Spotplex Inc. on Monday announced a new content-aggregation site that it said will provide Digg.com-like rankings of Internet content -- with a twist. Instead of requiring users to rank content, Spotplex will automatically rank it based on the number of people reading it.

In addition, Spotplex -- launched by Dialpad Communications Inc. founder Doyon Kim -- will provide a widget, or small piece of HTML code, that bloggers can embed in their sites to measure traffic. The goal of Spotplex is to reach the large number of people who read content on social networks and other Internet sites but aren't inclined to submit votes or to rank that content, said CEO Kim, who sold Dialpad to Yahoo Inc. in 2005.

"We are not asking people to change their behavior," he said. "Instead, this is our responsibility as a service provider -- capturing people's intentions or opinions without asking them to change."

Spotplex uses an algorithm to measure and analyze reader behavior in real time while offering community features such as user comments. Graphical tools for each post give users insight into the article and blog traffic, Kim added.

Bloggers can insert the Spotplex code into their sites and begin tracking the number of article reads, which is also updated on the Spotplex site, Kim said. In addition, Spotplex offers widgets that can analyze reader traffic on blogs and list other popular articles on blog sites to keep readers once they arrive, he added.

Spotplex said it also provides a tool that measures the relative popularity of an article compared to a site's overall traffic, which will help focused blogs compete with those with larger audiences.

This story, "Spotplex Launches Digg.com Competitor With a Twist" was originally published by Computerworld .