Reuters has invested $7m (£3.7m) in an internet startup, aiming to push the world of blogging further into the mainstream. Texas dotcom firm Pluck brings together almost 3,000 highly rated blogs and syndicates them to news media organisations for use on their websites. The service covers subjects such as politics, sports, technology and travel, and has negotiated deals with news groups including the Washington Post and Guardian Unlimited. As part of the agreement, Reuters will syndicate third-party blog content alongside its news and information.

Also, several major newspapers, including The San Francisco Chronicle, The Houston Chronicle, The San Antonio Express-News and the Austin American-Statesman who began syndicating and displaying high-quality blog content from the BlogBurst syndication network on their web sites. BlogBurst, the industry's first blog syndication service linking new and traditional media with a blog-powered newswire service, now includes many activated and available blog sources. Pluck helps its customers leverage the new open content model that has emerged of Web 2.0 technology.

More than 15 million unique visitors per month turn to live BlogBurst sites SFGate.com, Statesman.com, Chron.com and MySanAntonio.com for the latest news, entertainment and commercial information. With the addition of syndicated blog content from BlogBurst, visitors to these sites can enjoy an expanded perspective on a variety of topics. Bloggers are rewarded with increased exposure and reader traffic through attribution and links back to their blogs.

Following on the foot-steps goes MSN India with it's recent features of MSN Contribute. Accepting manually, the articles submitted by Contribute readers are checked and posted on their main page with viewers who can read, rate and even labelled 'Editor's Choice'. So, if you think you can pen your thoughts, express your views, get your thoughts published - contribute on web - Blogburst or msn contribute or Goarticles - Choice is entirely yours!

- ilaxi