Blog authority ranking algorithms have one big problem; they don’t take in account what users are actually reading. The acquisition of BlogRovr may solve that problem for BuzzLogic, leaving the world with a buzzmonitor that deals with both sides of the equation.

There’s an upcoming acceptance of a rule of thumb called The 1% Rule. This rule simply states that at most 1% of the users within a community will create content, 10% will interact with it and 89% will do nothing more than just view it. The blogosphere is a community too, so I assume it follows the same rule.

Known algorithms only measure that active 11% of the community. Simply because that’s the part that leaves tracks to trace. This approach seems to work, but fact remains that they’re unable to measure 89% of the community’s feelings towards a certain article, blog or blogger.

BlogRovr is a Firefox addon that display contextually related content to the websites your visiting. The plugin was developed by Activeweave and has a user base of 180,000 registered users. Buzzlogic acquired Activeweave, making BlogRovr part of their toolset.

BlogRovr makes a valuable asset because it allows BuzzLogic to dive in to the 89% of the community their competitors are currently unable to measure. This will give BuzzLogic a significant advantage in the market and may prove to be a lethal combination to their competitors.

The community that BlogRovr has is a great strength for BuzzLogic, but a great weakness at the same time. Installing the addon takes a certain amount of internet experience and I doubt that your average Joe will do so. It’s far more likely that most BlogRovr users have somewhat to a lot of internet experience, and have at least some affinity with the blogosphere. Thus making their users a niche within general population.

The way I see it BuzzLogic has two options:

1. Increase the user base by partnerships and building software for other browsers and platforms.
2. Extend what they know about their user base with user profiling.

BuzzLogic may opt to do both -in random order- but I have a feeling they’ll stick with option two for now. It will deliver them results faster than upscaling and is perfectly acceptable for any researcher providing they use the segmentation to match reader and blogtype.

As BlogRovr gets smarter, BuzzLogic might be able to give back to the community by providing more relevant results. BlogRovr is an intriguing tool but I’m not sure if I’m that keen on letting BuzzLogic know what exactly it is that I’m reading at a certain time or place, even if it’s anonymously.