Zemanta Gives Bloggers Balloons

Blogging service Zemanta has announced the launch of their “Balloons” service. Zemanta’s goal is to bring together relevant databases and help enhance content across the Web and in email. They use a variety of databases including Amazon, IMDB, Wikipedia and Last.fm.

Zemanta Balloons are similar to what Snap offers — you can see an example below. If you are using Zemanta on your blog, you can add the balloons option. This allows readers to see a sample of the content behind the link before the reader clicks on the link. Zemanta notes that the content comes from, “the openly licensed Freebase database and content from YouTube, Google Maps and MusicBrainz, as well as millions of articles from Freebase contributors.”

As for the technology behind the balloons Zemanta notes, “the code underpinning Balloons is open source and built on Common Tag architecture, the open tagging format – developed by Zemanta, Freebase, Yahoo!, AdaptiveBlue, and others that aims to make content more connected, discoverable and engaging.”

On the Zemanta Balloons test page, one of the links provides content from Wikipedia and a link to Amazon for the product. While I don’t see an affiliate code in the link, it could be a way for Zemanta to generate revenue from the Balloons functionality.

One interesting note – in IE7 if you start a video inside one of the balloons and then mouse away, the video keeps playing and the only remedy is to close the tab or browser.

Related: Our full Zemanta coverage.