Nothing has been hotter in the blogging industry than the recent launch of BlogRush, a new blog syndication network that allows bloggers to gain exposure for their blogs by giving other bloggers exposure through a simple widget.

With this new introduction also come changes announced by John Reese at Income.com’s Blog that should benefit the new service:

1. We?re moving to a MANUAL REVIEW process. No more automation. We will be reviewing ALL blogs submitted to BlogRush. If the quality of the blog is poor, they will not be allowed to participate. We?re going to start reviewing ALL the blogs that are currently in our network and will be disabling the accounts for poor quality blogs.

2. We?re continuing to add security measures to our system and we will be mass-removing any and all cheaters that we discover. We will not rest until the cheaters are WIPED OUT and kept from abusing our network. The manual review process will help eliminate most of them as legitimate bloggers that have put in the time to create a decent blog aren?t the types that are going to be abusing the system.

I’ve already seen some visitors from my widget and can’t wait to see this service grow.

It’s a big headache. I’ve been out of the loop in terms of news regarding big name purchases and I happened to go over to MyBlogLog today to change some settings on my widget display, when I noticed the acquistion by Yahoo!. Didn’t really think anything of it until I tried to log in to my account and realized now you have to use a Yahoo! ID.

Ok, not bad. No worries as I have a Yahoo! ID. Well, wait, there is an issue. When I registered this blog a while back, I used an email address for a site I had previously owned and sold no less than a month ago. Not to mention, I’ve also forgotten the password. (Slap on the wrist for me)

I clicked on the link to find out my log in information and realized I was out of luck there as well as it asks for the email of the account to send the account information to.

Hopefully, things will be sorted out as I’m probably not the only one having an issue like this.

Update: I’ve emailed Customer Support so we’ll see what happens with my account merger and blog claim.

Well after an exciting few weeks, we’d like to report some news from (wb). We recently sold two directories, Fourfind.com and Webmixture.com, to iEntry.com, who owns Jayde.com and WebProNews.com.

We’ve also been working hard on developing some quality templates for PHPLD which we will be releasing soon.

Another big update is we are working with Creativestl.com to develop a new theme for DirectoryNetwork.org to give it a fresh look to bring web directory owners together.

That’s all for now!

I am currently in the process of designing twenty (20) PHPLD templates for sponsorship.

Each template will be of the highest quality with a clean and elegant design.

Webmasters will have the opportunity to sponsor (2) spots on the template.

Stay Tuned for more details!

Chris Hoffman, owner of Alive Directory and Island of Media, has put together a large list (24 points to be exact) of tips and hints for web directory owners.

An excerpt from his post:

1. Disable image validation before announcing your directory. It is recommended that you always keep it disabled. Many submitters that have numerous listings to submit to each directory avoid those that use image validation because the time is better spent submitting to those that don?t use it and the inconvenience. No matter how easy the image validation is (and some are quite bad), it takes more time to submit to directories that use image validation than those that do not. There are better solutions to prevent spam, such as the spam guard MOD. Don?t put up a road block for those who want to send you money.
2. Include an option for featured listings in your directory. This probably seems obvious to most, but it?s surprising how many directories you can run across that do not. Featured listings provide you with increased revenue, and allow submitters the option for better and secure category placement. Some web site owners and promoters will not even submit to a site if listing cannot be achieved on the first category page. Most submitters prefer to be included among the first one or two pages of a category rather than much deeper, of course.more…

The article is extremely well written and comes with years of directory submitting behind it, as Chris has promoted his large network of directories and sites around the web.

Continue reading the article at Alive Directory’s Blog: Comprehensive Tips and Guide for Web Directory Owners