Chicago Tech Startup: Edit Huddle
Edit Huddle allows bloggers to receive reader feedback on issues like spelling, grammar and factual mistakes via a private dashboard system.
TINC: What growth phase is your company in currently?
Pre-A Series (no external funding);
TINC: Give us your Elevator Pitch.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably a blog reader. And you probably notice errors a fair amount: spelling, grammar, factual misstatements, and things that just plain don’t make sense. Errors like this suck. They’re distracting, they lower the quality of the blog, and they cause commenters to swarm the comments section pointing out mistakes, which detracts from real discussion. That’s where Edit Huddle comes in. Edit Huddle is a tool for bloggers to harness the power of the crowd to quickly fix errors. An unobtrusive “Corrections” button at the bottom of blog posts allows readers to select the type of mistake–spelling/grammar, factual, clarity–and attach an optional suggestion. That submission goes straight to the blogger, who has access to a dashboard that features useful analytics. The dashboard seamlessly integrates with blog sites, allowing bloggers to correct their posts right from our system. The tool promotes more reader interaction and makes for improved SEO, because Google uses spelling and grammar as an SEO determinant. Edit Huddle is a way for bloggers to more effectively target and fix mistakes, raising the quality and professionalism of their blogs.
TINC: Can you explain to our readers the service that you provide, in detail?
Edit Huddle is a tool that allows bloggers to receive private, specific feedback on their posts. Right now the only place to point out errors–some trivial, like spelling, some more serious, like factual errors–is the comments section. There are a number of problems with this: it’s public, it reflects poorly on the blogger, and it takes away from more substantial discourse. Edit Huddle is an unobtrusive button that appears on the bottom of every post. It’s very simple for blog readers to submit an error: they simply click the button, highlight the problematic text, and select the type of error. They can also optionally suggest a correction, which they may want to do upon finding a factual error. This feedback is private, anonymous, and sent directly to the blogger in the form of a dashboard. The dashboard features analytics on the most commonly flagged errors, and seamlessly integrates with the blog: the blogger can fix the error and update their blog directly through the dashboard. Errors manage to slip past even the most diligent pair of eyes, and Edit Huddle serves as an editing safety net to catch those errors and rectify them.
TINC: How is your product different from the other guys? What makes your company unique to the scene?
We are unique in our focus on the blogosphere and our use of an already-existing, attentive audience: blog readers. We benefit both bloggers and blog readers: the former can more accurately target and quickly fix errors based on private feedback, and the latter now have a venue through which to submit that feedback and help cut down on mistakes. Other editing services aren’t focused on blogs and don’t allow for edits targeted to specific lines of text.
TINC: How many employees do you have on board right now?
We are a tiny company! Our core team is made up of 5 members.
TINC: Who are the founders and CEO’s of your company?
Imran Ahmad, Adam Bain, Mark Roberts, Charles Scobee, and Rachel Hyman.
TINC: When was your company established? What is the official founding date?
Edit Huddle at Technori Pitch
In addition to being tiny, we’re very young: Edit Huddle got its start at Chicago SocialDevCamp on August 26, 2011.
TINC: Tell us about development platforms you may be using, or what you’re coding this in.
Our front end is Javascript and our back end is Django.
TINC: What is your technical approach that makes your software better? How are you getting the details right or working in a more optimized way?
We are using smart algorithms to make inferences from user data. For instance, we infer where the most problematic parts of a blog post are based on user submissions.
Comments (4)
Links to this Post
- TINC Magazine Feature on Edit Huddle | EditHuddle Blog | January 31, 2012
My question is, will people really use it? I don’t see readers, aside from the OCD types, taking their time to make corrections to blogs. Readers will either not notice because their focused on overall content, or not care because they just want to get to the end of the post and move on. I think we bloggers ask for a lot of engagement already: view, comment, follow, and share. Adding “edit” in may take more time than users are willing to spend.
Plus, you should just take the time to ensure you’ve written a quality post, not leave it up to your readers.
I don’t mean to be a downer. Just adding an observation. I’m interested to know how this works out.
Hi there,
Thanks for the comment! We’ve found that readers do actually notice these errors, and wish that there was a better way to point them out than publicly, in the comments section. This is especially relevant for the more serious errors, like factual ones.
The process of error submission is designed to be as seamless and unobtrusive as possible: essentially click-drag-click (click the button, highlight the error, and pick a category). We know that not every single blog reader is going to use the tool, but we think we have enough of a critical mass that would to make it useful.
We definitely agree that bloggers should be editing their posts! Edit Huddle is an additional safety net, for those errors that inevitably slip through due to the pressures of constantly putting out new content.
We’re looking forward to seeing how the tool works out too! If you have a blog, you can sign up at http://www.edithuddle.com.
-Rachel from Edit Huddle
Our blog at http://www.siliconprairiesocial.com doesn’t tend to have enough writing to necessitate utilizing your service, however, we may starting writing more this year. When that happens, we’ll look to Edit Huddle. Thanks for the heads up. Good luck building your service.