Yes, the rumors are true and we’re all really excited. Now that that is out of the way, I’ll try to answer some questions.

1. I won’t be going anywhere. I’m fully committed to Bloglines, and we’ve got great things in store.
2. The Bloglines web site will keep on going, business as usual. One of the things we liked about Ask Jeeves is their multi-brand strategy, and we’ll be operating as one of their independent brands.
3. So what will change? We’ll have a lot more resources available to us. For example, we’ll be integrating Ask’s killer Teoma search engine technology within Bloglines. This will vastly improve our blog search capabilities. We don’t think that world-class blog search exists yet; with Teoma and Bloglines that will happen.

Since we launched in June 2003, we’ve had an organic growth policy, both for the web site and for the company. And that’s worked very well for us. Over the past year and a half, we’ve had many conversations with several great VC firms about funding Bloglines. We’ve also had conversations with many companies about acquiring Bloglines. We’ve been in a very fortunate position where we did not have to take any money, and we turned down all offers. But Ask Jeeves was different than the others that approached us. They wanted us to continue to run Bloglines as a stand-alone property, and also integrate Bloglines into their other properties where it made sense. And they were willing to commit a lot of resources to Bloglines to help us expand our features and capabilities. Just as important, it was clear from day one that the Ask team understood us, and our service. In fact, many of the execs at Ask Jeeves were already addicted Bloglines users. More subjectively, we thought they had much more of the start-up/fast moving mentality than any of the other companies we talked with, and that approach made them feel like the right partner for us. Speaking from experience, I know that the acquisition of a service that you use and depend upon can be unnerving. I also know that after acquisition some services wither.I am confident that won’t happen here. There is a shared passion and vision for Bloglines, and I’m very excited about the future. Update: Here’s Jim Lanzone’s take on the acquisition. Also, thanks for all the great emails and comments! I will try to respond to them over the next couple of days.

I recently purchased a Canon Powershot G6 digital camera. I’m really happy with it and it takes great pictures. So now, without further ado, pictures of my cats! First up is Babe, who was named after Babe Ruth, because she was found at Crusher Stadium: Another picture of Babe: And here’s Einstein. The name is ironic; he’s not the brightest bulb in the bunch, but he’s a good guy: Next, if you ask really nicely, I’ll post pictures of some of my favorite socks.

Richard MacManus has been trying to figure out aggregator market share based on stats from his own blog. It’s really interesting reading, and the comments are very good as well. He puts Bloglines at 50% of the aggregator market, although he implies (and I agree) that hard numbers are difficult to come by.

Seperately, a lot can be gleaned from the live traffic stats that BoingBoing publishes. Kirk Scott ran the numbers, and he came up with the following. BoingBoing is the 3rd most popular feed on Bloglines, with 13,533 subscribers as of this morning. In the “Connect to site from” section of BoingBoing’s stats report, the stats show that 90% of all traffic is directly linked from a bookmark or URL. Of the remaining 10% that is referred to BoingBoing, Bloglines is delivering more than 2.7x the number of hits than Google.

I’ll be attending the BloggerCon conference this Saturday. I’ll also be at the dinner at Mings on Friday night, and the Aggregators dinner at the Fish Market on Saturday. It promises to be a full weekend. Bloglines is pleased to help support BloggerCon, and I’m looking forward to the conference. If you’re attending one of these events, please say hi. I always enjoy talking with Bloglines users, and I’m always looking for feedback and suggestions for how we can improve the service.