Dobhal.com

There is a new king of KISS (Keep it simple stupid) in my books, the award goes to…… Outbrain, the company behind the latest plug-in that allows people to rate blog posts (and I imagine these functions can eventually be extended to other kind of consumer ratings sites but for now… I like the focus on blogs).

From a blogger’s perspective,  I highly recommend this plug-in for fellow bloggers. It was an easy install - well under 5 seconds. (No changes/inserts required at the template levels!)

From a business / new venture perspective, I feel they nailed it. Not surprising given that one of the founders is Yaron Galai (you can read his blog here… I have always liked reading his posts).

It was a weird coincidence that I saw this on a Israeli Venture Blog - “Today we announced our new investment – Outbrain, founded by Yaron Galai and Ori Lahav. Yaron founded it last year right after selling Quigo to AOL for $350M+. ” while searching for a rating tool for this very blog on the another tab  - yes, I am the king of multi-tasking.

My immediate thought - Boy, I sure want to see how the ”exit” pans out on this new venture given the last one had an exit at $350M+. And if Yaron is reading this… I know how you feel about exits and I agree with your philosophy

My  two cents on Outbrain :

It is simple.It does exactly what its supposed to….. and the best part it builds on a network of all those blog feeds out there. Outbrain has the potential to solve the problem of information clutter in a simple way.

 I honestly like it better than Digg as “Digging” still requires a lot of effort as far as I am concerned — click on Digg, login if you aren’t logged in, submit a story…something like that….. :).  Another issue I have with Digg is that viewing the most “Dugg” articles does not necessarily mean viewing something I would enjoy. Some of the highly “Dugg” items are best described as information pollution. Lastly, Digg only relies on a strict ”yay” or “nay” a.k.a “Digg” or “Bury”….there is no middle ground. In contrast, Outbrain’s rating tool is based on the good old and familiar 5 star rating system.

At first glance, Outbrain seems to have a one click solution that combines the functionality of “Digg” and suggestion features ( seen in blog readers/aggregators such as Google reader. Outbrain offers a solution that makes ranking an article hassle free and worth that half-a-second click. I think it is particularly appealing to readers who don’t care about reading user comments or leaving comments but would be willing to contribute a simple click towards a “clutterfree web”.