MadKast is a startup by some of the graduates of Techstars (think of it as Colorado’s Y Combinator) that makes it easier for blog readers to share articles and submit them to social news services.

If you have spent any time in this space you know that every blog worth its Technorati score has some kind of social bookmarking plugin installed, so you might be wondering why we need yet another one. Well, maybe we don’t, but MadKast might just make you reconsider.

Those Whom The Gods Would Destroy…

What I love about MadKast is that it takes all of the “share with a friend” features that you can think of and puts them all in one package. More importantly, it helps you explore the results of all this sharing through built in analytics. It would take me hours of putting together a plugins list to get all these features in one place.

So what is the problem?

Well, like I said earlier, almost everyone who could really use a product like this already has a very similar solution installed on their blogs. While MadKast takes what might otherwise require three or four plugins to accomplish and puts it in one quick install, if I already have those plugins installed, why am I going to waste the time?

For power users, the analytics might overcome some of this inertia but even that is dulled somewhat by other traffic explorations like MyBlogLog that already have a strong installed base. The best thing that the MadKast team can do at this point is to get themselves in front of bloggers and let them see the value of the product. All you need are a few big bloggers to pick you up, and the idea will spread across the echo chamber.

One last gripe. I’ve been told that MadKast does have WordPress support but despite a heroic effort I was unable to get it working with this template. The install says to put the script “before the ” tag, unfortunately that did not seem to work, nor did it work when I placed it in other static areas of the page. The javascript is loading, but the share button is missing in action.

While I am certain that an email would suffice to get this cleared up, many users in the field would not waste the time — especially since there are other ways they can accomplish the same task. I see a WordPress plugin in MadKast’s immediate future.

Web 2.0 Roundup

All in all, if you use Typepad or Blogger, I can’t say better things about MadKast. The install is painless, the features are great, and the company was put together by some really clever people that I have heard nothing but good things about. If you use WordPress, I can’t quite put my stamp of approval on it just yet but if you can get it up and running, it’s certainly worth doing.

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