ReachBy: A Startup With a Fresh Look at Blogging

While there’s no shortage of blog platforms out there on the market, most of them are basically a re-hash of the same old things. If you want simple blogging, options exist, but they are usually quite limited in what they let users do.

ReachBy.com is a simple blogging platform with some new and unique advantages that make it a solid startup. After chatting a bit with Tolu, we came to think that the readers of Generation-Y Startup might be interested in hearing about it.

A beta version of ReachBy was recently released. Here are some reasons why we think it has a bright future ahead of it.

Reaches a Wide Market

ReachBy provides features for new bloggers and savvy pros alike.

For those new to blogging, a ReachBy “Stream”, as they’re called, is a compelling place to start an adventure into the blogosphere.

We know that setting up and designing a blog is confusing for many people new to the practice. People simply don’t want to invest time or money into starting a blog, especially when they don’t know if they’re going to stick with it. A ReachBy Stream makes it easy. You just sign up for an account and then you’re basically ready to go. You can upload your avatar and a background picture to customize your Stream, similar to Twitter.

Experienced bloggers might be interested in ReachBy, too, since the dynamic interaction platform allows readers to contribute their own blog posts to a Stream. With this, you can take content contributions from anyone, without having to give them sign-in access to your blog. It’s similar to posting on someone’s Facebook wall. But, in this case, bloggers can take contributions from readers or other writers, then edit the content and post it. Of course, the system also allows readers to comment on posts.

For example, let’s say your favorite rock band is the Kings of Leon and you decide to start a Stream about them. Then readers and other contributers can add updates, performance reviews, post videos, discuss the latest album, etc. Basically, anyone can add to the Stream of content, and you act as editor to make sure all the content is the right fit.

Social Integration

All of the ReachBy pages have social sharing tools embedded — a must have for any great blog platform today, but something that can be too complicated for some people to do on their own.

ReachBy also lets you promote your Twitter or Facebook page, or even other websites and blogs, by adding social icons links to your Stream. We’ve made this easy for anyone to do. Just paste a link and the icons are automatically added.

Because it integrates with social media so well, we think ReachBy can play an in-between role. Meaning, in addition to serving as a full-service blog, it can also act as a place to continue conversations and create connectivity between social media and blogs.

User Centric Approach to Ads

There have been other blogging startups based on interacting communities — like Vox. I was actually a Vox beta tester in ‘06. Vox is a great site, with great designs. It was developed by Six Apart, which is obviously one of the best startups in the past decade, so I’m not out to knock Vox. It was, and still is, a lively, fun community. However, the thing that always bothered me about Vox was that they put ads up all over my content. I had no control over it whatsoever and I began to feel exploited. At least Squidoo shares ad revenue.

ReachBy gives you full control over whether or not ads appear on your Stream. If you do decided to put ads up, guess what? You place them with your own AdSense account. Meaning, if there’s revenue made from ad traffic, you keep all of it. ReachBy places its own ads on some main pages, but it doesn’t touch one penny of income that you might generate from visitors to your Stream.

We think this is a good way to attract and motivate users. We’ve made the process of placing ads on your Stream as simple as possible.

Usefulness

We can think of many ways that experienced bloggers might make use of a ReachBy Stream.

Let’s say you develop an open-source web app or a Wordpress theme, but already have a website with information and download links for your product.

A ReachBy Stream might act as a place to get collective feedback and discuss future enhancements. It can also serve as a location for users to crowdsource solutions and help each other out with answers. Basically, you can use ReachBy as a forum on anything, then link it all back to your home website, Twitter account, and Facebook fan page. This gives you an instant way to provide support and communicate openly with your users, without having to give out your email, invest money, or spend a lot of time developing a wiki or forum on your site. Plus, if your Stream builds an audience, you can capitalize on it with ads. This is a better route than opening a Google or Yahoo discussion group. You have more control and you can make money.

Also, because the ReachBy technology platform was designed to be lightweight and fast, it loads very quickly on mobile devices. If you save a ReachBy Stream as a bookmark on the home screen of your iPhone or iTouch, ReachBy uses the avatar image from the account to automatically generate an icon with that image. Pretty fun.

More Features Coming Soon

Since ReachBy is run by a small nimble team, we’re working to make it even more interactive and dynamic. Some very novel and very cool ideas are being developed, and hopefully, we’ll be able to release them soon.

What Do You Think?

If you have a chance to visit ReachBy.com, we’d love to know what you think of the site and how we might improve it. In fact, we’re looking for beta testers to give us some feedback, so if you have a moment to help us out, we’d love to hear your thoughts. We appreciate any help we can get in our work to make ReachBy better.

I’d also like to thank Tolu for giving us a chance to tell you about ReachBy!