to my content. This is a powerful tool and I expect PodZinger’s new platform to generate a robust, incremental revenue stream for my business.”
With PodZinger, advertisers are able for the first time to mine multimedia search data and leverage usage and topic filters to arrive at a better understanding of how consumers are interacting with content. Based on this insight, advertisers can identify the most valuable audio and video programming and deliver the most relevant and effective messages, targeted specifically to the content viewed and its context.

In addition, PodZinger makes it possible for content creators to monetize their assets by opting-in for free to the
PodZinger revenue sharing program via a simple user interface. Using speech recognition technology and natural language processing, PodZinger searches words within both audio and video, not just the metadata, to classify content based on topic and usage.

Since its launch one year ago, millions of consumers have used PodZinger to search for, discover, play and download content that is relevant to them. PodZinger users have shown that they love the unprecedented “jump to” playback experience offered by PodZinger, and they’ve voted for their favorite method of viewing video content with their “clicks,” playing audio and video directly from the PodZinger site nearly 10 times more often than they download content. This
creates a unique opportunity for advertisers and podcasters or any content creator to deliver brand messages in connection with the content. PodZinger’s data analysis algorithms and content classification technology make it very effective, identifying the content that is most valuable in each topic area based on frequency and duration of plays.

“Advertisers should not wander in to the world of online audio and video with blind hope of finding their target audience,” said Alex Laats, CEO of PodZinger. “With PodZinger, advertisers can craft their campaigns based on real information about consumer intent and usage, aggregated over a broad base of consumers. We are excited to bring this capability to market and share it with our content partners and network of affiliates.”

Technorati Tags: podzinger, ad networks, podvertising, podcasting, podcasts, podcast marketing, advertising, twit, leo laporte, twit.tv

On his blog, Matt Cutts has confirmed that an update has occurred for Google PageRank.

Technorati Tags: mattcutts, matt cutts, google, pr, pagerank, update, search engine, seo