Amatomu was born in MandG Online’s “Labs”, a division similar to Google labs, which encourages staff to initiate and develop their own ideas and projects (to be considered by other publications).

The blog aggregator ranks and categorizes blogs, and enables users to search the blogosphere in an efficient manner, whether according to classic newspaper sections (Politics, Business…), ‘Hot Right Now,’ or simply by looking at the region’s newest blogs and postings. Amatomu also provides a blogosphere-wide search function to finally facilitate information gathering across blogs.

"The site has filled a gap in the market in that the blogosphere is a highly segmented community and Amatomu has provided a meeting place and central destination for bloggers,” says Matthew Buckland, publisher of MandG Online.

Perhaps even better (for newspapers), Amatomu is paving the way towards concrete and sincere collaboration between bloggers and newspapers on a bigger scale. The newspaper’s offering was built in conjunction with bloggers and has been received extremely positively.

“The support we have received from local bloggers has been outrageous. The site is not even two weeks old and not out of alpha development and it has been flooded by local bloggers," says Buckland.

Indeed, Amatomu has been in the blog conversation for the past weeks, ever since its Alpha version was released. The blog even has an online tool to measure and collect feedback about itself.

Amatomu’s power lies in its “crystallization of the shift that we are going through and that all media companies must go through, from a producer of knowledge to a facilitator of knowledge-makers," says Vincent Maher, MandG Online digital media strategist.

Among Amatomu’s basic features, as summed up by South African blogger Tyler Reed:

“Hot Right Now
Tracks the hottest posts by traffic over the last 24 hours, 7 days and last month.

Tag Cloud
Showing the most popular tags over the last 24 hours, 7 days and last month. Really handy to track whats cooking.

Search Blogs
Allows you to search South African blogs. Woohoo! This is really going to come in handy. It also provides an rss feed for the search results which will allow people to track what is going on.

Top 100 Blogs
Top 100 blogs in South Africa, really nice to see.

Statistics
Amatomu provides you with code to insert in your blog to track traffic statistics, which include page impressions and unique visitors.

Widget
A tag cloud widget is available for your blog.”

It seems the Mail & Guardian Online is pursuing its strong emphasis on multimedia offerings and innovative online features – to be considered by all newspapers. “Never before have I been so impressed by a South African website service - it looks great as well,” commented another blogger.

And yet Amatomu is “only 25% complete…” says Buckland. The Mail & Guardian online is already working on a regionally-categorized African Amamotu.com.

Source: Amatomu.com – Tyler Reed blog